When Insight Isn't the Thing That Changes You

I want to answer a question that came in from someone who’s started the process of unbecoming. It’s a really good question, and I suspect it’s one that comes up for a lot of people:

“I’ve done a lot of therapy, journaling, and self-work. I intellectually understand myself pretty well, but I still find myself reacting the same ways in my relationships, and my body still holds a lot of tension. When you talk about unbecoming, how is this different from just doing more insight work? What actually changes when someone moves from understanding themselves to living from that place?”

I think this question names a very real frustration—the sense that awareness should be enough, and the confusion that comes when it isn’t. When you’ve done the work, understand your patterns, and yet nothing seems to shift in how you actually live.

So how is unbecoming different?

To answer that, I want to start somewhere that might seem unrelated.

The Premise We Don’t Know We’re Carrying

A few years ago, I was walking through Target when a song came on over the speakers. I started singing along—and then stopped myself. I realized I knew every single word. It was a Taylor Swift song. I’m not a Swiftie. I’ve never intentionally played Taylor Swift. And yet, somehow, every lyric was in my head.

It was one of those slightly disturbing moments where you realize:
What else is in my mind that I didn’t choose? What beliefs am I carrying that I never consciously agreed to?

That’s actually a useful place to start when we talk about self-work.

Because in therapy, self-help, and inner work, there is almost always an unexamined premise running in the background. From what I can tell—both as someone who’s done a lot of this work and as a therapist—the dominant premise is this:

Something is wrong with me. I need fixing.

We don’t usually seek help unless we believe something needs to change. And that makes sense. There are ways we react or cope that cause harm or pain. Wanting change is not the problem.

The issue is what happens when that premise never gets questioned.

When the frameworks we enter echo that same message back to us—yes, something is wrong, and here’s how to fix it—we can end up on a hamster wheel. Always working toward the next realization, the next breakthrough, the next version of ourselves that will finally feel okay.

Where Unbecoming Starts Differently

The process of unbecoming does not agree with the premise that you are broken.

That’s the difference.

So someone might come into self-help saying, “Something is wrong with me. I need fixing.” And the first thing we would ask is:

Is that actually true?

Is there something fundamentally wrong with you?
Or have there been conditions in your life that shaped how you learned to relate, cope, and survive?

Unbecoming starts from a different premise:

You are already whole, complete, and inherently worthy as a human being.

The patterns you’re trying to change are not evidence of defect. They are adaptations—ways you learned to maintain connection, safety, or belonging. And adaptations can be undone.

The Baby Question

One way I like to think about this is through children.

When you look at a baby—newborn, infant, toddler—there’s usually no doubt that they are worthy of love and belonging. There’s an openness there. A presence. No layers of skepticism or fear yet.

I see this in my son all the time. When he looks at you, he’s just here. Just aware. And it’s obvious: there is inherent worthiness and completeness there.

So then the question becomes:

At what point does that disappear?

If so many adults walk around feeling unworthy or incomplete, when exactly did that baby lose it?

Was it as a toddler?
A child?
A teenager?

At what point would you look at another human being and say, “Now you no longer deserve love or belonging”?

Most people can’t find a point where that actually makes sense.

What changes is not the presence of that wholeness—but the belief in it.

The Golden Light

I sometimes imagine this as a little golden light at the center of a person. You can move the body forward through time, watch it age, and ask:

Does that light ever actually disappear?
Or does the person simply come to believe it was never there?

Unbecoming is built on the idea that the light never left. It cannot leave. What changes is our relationship to it, shaped by conditioning, environment, and the systems we grow up in.

So the premise becomes:
You are already whole. Nothing took that away. The work is about undoing what obscured it.

From Understanding to Living

Often, this starts as an intellectual buy-in. You don’t have to feel it in your bones yet. You don’t have to believe it emotionally. You’re just saying:

Okay. I’m willing to operate from this premise and see what happens.

That alone can reduce a lot of pressure—the striving, the tension, the sense that you need to become better in order to be okay.

From there, the process unfolds:

• Awareness: noticing the beliefs and conditioning you’ve been carrying

• Shedding: questioning whether those beliefs are actually true

• Alignment: letting what does feel true emerge

• Embodiment: living from that place

• Integration: remembering, forgetting, and beginning again

What changes when you move from understanding yourself to living from that place is not perfection.

It’s relief.

The pressure eases.
The striving softens.
You stop trying to fix yourself into wholeness.

And life becomes something you’re in—not something you’re trying to solve.