It’s a new year, which means your social media feeds are overflowing with transformation content. Green smoothies. Gym memberships. Journaling challenges. Vision boards. Everyone seems to be talking about becoming their “best self” this year.
But what if you’re still processing last year’s trauma? What if your primary goal right now is just to keep showing up? What if the idea of “self-improvement” feels like one more way you’re falling short?
You’re not alone, and you’re not failing. Let’s talk about why “New Year, New You” culture can be harmful—especially for marginalized communities—and what a more compassionate approach to January might look like.
The Problem With “New Year, New You”
The annual pressure to transform yourself isn’t just annoying—it’s rooted in systems that profit from your belief that you’re not good enough as you are. Wellness culture, productivity culture, and capitalism all benefit when you think you need to constantly optimize, improve, and upgrade yourself.
This narrative centers privileged perspectives. It assumes you have:
- Time and energy for self-improvement projects
- Money for gym memberships, supplements, or therapy copays
- A body that responds predictably to diet and exercise
- Mental health that allows for goal-setting and follow-through
- Living circumstances that support “wellness routines”
- A sense of safety that makes planning for the future feel possible
For many of TCP’s clients, these assumptions don’t hold. When you’re navigating systemic oppression, financial precarity, or ongoing trauma, the pressure to “improve yourself” can feel like gaslighting. It suggests that your struggles are personal failures rather than responses to real barriers.
What This Looks Like for Our Community
When you’re transgender or non-binary: Just existing in your authentic identity while navigating over active anti-trans bills, executive actions, and proposed federal rules is an act of resistance. When politicians debate your right to healthcare and politicians use your existence as a political tool, “self-improvement” might feel absurd. Surviving is success. Showing up as yourself is revolutionary.
When you’re BIPOC: You’re navigating race-based trauma that didn’t take a break for the holidays. When you’re processing microaggressions, discrimination, and the ongoing impacts of systemic racism, adding “wellness goals” to your plate isn’t self-care—it’s another burden. Your mental energy is already spoken for.
When you’re a woman: You’re navigating a culture that has always told you that you need fixing. Diet culture, anti-aging messaging, productivity pressure, and the expectation that you should be endlessly self-improving while also caring for everyone else—these aren’t new year pressures, they’re constant background noise. Add in threats to reproductive autonomy, wage gaps, and the emotional labor you’re expected to perform for free, and “New Year, New You” can feel like one more way society profits from your insecurity. Your body doesn’t need to be smaller. Your face doesn’t need to look younger. Your life doesn’t need to be more Instagram-worthy. You’re allowed to take up space exactly as you are.
When you’re living in or near poverty: Wellness culture costs money. Therapy costs money. Time for self-care costs money. When most of TCP’s clients live with financial anxiety, being told to “invest in yourself” isn’t inspirational—it’s a reminder of what you can’t access. Your worth isn’t determined by your ability to afford transformation.
When your relationship with your body is complicated: Whether through gender dysphoria, body trauma, disability, or the impacts of fatphobia and beauty standards rooted in white supremacy, “new year, new body” messaging can be actively harmful. Your body doesn’t owe anyone a transformation.
When “self-care” feels impossible: If you’re already at capacity—managing chronic illness, caregiving, working multiple jobs, navigating unstable housing—one more self-improvement task isn’t care. It’s punishment disguised as wellness.
A Different Approach to January
What if, instead of asking “How can I be better?”, we asked “What do I need right now?”
Maintenance as success. Did you take your medication? Show up to therapy? Get out of bed on a hard day? Text a friend? That’s not “bare minimum”—that’s sustaining yourself in a world that makes it hard to exist. That counts.
Survival as resistance. For marginalized communities, surviving systems designed to harm you isn’t failure to thrive—it’s active resistance. Every day you continue to exist as yourself is meaningful. You don’t need a transformation on top of that.
Rest as revolutionary. In a culture that measures your worth by your productivity, choosing rest is radical. You don’t have to earn the right to exist without constantly improving.
Honoring where you are. What if you’re exactly where you need to be? What if this moment, with all its difficulty, is teaching you something? What if you don’t need to be “better” to be worthy of love, care, and community?
What Sustainable Change Actually Looks Like
We’re not saying growth never happens or that goals don’t matter. But there’s a difference between compassionate growth and self-punishment disguised as self-improvement.
Questions to ask yourself:
- Does this goal serve me, or does it serve capitalism/white supremacy/cisheteronormativity/ableism?
- Am I trying to change because I genuinely want to, or because I feel I “should”?
- Does this goal honor my access needs, limitations, and current reality?
- Am I allowed to just… exist as I am?
- Would I talk to someone I love the way I’m talking to myself about this?
Red flags that your “goal” might actually be internalized oppression:
- It’s focused on making yourself smaller, quieter, or more palatable
- It’s about “fixing” something you’ve been shamed for
- It requires resources (time, money, energy) you don’t actually have
- It’s rooted in comparison to others
- It feels like punishment
- You can’t articulate why it matters to YOU (beyond external pressure)
Green flags for compassionate intentions:
- It comes from genuine curiosity or desire, not shame
- It’s flexible enough to adapt to your reality
- It honors your body’s and mind’s needs
- It builds community rather than isolates you
- It acknowledges your constraints
- It allows for “failure” without judgment
- It can be paused or abandoned without guilt
What We Tell Our Clients at TCP
In therapy, we don’t see you as a self-improvement project. We see you as a whole person navigating real challenges in systems that weren’t designed for your well-being.
You’re not broken. When you’re anxious, depressed, or struggling, it’s not because something is fundamentally wrong with you. Often, it’s because you’re having a reasonable response to unreasonable circumstances. Therapy isn’t about “fixing” you—it’s about supporting you to survive, heal, and claim agency where possible.
Your worth isn’t tied to productivity. We live in a culture that measures human value by output. That’s not truth—it’s capitalism. You have inherent worth just by existing. You don’t have to earn the right to take up space.
Progress isn’t linear. Healing doesn’t look like a steady upward climb. It’s messy. There are setbacks. Sometimes you need to rest in place. Sometimes survival is the victory. That’s not failure—that’s being human.
Sometimes the goal is just to survive. And that’s enough. That’s more than enough. If your mental health goal for this year is “don’t die,” that’s valid. If it’s “keep taking my meds,” that’s meaningful. If it’s “maybe text my therapist when I’m struggling instead of isolating,” that’s growth.
You deserve care even if you never “get better.” This one is important: You don’t have to be “working on yourself” to deserve support. You don’t have to be making “progress” to be worthy of compassion. You get to receive care just because you’re a person who needs it.
Practical Alternatives to Traditional Resolutions
If you want to mark the new year in some way, here are some alternatives to the “New Year, New You” framework:
Review what you survived. Make a list of everything you got through last year. Every hard day you survived. Every crisis you navigated. Every moment you showed up even when it was difficult. That’s your real accomplishment.
Identify what actually brought you peace. Not what you think “should” bring you peace, but what actually did. Maybe it was lying on the floor with your dog. Maybe it was a specific friend’s texts. Maybe it was that one show you rewatched for the third time. Do more of what actually helps.
Choose one word instead of specific goals. Pick a word that represents how you want to feel or what you need more of: Rest. Boundaries. Softness. Community. Permission. Enough. Let that guide you without rigid expectations.
Ask “what do I need?” regularly. Not “what should I do?” but “what do I actually need right now?” Practice listening to that answer without judgment. Sometimes the answer is “absolutely nothing” and that’s valid.
Build community care. Instead of individual transformation, what if the goal was collective support? Check on your people. Share resources. Build networks of mutual aid. Surviving together is more sustainable than optimizing alone.
Give yourself one permission. What’s one thing you need permission to do (or not do) this year? Permission to say no. Permission to rest. Permission to ask for help. Permission to not have your shit together. Grant it to yourself.
A Final Word
At TCP, we’re not here to help you become someone else. We’re here to help you survive, heal, and maybe—if you want to—grow. But you don’t owe that growth to anyone. Not to society, not to your family, not to your therapist. Not even to yourself.
If your 2026 looks a lot like your 2025, that doesn’t mean you failed. It might mean you survived. And survival, especially for marginalized communities in increasingly hostile times, is not a consolation prize. It’s an achievement.
You don’t need to be “new” to be worthy. You’re enough exactly as you are, right now, in this moment.
And if you need support navigating that reality? We’re here.