Problems
When I planted my summer garden in May, I was most excited about the sunflowers. After years of sunflower sprouts being eaten by ground squirrels, I finally found a solution: put a plastic pretzel container over them until they get tall enough that the squirrels can’t reach.
My bedroom window looks out over the garden, and now the sunflowers are a good five feet tall, with buds forming. When I wake up in the morning, they are the first thing I look for.
Except, smack in the middle of my view is the construction workers’ porta potty.
Many mornings I look out there, hoping to see a sunflower, and instead I see an electrician exiting, pulling up his fly.
Such is our experience in life. Just as soon as we solve one problem, another one is there, interrupting our happiness.
Before I go on, consider this:
What are the sunflowers in your life right now?
What is the porta potty?
When my son was five, I overheard his kindergarten teacher asking him what his parents did for a living.
“My dad’s a teacher,” he said, “and my mom listens to people’s problems.”
I thought it was a fairly accurate answer. I don’t solve people’s problems. That’s the job for electricians and construction workers and firefighters. But after more than 15 years of listening to thousands of problems, studying how the mind makes problems, watching how we stumble over ourselves trying to solve them, and living through plenty of my own recurring problems, this is what I have learned.
Beneath every problem is a value.
It wouldn’t be a problem if it didn’t matter to you in some deeper way.
There’s a practice I use, adapted from improv-based communication training, that I call a values rant. Basically, you have someone rant for one timed minute about anything that is bothering them.
In my practice, I hear rants about employees who are planning a mutiny, husbands who aren’t exercising, friends who somehow make every text exchange about themselves, and people talking on speakerphone in public places.
Then, when the rant is over, the job is to reflect back what the person values.
The person ranting about her husband not exercising may value health, vitality, and spending time outdoors with him doing active things.
The person ranting about the friend who always makes it about herself may value connection, mutuality, and an exchange of support.
The person ranting about people on speakerphone in public may value shared space, consideration, quiet, and basic social awareness.
Beneath every problem is a hidden value.
Try ranting for one minute—in your head, out loud, or on paper—and then ask yourself: What does this reveal that I care about?
Now you have something more useful than a complaint. You have a direction.
Your problem is working for you in some way.
There are many terms for this in psychology: strange loops, vicious cycles, negative reinforcement, experiential avoidance, secondary gain. But whatever you call it, when you look closely at a problem that keeps coming back, you may find that it is returning because it is solving some other problem.
The porta potty is there because it is solving the problem of a house under construction. Sure, that’s a simple one.
But what about these?
You worry about money because it is easier to worry than to sit down and face the shame of your overspending.
You keep getting in the same fight with your dad because arguing with him feels better than facing the sadness that he doesn’t really know you.
You keep thinking the people work for you are incompetent, blaming them helps you avoid looking at your unrealistic expectations, and poor leadership. Ouch.
Consider this:
How is your problem working for you?
What is it helping you avoid—ambiguity, anxiety, grief, loss, shame, feeling left out?
And what are you getting out of it—self-righteousness, being right, control, status?
In behavioral psychology we call this a functional analysis–Because once you understand what the problem is doing for you, you have more freedom to choose another way.
You may need to adjust your focus.
Attention is like a spotlight. You can narrow it down to one tiny thing, or you can widen the lens and let it illuminate the whole picture.
This week, someone wrote to me asking for consultation. She is 65 years old. She said weight has always been a problem for her, and she is about to go on Ozempic. But she also knows that even if she loses weight—which she has done many times before—her problem may not actually be solved.
When I work with someone like this, one of the first things I might do is a mirror exercise.
When you look in the mirror, what do you see?
“My stomach.”
Really? What else do you see?
“My scars from breast reduction surgery.”
What else?
“That’s all I really see.”
Now imagine you could zoom your lens way out and see yourself in the room looking in the mirror, almost like an astronaut looking from outer space.
What do you see now?
Now try zooming in. Look at your eye. The details of your retina. The colors. The light.
What do you see?
In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, we call these processes flexible perspective-taking and flexible attention. When you can move your focus around—out and in, right and left, narrow and wide—how you see your problem will likely shift. Often it shifts toward something more compassionate.
Sometimes the problem is not only what you are looking at. It is where you are looking from.
Our minds love to create and solve problems.
Erin Westgate, who I interviewed on the Wise Effort show, is well known for her studies on boredom. In one series of studies, people were asked to sit in a room with nothing to distract them from themselves.
Before the study began, participants were shown a machine that delivered mild electric shocks and were given a sample shock. They said it was uncomfortable. Then they were left in the room with that machine for about 15 minutes.
Many of them shocked themselves.
Not because they liked it. Not because it was good for them. But because the mind often prefers stimulation—even unpleasant stimulation—to sitting alone with itself.
The brain seeks stimulation. It seeks control. It seeks something to do. And if there isn’t a problem available, it may create one.
You may notice this if you go on vacation this summer. You are all geared up for the perfect vacation, and as soon as you leave, the problems start.
The plane is late. The pillow at the hotel is terrible. Your family is kind of annoying.
Problem. Problem. Problem.
Life hands us problems, sure. But is it really a problem that the plane is late? Haven’t you been wanting, more than anything, a little time to do nothing?
Is it really a problem that your family is annoying? Or is your mind creating a problem out of ordinary human contact?
Part of the frontal lobe is a problem-solving system. The anterior cingulate cortex and the salience network act a little like a hall monitor for conflict, error, and threat: What’s wrong here? What needs attention? What needs fixing?
That system is useful. We need it. But if you have trained for a lifetime in solving problems, grew up in an environment where you were seen as the problem, weren’t taught skills like mindfulness of emotions, or lived with a lot of real problems—trauma, lack of resources, instability—then your mind may be very well-practiced at finding what is wrong.
And sometimes what is wrong is simply that your mind is looking for what is wrong.
Some problems can be solved. Some cannot.
There’s a saying I learned from Kelly Wilson: if there’s a stone in their shoe, take it out.
Some problems are meant to be solved. You do not have to keep walking with a stone in your shoe if it is easy to remove. Please remove it.
If you can solve the problem, solve it.
But most of the problems that come into my office are problems people have already tried to solve a million ways. They have gotten all sorts of advice.
Have you tried X?
Have you tried Y?
If I were to offer that kind of advice, it is likely I would get a blank stare, a polite nod, and my client may not come back.
“Have you tried putting the porta potty in a different spot than directly in front of your garden?”
Really? You think I have not thought of that?
Of course I have.
So what then?
There are four ways to respond to a problem:
Solve it.
Think differently about it.
Accept it.
Stay miserable.
The word “acceptance” is in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for a reason. Often the pathway to commitment and change is acceptance.
Acceptance does not mean approval. It does not mean liking something. It does not mean pretending the porta potty is a sunflower.
Acceptance means allowing what is already here to be part of your experience so you can stop spending all your energy arguing with reality. It means making room for the full experience: irritation and gratitude, beauty and inconvenience, sunflower and porta potty.
And sometimes, when you accept, move toward, and allow the very thing you fear or hate, you end up back at the beginning.
Beneath every problem is a value.
I wanted the sunflower because I value beauty. Growth. Tending. Life. The small daily miracle of something making it’s way to the sun.
The porta potty is not the opposite of that. It is part of the same life. The same house under construction. The same garden. The same human mess.
Pema Chödrön writes that “things come together and they fall apart.” Then they come together again. Then they fall apart again.
The solution is not in finally getting a life with no problems. The solution is bringing every problem to your path and remember:
Beneath every problem is a value
Your problem is working for you in some way
You may need to adjust your focus
Some problems cannot be solved
Practice for the week
This week, choose one problem that has been taking up a lot of your energy
Then ask:
What value is underneath this problem?
How is this problem working for me?
Can I see it differently?
What story am I adding?
Can I make room for it?
Your task is to become more skillful with the problems you have, so they can become gateways to your values, so you can keep tending your little garden patch with care.