THE ART OF MIS-HANDLING PROBLEM

When it comes to problem-solving, handling a problem occurs on a continuum. There’s are many degrees between mis-handling a problem and handling it with grace, power, and focus. Your skill and my skill for effectively handling problems depends on a great many things: your ability to clearly define the problem, the number of contributing factors to the problem, the number of symptoms that result, the amount of noise around the problem, etc.

One kind of mis-handling of a problem involves creating a minimal solution or a pseudo-solution, and then exaggerating ut as if it was the ultimate solution. Here’s an example:

Let’s say a young man complains that “nothing ever works out and I can’t find pleasure in anything.” Imagine that those around him have a solution, “Just cheer up; put on a happy face; look on the bright side of things.” If the young man complies, thinking that they know better, he then adopts this shallow solution. He adopts a style of ‘smile, count your blessings and all will be well’ as his ‘solution.’

Yet actually this is a pseudo-solution. It is not a real one, not an authentic solution. Why not? Because it is based on a false assumption, namely, that the suffering person can directly turn his emotions on and off and that the source of the emotions (i.e., his thoughts and beliefs) do not really matter. Now given how we can adopt false understandings, false strategies, false ways of acting, etc., what if the young man becomes ‘overly optimistic,’ by developing his ability to ignore his emotions and ‘pretend his way’ to a shallow optimism?

If that happens, then his ‘solution’ has becomes the next-level problem. In that case, the ‘overly optimistic way of being’ not only covers up the real problem, it also defends and protects the real problem (his original negative thinking). The pseudo-solution would now stand in the way of getting to the original problem. It becomes an interfering problem itself. Yet the young man would not see it that way. He would see it as the great solution and so would refuse to give it up or consider it as a problem.

What may have been a fairly harmless difficulty in the first place which the young man over-generalized and over-exaggerated (‘nothing’ ‘ever’ works out for me), the solution of denying his emotions, refusing to look within, and adopting a shallow optimism has all come together to create a really big problem. And he doesn’t even know it!

In this way the attempted solution mis-handled the first problem and became the next-level up problem. And when an inadequate solution becomes the problem, if often becomes a much bigger problem and more difficult to deal with. The entire experience may have gone in another direction. What if the attempted solution of denying emotions and adopting shallow optimism lasted for a short while and provided a temporary relief, but the original problem continued and got worse— more frustration, more failures, etc. Then below the shallow optimism that he’s faking and that others are preaching could be a slow burn of a rage, a deep sense of helplessness and a rage at the unfairness of the world. He would then become a volcano in the making, becoming more and more ready to explode.

Obviously, the pseudo-solution became a much bigger problem because of its implications:

∙ Don’t look within. Don’t seek to understand why you felt what you felt when things didn’t go well for you. Ignore your emotions and they will go away.

∙ Don’t track back the emotions to the thinking that produced them. Don’t discover your cognitive distortions or ill-formed ways of thinking about your original problem.

∙ Cover up the negative emotions with positive emotions. Just ‘fake it till you make it’ and all will be fine.

This reveals how the original problem was mis-handled. Nor is this rare or an exception, pseudo-solutions occur all the time. They are, in fact, easy to generate. The same structure occurs when a parent tells a child, “Go to your room and don’t come out until you have a smile on your face.” Or when a manager says, “Just suck it up; everybody’s struggling, it’s best if you leave your emotions (your problems) at home.”

To flush out hidden solutions that have become a problem, use these questions:

∙ What ‘solutions’ have you used in the past that may now be in your way?

∙ How have you interpreted some previous problems and thought you ‘solved’ them, only to fine that they are returning?

∙ What symptoms may be popping up which don’t make sense and seem to come from out of the blue?

The bottom line is that problems need to be handled aright—appropriately. And that requires a creating a well-defined problem in the first place. Then developing the skills to do the meta probe into the mind-body system to find out what needs to occur.