13. How Our Attempted Solutions Perpetuate our Problems
When we struggle with sadness, anger, fear, other unwanted emotions and behaviors such as any type of addiction, it feels like we have no control, and our only choice is to suffer with our pain. We are so focused on the problem and trying to understand the cause, we don’t realize that what we have been doing to try to manage our problems (this is our Attempted Solution), has not worked. It will not ease our pain or help us find resolution to our problems. These are unconsciously generated adaptive mechanisms set up within us, usually from an early age. We keep using our Attempted Solution over and over to try to get our deeper inner needs met. We don’t pay attention to how this is (or isn’t) working for us. We are stuck in the rut of doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results: the definition of Insanity.
Attempted Solutions often relate to doing things to get our feelings and problems to go away, including working hard to try to “manage” or get rid of our feelings. We have turned to taking illegal and legal drugs/medications, which is certainly an example of an Attempted Solution creating and perpetuating a problem. Psychotropic medications have their place and are helpful in some circumstances, we have turned to them as the “answer”. They typically are ineffective to resolve the underlying problematic issues or move us toward our goals. In fact, Attempted Solutions actually contribute to staying stuck.
We try to figure out what is wrong and why we are the way we are, in hopes that this will diminish our emotional pain. However, to truly find resolution, it is important to discontinue focusing on our flaws and reliving our past problems. Instead, we can direct our attention to what we do want, finding effective ways to move in that direction. It is useful to pay attention to what we are doing that is contributing to and perpetuating the problem. If it is not working, we need to find ways to do something different.
With all good intentions, often mental health professionals unwittingly keep this cycle going as well. Many traditional therapies tend to use Attempted Solutions of focusing on the problem/what is wrong, trying to figure out where the problem originated, believing this information will help. Unfortunately, what actually transpires when we stay focused on our problems and what is not working, we remain stuck and feeling hopeless.
When a client comes to me presenting with “severe depression” (likely diagnosed long ago and most certainly on psychotropic medications), we explore how being depressed affects them now. What are the current problematic behaviors they are experiencing? For example: not being able to get out of bed in the morning or crying most of the time. I identify the thoughts, beliefs, and experiences that contribute to my client feeling depressed. One of my great teachers, the co-founder of NLP, Richard Bandler, used to his ask clients who came in reporting they were depressed, “How are you depressing yourself?”
A potential answer to this question could be: “I compare myself to others in my life and feel I have not accomplished what they have. Then I feel bad about myself for being a failure and beat myself up for it. I become so incapacitated that I can’t function and blame myself more.”
In my own practice, many of my clients have reported struggles with self-loathing, self-blame, and other forms of not being good enough. That would be very depressing!
Next, it is important to find out what they have already been trying to do to resolve their depression. This shows me their Attempted Solution, which is contributing to their Problem. A client may say, “When something goes wrong in my daily life, I tell myself I deserved it. I have spent years in therapy trying to identify where this pattern came from.” It is easy to see how their Attempted Solution keeps them focused on and perpetuating the problem of feeling depressed.
What keeps us using our Attempted Solutions - doing things and being ways that are not useful and even harmful to ourselves?
These patterns and responses are not logically or consciously generated. We operate from the underlying programs wired into our neurology - the tapes that play over and over in our heads and the stories we tell ourselves. These unconsciously generated responses are attempting to serve a positive purpose, to meet our deeper underlying needs in the best way they can based on when they were learned, as adaptive responses to past “dysfunctional” circumstances. Even though our Attempted Solution is not meeting its intention now (and is usually getting us the exact opposite of what it is that it had initially intended), this pattern is a survival mechanism trying to get our needs met. If we do anything to try to take it away, it holds on tighter.
The fact is, when an unconscious survival mechanism does what it does to try to get what it needs as an attempt to help us, if it doesn’t work, it does more of the same. It is not logical or rational. It holds on for dear life. We get stuck running in our hamster wheel, running faster, going nowhere. We need to find a way to step off the wheel and into a new direction with other choices that work better.
So, the Part that generates the response of self-blame, and thus the effect of feeling depressed, has been trying to meet deeper inner needs. When I guide a client to go within, they get answers of this part trying to help them do the right thing, so they can be accepted and ultimately feel their inner worth. It has a useful positive intention, however, being self-critical does not help us really feel inner worth. When I guide my clients into the inner state or self-worth, they naturally let go of self-blame, realizing they did their best and know it is okay to make mistakes and learn from them.
Change comes from accessing and utilizing our own inner resources to find resolution to our problems and move toward our goals.