Wouldn’t it be great, if we never had any problems again?
The reality is not all problems are bad, we need problems to motivate us to action, what’s bad is the way in which we view our problems that keep us stuck, for some they remain stuck for years sometimes for life. What’s needed is effective problem solving skills.
My problem seems impossibe to solve…
You see when individuals come to me for help usually what happened is they have been seeing their problems from only one perspective. That perspective is usually one which makes solving the problem impossible.
For example: Many people are trying to control their outside world so they can feel ok, but the more they try this, the more out of control they feel, because people either reject them, or move away from them.
If you help this person to work on what they can control i.e. Themselves and their own actions then their problems change and despair and fear can be replace with strength and courage.
What if a depressed person was actually just bored with the lack of progress in their life? So their life was not going the way they think it should go and that’s why they feel hopeless and depressed? You see boredom is far easier to deal with than depression.
A client recently came to me with a problem with her children. She wanted to get her children back and to do this she wanted to feel less emotion inside her so she had the strength to go to them. This created an internal conflict in her that literally froze her for years.
Her focus on gaining strength from less emotion for her children was her problem.
So I helped her to refocus her thoughts to getting more emotionally attached the pain her children were in. This shift of focus away from her own feelings and to the children she loved triggered her instinct to protect them and put them first.
So the challenge when a problem strikes is to understand it in ways which make is easy to solve and motivates positive actions.