What's Your Problem, Anyway?
Recently, I met up with a friend of mine from MSASS and had an incredible four hour lunch where we caught up on our lives and talked about what's teaching us these days. Near the end of our time together, my friend was talking about how she sometimes falls into this "therapist" role with people to help them "solve their problems." And I smiled at her and said, "Let me throw this at you and see how it sticks: what if, instead of the problem-solution model, you used Asset Based Community Development? What if instead of deficits, you thought about strengths?"
My friend grinned at me because she knows my affinity for ABCD, so she indulged me as I explained:
"I think in my own life, I've struggled a lot with this idea that I should 'get over stuff.' That there's a pressure to 'get over' a relationship or a traumatic event or really anything. What does that even mean, 'get over it'? Who does that language benefit? I think that it puts unfair expectations on people and undue pressure to 'resolve' this 'problem' when it's not even clear how to do that or what true resolution looks like. What if the 'solution' is simply knowing how to cope with a trigger? How does it all shift if there's an understanding that there isn't a 'solution' that's so conclusive but, rather, acceptance that this may just be something you have to learn to cope with? Isn't it possible that setting up the expectation that someone can 'solve' their 'problem' really just setting them up for failure?" I asked.
My friend's face was thoughtful the whole time I spoke. "I hadn't really thought about it that way before," she said as we continued to dialogue about our own life experiences and how we had learned to cope with difficult feelings, including our "inability" to "get over" some of our hardest life experiences.
A few months back, a friend of mine from Boston posted this meme:
I normally just roll my eyes and keep scrolling at stuff like this -- or even just nod my head in agreement because, yeah, therapy can be very expensive. But it is also not remotely true that venting to a co-worker is therapy. It may feel therapeutic to a certain extent. Maybe you even get lucky and have a really intuitive or tuned-in co-worker who can help you deconstruct what you're venting about. But even so, it ain't therapy. I have a six-figure loan to pay back -- plus a $400 license -- that tells me that to be a therapist requires quite a lot of training and investment. So I dropped a comment on this tee-hee-hee post and said that "venting" wasn't therapy -- which I think annoyed my friend, but I'm also not sorry. This misunderstanding of what therapy is persists. And it's really damaging for anyone who might actually benefit from a therapist. While there's lots of different kinds of therapy -- and lots of different paths for someone to hold the title of "therapist" -- it's important to know what it means to go into therapy.
At its most basic, a therapist assists a client (or a patient, the terminology may vary) in assessing what they want to work on ("what brought them in") and helps create an actionable plan to make productive change in that client's life. In even simpler terms, a therapist teaches skills and provides tools for a client to empower themselves to make the adjustments that they want to make in order to improve how they feel about the direction of their lives.
A good therapist is the mental and emotional equivalent of a really good sales associate at a hardware store. "Hey there, whatcha trying to build? Let's see what we've got over here in Aisle 4 that might make that process possible for you." Very that.
So I can see how this "problem-solution" model might creep into the way a social worker, psychologist, or licensed counselor of any kind might approach their work. And there may be clients who really resonate with that model and it might be just the thing they need to reclaim whatever pieces of themselves have drifted away (to paraphrase the incomparable Lorrie Moore).
But for people with trauma backgrounds? Let me just say that the "problem-solution" model would not work for me. If anything, I spent years and years and years blaming myself for not being able to "get over" something that I eventually realized was related to my core fears. Once I accepted that it was more a matter of learning how to recognize my triggers and self-soothe so as not to take it out inappropriately on whoever set me off, it really changed how I thought about these aspects of my life. It was a relief to come to terms with the fact that these core fears are part of who I am and it was more beneficial for me to get comfortable in the discomfort of understanding those fears and their related triggers than it was for me to put up a wall and try to "toxic-positivity them" out of existence.
There is nothing shameful about being afraid of something. There is nothing shameful about having complicated emotions. There is nothing shameful about being honest about my feelings.
So I own my fears. I own my complicated emotions. And I own being honest about my feelings.
I no longer goal to "get over it."
Instead, I goal to engage with how I'm feeling and explore why. I goal to use my training as a social worker to think practically about my feelings and experiences. I goal to let what I learned from past experiences be a guide or a model for how to understand this present moment. And, yes, I also goal to be uplifted out of even my darkest moments, but not with a white-knuckle-grip on BE POSITIVE. Instead, I look for the joy and the empowerment of standing face to face with a demon and knowing that I will thank this opportunity to learn -- and I will be OK -- because I have done the prep work to see this demon for what it is.
Often times, it seems that people go to therapy expecting that someone will just tell them what to do or how to "solve" their "problem" -- and get frustrated when it turns out that they actually have to do the work themselves. The therapist is there to guide them on their path towards healing, but they are not there to say "do this and this and this and you're all better." Even if a therapist employed the technique of "do this and this and this" with the presumption that their client would then be "all better," both parties would likely end up disappointed with the outcome.
Yesterday I told my friend about how I'd reached a point in my ten-year relationship with an alcoholic (I will call him T.) where I realized that things were not "normal" or even OK -- that what was happening with him was actually quite abnormal and made friends outside of our circle furrow their brows with worry. Once I started to acclimate to this abnormality and more freely calling it out as such, it set off a domino effect where I couldn't ignore it -- I couldn't just look the other way or shrug it off anymore. And the result of that was confronting that I needed to make massive changes in my life, changes that I'd avoided or rationalized away for years because accepting them meant giving up my entire lifestyle. Removing T. from the center of my existence would mean throwing my life into utter chaos, perhaps ironic given how chaotic my life with him was.
Once I started to see certain things about my own rationalizations and excuses and my own prioritization of this person and this life that was depleting me instead of uplifting me, it meant I had to do this painful work of extracting myself from what had become a "safe" existence. This is something that mental health experts encounter time after time after time -- the normalization of toxicity or even danger. Humans can truly adapt to anything. What we want is something predictable because that's what regulates us, even if that means putting ourselves in harm's way day in and day out.
We can get addicted to our sense of normalcy. We spend our lives chasing that high.
In my relationship with T., he spent a lot of our last year telling me how my abuse of alcohol was our "problem" and that he couldn't be around someone who was so self-destructive. But everything about that accusation was wrong or misguided. He was actually right that I was addicted to something -- but it wasn't alcohol and I have never touched a drug in my life. What I was addicted to was his ability to give (or withhold) love. What I craved was his attention. And he expertly kept me off balance and pointed out red herring reasons for why "we didn't work" when the reality was that I was chasing the high of being loved by him. While he has clear dependency on alcohol and drugs, my clear dependency was on him and our relationship. Owning that was a big part of my recovery.
And if I know anything about recovery from addiction, it's not a problem to "solve," it's a circumstance to be managed each and every day. Every day, an addict has to make a choice about maintaining or surrendering their sobriety. When I chose to stay sober from T., I committed to that decision. But that doesn't mean that he ceases to be part of my consciousness. That doesn't mean that all of my feelings about him and our relationship are vanquished. What it means is that now I commit to processing and dealing with and owning how it came to be that this person dominated my life in a brain-chemistry-altering way.
The other day, one of my friends shared this meme on social media:
With me, there was a common thread of T. lashing out, of blaming others (especially me), of not owning responsibility over his actions in genuine ways. And that is only compounded by the fact that he also found ways to claim dominion over certain aspects of my life, finding ways to siphon or put down the light that I shown in the world, despite my hardships. The codependency of wounded souls is common in humans. We both hid our trauma at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey. We certainly abused alcohol beyond a healthy limit when we were together.
But again, that just speaks to our human ability to normalize that which is abnormal -- we will do anything to keep from doing the hard work of breaking away from toxic bonds. And while it's really difficult, still, over seven years since I left him, to call my relationship with him toxic or abusive, I know that it was. I know that other people recognized that long before I could fully see it myself.
I wanted to believe in love. I know that's a whimper of an excuse. But it is also true.
What I have learned in the years since leaving T. is that love is real -- but it has to start within me. I cannot wait for someone externally to love me and let that set the tone. I have to love myself and nurture that love by taking care of myself. That means nourishing myself with healthy, reciprocal relationships. That means transparency and clarity and boundaries. That means cultivating vulnerability and courage. That means reducing transactional modalities like "problem-solution" and invest in the long-term, ever-evolving, and never-ending strengths-based approach to assessing my life. No longer do I emphasize failing in past relationships -- instead, I recognize intention and carry those lessons forward with me.
Doing this work is not easy. Nor is it something that most people can do on their own, without the guidance of a trained professional, like a therapist. We all need support and care on our paths towards healing. And we all need to be relieved of the stress and burden of checking the box that says "Over it! Mean it!" We may never fully release the hurt or stress or pain of a traumatic life moment -- and that's OK. What's more important is knowing what to do when hurtful or stressful or painful feelings rise up.
How we cope is the direct link to how we heal.
There is comfort in thinking of life in the problem-solution model. It means that there is an end-in-sight and when we are in trauma or we are in pain, all we want is that sense that we will be released from our suffering. If we think "all I have to do is solve xyz," then we can "get over it" and "move on."
But what happens when we realize that "solving" a problem only uncovers a lot of other "problems"? What happens when we think we've "solved" it only to relapse or realize solving this one piece of the puzzle didn't bring us the peace we thought it would? Doesn't that only compound our suffering? Doesn't that complicate our process of healing?
It sure had that impact on me.
By adopting a strengths-based approach to my ability to cope, I have found greater freedom and greater relief. By accepting my feelings and emotional responses at face-value instead of suppressing or denying them in favor of this false sense of being "over it," I've learned exponentially more than if I'd just buried and hid my feelings away.
So, yeah, I don't have problems. I have opportunities to make changes and learn and grow and evolve. And that mindset has made all the difference.
This essay was originally written on 1/16/22 as part of my 2022 daily writing project.
See also:
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