If you follow these guidelines and tailor them to the nuances of your own life, they can work.
Everyone has problems and faces challenges. With these four solutions, you can face any problem in your life head-on.
Savvy Psychologist is hosted by Dr. Monica Johnson. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Do you have problems? Or is society telling you that you are a problem? I don’t think anyone walking around in the world these days has any shortage of problems, so today, I am going to give you four solutions to solve any problem.
Welcome back to Savvy Psychologist. I'm your host, Dr. Monica Johnson. Every week on this show, I'll help you face life's challenges with evidence-based approaches, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment.
In Dialectical Behavior Therapy (or DBT for short), there are four solutions to any problem that you can use as guidelines for how to approach life’s challenges. I have found through my own life and through the work that I have done with patients that these guidelines actually work—if you’re open to applying them. And they can work for all types of problems: career issues, relationship issues, and issues surrounding identity. It doesn’t matter—if you follow these guidelines and tailor them to the nuances of your own life, they can work.
This brings us to our first solution, which is actually solving the problem! That might sound obvious and easy, but here’s the rub: most people are bad at problem-solving because so much of our behavior is mood dependent. What I mean by this is that you only want to do what you want to do instead of what is effective and will actually solve the problem. We get blinded by our emotions all the time and lose sight of our values and our goals.
For instance, let’s say you’re single and you consider that a problem in your life. You want to get married and have children; however, you currently have feelings for and engage in juicy booty calls with Jamie. You want Jamie to realize that you’re awesome so you can be in a relationship with them, but Jamie is not looking for marriage and children. You come to Dr. J and ask for guidance and I look at you and ask: is your goal to find a healthy stable relationship or is your goal to be with Jamie? Because the approaches to those issues are different.
At times, we have to get comfortable with our discomfort before we can move forward. With this specific example, you may actually need to be single for a while and remove yourself from situations that confuse you emotionally. This can give you time to clarify your needs and desires and engage in actions that allow you to meet the type of person that you can build a committed relationship with.
Now if you look at me and say, my goal is to be with Jamie, then you might need to ask yourself—why am I having these late-night romps if they’re not fun or don’t fit my values? In problem-solving, you have to clearly define the problem. That’s always step one. Maybe the problem isn’t that Jamie isn’t interested in a relationship with you. Perhaps the problem is that for whatever reason (e.g. early childhood experiences, your temperament, poor romantic relationships, low self-esteem), you have convinced yourself that the only way to obtain love is from someone who doesn’t want to give it to you. You can’t make someone love you, the same way you can’t make a flower grow. You can water it, give it enough sunlight, buy high-quality soil, and whisper sweet nothings to it, and you can still have a flower die on the vine. It’s maddening. I had an aunt that could grow anything and a mother who could kill anything, and with my mother, we learned what plants actually suited her best and she was able to have a healthy, not murderous, dynamic with plants. And I know that some of you are thinking, but yeah, I want to be your aunt. And I want to be Serena Williams, but simply because I will never be as good at tennis as she will be does not mean I can’t play the sport to the best of my ability and have a fantastic time doing it.
The next solution is changing how you think or feel about the problem. Sometimes, it may not be possible to solve the problem immediately, or the issue may be beyond one's control. In such cases, the focus shifts to changing your emotional response to the problem. A large part of what makes a problem taxing on us is how we are responding to it or the efforts we engage in to fix it. Sometimes, it isn’t necessarily fixable, or at least not fixable in the way we assumed.
For example, I have something to disclose to you. I am a problem—at least for some people. I was born a black, poor, queer, fat woman in the deep South and every single one of those things was deemed a problem. Now how do you fix that? I’ve known people who bathe in bleach to lighten their skin, starve themselves, and look down on themselves for not having the same wealth as the Instagram pretenders that they follow. I was speaking to an obese woman who told me she wanted to lose weight because she wanted to get married one day. I asked why her weight was linked to this goal and she stated that she didn’t think she could find someone if she wasn’t smaller nor did she want to be “fat” on her wedding day.
But what if she never loses that weight? That question terrified her. I then revealed to her that I was 391 lbs on my wedding day and that I didn’t know if she would ever be skinny, but if she was going to be fat, I hoped she would be fat and happy. She followed up with me years later and let me know that she was in a solid relationship, had lost a few pounds, was overall taking better care of herself, and was for all intents and purposes fat and happy. When we change how we think or feel about a problem, we discover solutions that were previously outside of our perspective and can obtain gains in an unexpected fashion.
That brings us to the third solution, which is simply accepting the problem. There is a quote that I love that goes, “The problem is not that we have problems, but that thinking that having a problem is a problem.” I tell my patients all the time that our goal is to remove suffering, not pain. Pain is a necessary condition of life. In many ways, the problems that you experience will evolve with you. They level up, just like you do. It’s like playing a video game—the challenges you face on level one are different from those on level 10. The goal of the game is to accrue knowledge and skills along the way so that you can conquer those challenges.
Acceptance involves acknowledging the reality of the circumstance and embracing it without judgment or resistance. By practicing acceptance, individuals can reduce internal conflict and find peace in difficult circumstances. For a long time, I worked with folks who were incarcerated and those that were homeless, and we worked on acceptance of the problem all the time. Not everything in life is meant to be loved or enjoyed—so much of life must simply be tolerated. If you’re not able to get to a point where you can tolerate an issue, then usually it will consume you. You will remain in a crisis state and burn through your resources at a much higher rate. Most of the people I worked with initially believed that acceptance meant you had to like the problem or give up on it. When I worked with people in these settings and they were able to work on acceptance and tolerating their circumstances, it freed up internal resources that they were able to use to actually change aspects of their lives.
Your final option for solving problems is to stay miserable. Which honestly doesn’t require much effort. I find the world does a good job of helping us with this one. However, I am hoping that you can be more open and flexible in your problem-solving and realize that an all-or-nothing approach will likely be ineffective. By recognizing the negative outcomes of maintaining destructive behaviors or avoiding solutions, my hope is that you will be motivated to seek healthier alternatives and take steps towards positive change.
Unfortunately, you may not have created all of the problems in your life, but it’s your responsibility to solve them. I encourage you to listen to “Level Up” by Ciara and get your next phase started with an empowering groove.
What is a song that motivates you to tackle problems? Let me know on Instagram @kindmindpsych. You can also reach out to me via my email at psychologist@quickanddirtytips.com, or leave a voicemail at (929) 256-2191.