Learn This Skill: Let Others Solve Their Own Problems

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This is one of my favorite skills that I teach. It comes in handy for parents, friends, family, and coworkers. Sometimes it even makes sense for couples, too.

In order to release yourself from the burden of solving others’ problems (especially when you’re not being paid to do so!), you must understand the art of deflection. Deflecting means being able to listen to another’s plight and his or her attempt to pull you in, empathizing with it, and then putting it back on the speaker to see what they do next.

Deflecting is very simple and involves a few key phrases:

“Wow, that is a bummer.”
“Oh, that’s too bad – what a pain!”
“I would feel the same way.”

These are sympathetic statements that are offered in a sincere and genuine manner. Often just by repeating these statements in different forms, the listener is able to let the speaker vent and express feelings without being distracted by solutions offered up by the listener. Usually (especially with kids!) this is all the speaker wants: a sympathetic ear.

What happens too often though, is the listener makes the mistake of trying to “help” the speaker with advice, a “similar” story of his own (which is almost always perceived as 0ne-upping and not helpful) and the listener ends up with his advice being rejected. For a full explanation of this phenomenon, please reread my story about “Your New Golden Rule: Never Drag a Cat”, which discusses listeners who spend a lot of time in this inefficient mode.

If you cannot maintain patience to listen any longer and must turn the conversation “productive”, the trick to not getting drawn in (especially with a chronic complainer) is to add one more phrase after the sympathetic statement.

“What do you think you are going to do?”

Again, you are turning the speaker’s problem back onto the speaker. In the extremely rare case where the speaker actually actively solicits your advice (be sure this actually happens) even then you can think for a moment and ask the speaker:

  • What have you tried?
  • What do you think would work next?
  • What worked the last time you were in a similar situation?

It is always amazing to me how many clients have the answers to their own problems – and these solutions are far more creative and effective than anything anyone else could come up with.

Children especially are very creative thinkers, and develop coping and self-soothing skills when allowed to brainstorm their own solutions with your guidance. They do NOT need answers to all their problems; usually children just want a venting session (“I hate math! I’m never going to school again!”) These kinds of statements always sound alarming but when offered a sympathetic ear, the conversation usually end abruptly with a change of subject and an amnesia-like quality of moving on from the problem.

For more information on this technique, check out the cheesy but effective book, “I Don’t Have to Make Everything All Better” by Gary and Joy Lundeberg.

The Flip Side Of Your Problems: Some Surprising Benefits

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the beautiful lotus usually grows out of muck

When discussing perceived “flaws” in counseling, my clients are often surprised to discover that the very things the dislike about themselves can be reframed as beneficial in some way. Therefore, coming to my office gives a client a chance to see himself from a new perspective. This doesn’t mean they always agree with my viewpoint, but as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, being able to see yourself in a compassionate manner is always the first step towards behavior change.

When seeking out solutions to problems, it is always worth at least noting that most problems have some benefits to them as well. In therapy we call these secondary gains.

Here are some upsides to common complaints brought to individual counseling:

  • The Upside of Anger: A client might feel worried that their anger is uncontrollable, but the positive side to feeling anger is just that – the client is actually feeling something and can therefore DO something productive with that anger. Anger can relieve stress and prevent runaway anxiety. Anger gives a therapist a lot of opportunity to help a client.
  • The Upside of Loneliness: A client struggling with loneliness has already advanced past many of us who fill our days trying to prevent this feeling; they are experiencing something we fear most. A lonely client seeking companionship has already been figuring out how to structure his day, soothe his quietest moments, and engage in solo activities. Plus, a client who has learned how to live through loneliness can be well prepared to be an independent and self-sufficient partner. A lonely client gives the therapist a chance to help them build his life around his most permanent relationship: the one with himself.
  • The Upside of Anxiety: An anxious client wants to soothe the physical feelings that accompany anxiety. What the client doesn’t realize is that the flip side to his anxiety is the concerted effort his brain is making to soothe him. The client is tuned into life and cares about something; otherwise, anxiety would not be present. Therefore, we can reframe anxiety as a normal response to something that has just gotten blown out of proportion. Anxiety is an extreme measure of self-care.
  • The Upside of Depression: Clients who have worst-case scenario thoughts about their lives are usually very good at predicting and overcoming potential obstacles. This can turn anxiety and brooding into action, which is empowering. A depressed client always has positive aspects to his life that he has been downplaying or not tapping into. This is one reason why depression is so difficult to tackle without professional help; there are immense blind spots with regards to positive qualities that a therapist can help the client see and use.

Solution-Focused therapy, in my opinion, is better than any other therapy when it comes to helping a client reframe their problems and see opportunity and choice.

How Solution-Focused Therapy Increases Your Luck

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Have you ever wondered at the difference between those who seem blessed with luck and those who seem perpetually unlucky? It turns out that the most essential quality that lucky people possess is a state of mind.

Lucky people seem to generate their own good fortune, but it’s not all due to hard or conscientious work. For example, one quality of lucky people is a tendency towards extraversion; they are more likely to have something good happen to them because they encounter more people and tend to be more open to new ideas. Extraversion also tends to go hand-in-hand with less anxiety, anger, and depression.

That idea seems simple enough: the more you put yourself out there, the more likely you are to increase your chances of a fortuitous situation. But two other qualities common in lucky people are being flexible and allowing yourself to stray off-task. Why? Flexible people respond with less rigidity to a situation, which provides more opportunities for solutions and lucky outcomes. Similarly, being overly conscientious can result in missing the point – “losing the forest through the trees,” so to speak. A stubborn focus on a task does not allow us to see hidden opportunities or to catch lucky breaks.

So what is the connection between lucky people and Solution Focused counseling? A solution focused therapist helps the client look for what is going well in life, as well as what is not. The therapist is interested in helping a client apply his own strengths to a situation using flexibility, cognitive re-framing (looking at a problem from a different point of view), and taking the focus off the problem exclusively. Sound familiar? This is the way lucky people approach their lives.

Because Solution Focused therapy isn’t problem-oriented, a client spends much more time examining alternative ideas to nagging issues. This again requires flexibility, for it is not easy to see good fortune or hopeful outcomes in the same area one has failed again and again.

A Solution-Focused therapist is also helping the client become confident in his own strengths and abilities, which gives the client more incentive to say “yes” to a potentially lucky situation. Saying Yes and learning to not live feeling trapped by fear of regret or guilt expands a client’s choices. As we learned above, expanded choices increase luck.

Being guided by a Solution-Focused therapist and experiencing luck does not mean that there will not be obstacles along the way. Again, the solution-focused mindset teaches the client resiliency. Because I believe that a client’s strengths – including those untapped – are greater than his shortcomings, I can help a client rebound from failure. Resiliency is much easier to implement when you believe that more good fortune is just around the corner.