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"Helping families, children and adolescents
grow well."
The Problem is the Problem, Not the Person
From "The Heart of Parenting" column
by Emory Luce Baldwin, LCMFT
Published in the Takoma Voice, December 2007
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This is the paradox of serious family problems-just when the family needs their creativity, energy, and
hopefulness the most in order to face a serious problem,
the problem itself is draining these very resources.
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Not every problem a family faces becomes a big deal. For instance, sometimes a child doesn't want to eat anything if it isn't a hot dog or a piece of pizza-and then after a few days of limited eating, the child is happy to eat what their family is eating again. It was no big deal. Or, for another example, a child may be having trouble falling asleep at night, and for a few nights there is fussing and getting out of bed over and over again-and then, for no particular reason, that night the child just yawns, curls up with their teddy bear, and falls asleep easily at bedtime. Again, it was no big deal.
But sometimes, there are problems that don't just pop up and create mischief for a short while and then disappear. No indeed. Some problems move in, unpack their stuff, create as much inconvenience and trouble as possible for everyone-and show every intention of staying around a long, long, l-o-n-g time. Some children and parents struggle every single night for years over what they will and will not eat. Other children and parents struggle with getting to sleep, doing homework, fighting, fearfulness, toileting, etc., day after day, with no end in sight.
Problems like these create so much trouble for the family that they have to be taken seriously. And when a problem demands to be taken seriously, it invites everyone to feel worry and despair. Worry and despair are exhausting. The more worry and despair drain the family's energy, the more hopeless they feel.
This is the paradox of serious family problems-just when the family needs their creativity, energy, and hopefulness the most in order to face a serious problem, the problem itself is draining these very resources.
Often times, a problem isn't shared equally among family members-even when everyone is suffering in some way from the troubles the problem creates. Instead, problems may collapse on top of one particular family member. The person most identified with the problem is labeled with the problem: they become known as the "angry" one, the "troublesome" one,
the "just-can't-get-their-act-together" one. And the labels just make the problem more permanent.
Sometimes the best thing to do with a serious problem is to look at it in a new way. When I am helping a family with a serious problem, I like to get to know what everyone in the family is like, apart from their problems. Because, as Australian Family Therapist Michael White, says, "The problem is the problem, not the person." Separating, or externalizing, the problem from the person allows new ways to understand the problem and new possibilities for dealing with it.
Sally, for instance, is a 7 year old girl that I know who has had a lot of experience with "Anger and Temper" creating mischief in her house. Once we established that Sally is a smart and determined girl apart from the "Anger and Temper" problem, we also discovered that she is quite an expert on how "Anger and Temper" operate. She reported that "Anger and Temper" were getting in the way of people seeing her as a good person and appreciating her smartness and determination. Her family added that "Anger and Temper" were also making people feel unhappy, hurting people's ears because of the noise they made, and lessening the amount of fun in Sally's house. Sally and her family agreed that they didn't like this, and that they didn't think it was fair for Anger and Temper to create so much trouble for them.
Fortunately, the last time I saw Sally, her mother reported that "Anger and Temper" were causing less trouble lately. When I asked why that might be, Sally thought it was probably because she and her brother are campaigning to convince their parents to let them get a dog. Sally and her brother have been using Cooperation in their Campaign to Win a Dog. I wondered out loud what "Anger and Temper" thought about this campaign, if they were happy about or not? Sally was very sure that "Anger and Temper" didn't like it this development one bit. When I asked her what they didn't like about it, she told me it was because "Anger and Temper" were really, really afraid of Cooperation!
Now that Sally and her family are united in their opposition to "Anger and Temper" and the troubles they created, they are determined to continue using "Cooperation" so that they can continue to live the happy life they want to live, instead of the trouble-filled life that "Anger and Temper" had planned for them. Instead of being the problem, Sally now has a positive role in the family as an expert in taming "Anger and Temper." Separating the person from the problem allowed us to once again appreciate Sally's special skills and abilities, and this gave Sally the opportunity to change her relationship to the "Anger and Temper" problem.
Emory Luce Baldwin, LCMFT, is both a Family Therapist working with families in Takoma Park and Kensington
and a Certified Parent Educator with the Parent Encouragement Program
(PEP). You can contact Emory at 301-588-1451
or e-mail emory@emorylucebaldwin.com.
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