Understanding Why Some Problems Resist Solutions Whilst Others Demand Immediate Action
We live in a culture obsessed with solutions. Every difficulty must have an answer, every challenge a strategy, every problem a resolution waiting to be discovered. This solution-focussed mindset has become so embedded in our thinking that we rarely pause to consider whether the problem before us actually requires solving, or whether our attempts at solutions might themselves become the problem.
Consider two scenarios that illustrate this complexity: someone struggling with weight loss, and someone suddenly facing unemployment due to company administration. Both appear to present clear problems requiring solutions, yet they operate according to fundamentally different logics and demand entirely different approaches.
To understand why some problems resist solution-focussed approaches, imagine attempting to unknot a severely tangled ball of wool. The obvious response is to identify what appears to be the key strand and pull it firmly, expecting the entire knot to unravel. Instead, this approach typically tightens the knot further, creating additional tangles and making the original problem more intractable.
The alternative approach requires patience and precision: gently teasing apart individual strands, working with multiple points simultaneously, sometimes leaving one area alone whilst attending to a completely different section. Progress may be imperceptible for long periods, but this gentle method respects the interconnected nature of the tangle and allows for natural loosening over time.
This metaphor illuminates why our cultural preference for direct action can backfire when applied to complex human difficulties. Some problems are knotted balls of wool, requiring gentle, multi-faceted approaches that acknowledge interconnected factors. Others are genuine emergencies demanding immediate, focussed intervention. The crucial skill lies in distinguishing between them.
Weight management exemplifies the knotted ball problem. The cultural narrative presents it as straightforward: consume fewer calories, exercise more, problem solved. Yet this apparent simplicity dissolves under examination.
Consider someone whose weight reflects a life authentically lived according to their values: cooking elaborate meals for family and friends, expressing love through food, finding joy in social dining, taking pleasure in selecting quality ingredients. Their body tells the story of generous hospitality, meaningful relationships, and genuine appreciation for culinary experiences. When the supermarket checkout person compliments their shopping choices, they're celebrating the same values that contributed to the weight.
This differs fundamentally from those experiencing food addiction, binge eating disorders, or using food as maladaptive self-soothing. For them, eating may represent escape from unbearable emotions, compulsive behaviour beyond conscious control, or deeply embedded trauma responses. Their relationship with food involves secrecy, shame, and loss of control rather than celebration and connection. The weight here tells a different story - one of struggle, isolation, and attempts to manage psychological pain through physical consumption. These are genuine clinical conditions requiring professional support, not lifestyle choices reflecting personal values.
The complexity deepens because both patterns can coexist in the same person, and external observers rarely possess sufficient information to distinguish between them. Someone might genuinely value food-centred hospitality whilst also struggling with emotional eating. The challenge lies in addressing pathological patterns without destroying the meaningful, value-based relationships with food that enhance life rather than escape from it.
Attempting to "solve" this weight problem through restriction and deprivation threatens the very lifestyle and relationships that provide meaning and connection. The solution becomes the problem, creating guilt around previously joyful activities and potentially damaging the social bonds built around shared meals.
But here we encounter a crucial question: whose problem is this? Many larger people are genuinely happy, confident, and comfortable in their own skin. Their bubbly, engaging personalities may not represent overcompensation for supposed inadequacies but authentic self-acceptance and contentment. They have simply rejected the cultural narrative that their worth depends on conforming to particular physical standards. Media representation increasingly shows larger people living full, joyful lives - though whether this reflects genuine diversity or marketing executives recognising a valuable demographic remains complex. Yet self-acceptance doesn't negate medical realities: diabetes, cardiovascular disease, joint degeneration, and other weight-related conditions create genuine health crises requiring intervention regardless of someone's psychological comfort with their size.
For some, the body may simultaneously be communicating genuine distress: stairs avoided when possible, constant back pain, increasing health risks, an internal awareness of physical limitations. The weight creates real functional problems that affect quality of life beyond aesthetic concerns.
This creates the knot: distinguishing between problems that exist in the person's actual experience versus problems projected by external observers. The weight might represent authentic living and meaningful relationships whilst family members, healthcare providers, or society generally feel more troubled by it than the person themselves. External pressure to see weight as requiring solution could be the actual source of distress, creating internal conflict where none previously existed.
This complex web cannot be addressed through simple solutions because it ignores the intricate connections between weight, relationships, emotions, identity, and lifestyle: emotional eating patterns, social food connections, time constraints, family cooking responsibilities, physical limitations that make exercise challenging, and the psychological functions that food serves beyond nutrition.
The classic New Year's resolution approach exemplifies the futile thread-pulling response. January arrives with renewed determination to "finally sort this out," as if calendar change will somehow untangle the complex web of factors that created the situation. The focus narrows to willpower and restriction, completely ignoring the intricate connections between weight, relationships, emotions, identity, and lifestyle.
This cycle is perpetuated by an industry with questionable incentives. Do solution providers actually want the problem solved? True weight loss success would eliminate their customer base, creating perverse economic pressures to develop solutions that work just enough to inspire hope but fail often enough to ensure return customers. The industry thrives on approximately thirty percent success stories to maintain credibility whilst seventy percent experience the familiar cycle of temporary progress followed by regain, creating shame that drives them back to purchase the next solution, the next programme, the next promise of transformation.
By February, the knot has typically tightened further. The attempted solution creates additional problems: guilt about "failing again," restriction triggering binge patterns, exercise causing increased pain, family relationships strained by dietary changes, loss of social connections previously maintained through shared food experiences. The failure becomes evidence of personal inadequacy rather than recognition that the approach itself may be fundamentally flawed.
The weight problem reveals itself as a condition requiring long-term management rather than a puzzle requiring solution. Progress comes through gently addressing multiple factors simultaneously: understanding emotional eating triggers, finding alternative ways to express care, gradually increasing movement within physical limitations, building supportive relationships that don't centre on food, addressing underlying health issues that affect metabolism and energy.
Contrast this with sudden unemployment due to company administration. Here, overthinking enlarges the problem whilst action reduces it. The mortgage company, utility providers, children's needs, and pet care requirements are entirely indifferent to personal growth journeys or philosophical approaches to problem-solving. They need payment within specific timeframes, and delay genuinely makes things worse.
This situation demands immediate triage: contacting creditors to arrange reduced payments, accessing emergency financial support, applying for any available income (even temporary work like delivery driving), and managing the practical consequences of sudden income loss. The person facing this crisis has no luxury of gentle reflection; survival needs force direct action on specific, time-sensitive problems.
Paradoxically, this urgency can be protective. With headspace occupied by immediate necessities, there's little room for the kind of rumination that can enlarge other types of problems. The crisis simplifies decision-making: take the Deliveroo job, accept the mortgage payment holiday, sign on for benefits. These aren't permanent solutions to deeper career questions, but they address the immediate survival needs whilst creating space to consider longer-term options.
The social dynamics also operate differently. Banding together with former colleagues to campaign for wages owed may be unrealistic, but it serves immediate psychological needs: channelling legitimate rage, maintaining some sense of agency, and preserving connections during a disorienting period. Some work relationships will survive the transition to genuine friendship; others will fade despite shared crisis experience.
The unemployment situation contains both immediate survival problems requiring direct solutions and underlying complexity that needs patient attention. The key is recognising which aspects demand urgent action and which require longer-term consideration. Career direction, industry changes, skills development, and life transitions are the deeper knots that can be gently teased apart once the immediate crisis is managed.
Our solution-focussed culture can pathologise natural human experiences and variations. The teenager who prefers reading to socialising gets diagnosed with social anxiety requiring intervention. The child who learns differently receives labels and treatments rather than adapted teaching approaches. The couple whose relationship has comfortable routines gets told they need to "work on" their marriage.
This pattern extends beyond personal situations into systemic interventions. Consider speed bumps installed to reduce vehicle speeds - a solution that appears successful by its own narrow measure. Cars do indeed slow down, providing visible evidence that the intervention works. Yet this "solution" generates an ecosystem of new problems: heavy vehicles create constant ground vibrations that damage underground utility pipes, increase noise levels for nearby residents, cause accelerated wear requiring more frequent vehicle repairs, and delay emergency services. The vibrations gradually create cracks in houses and buildings, leading to expensive structural repairs that weren't needed before the "solution" was implemented.
Each secondary problem then generates its own solutions: noise barriers, vehicle suspension upgrades, utility pipe reinforcement, alternative emergency routes, building foundation repairs. Rather than questioning whether speed bumps were appropriate, the culture responds by trying to solve each new problem created by the original intervention, creating an endless cycle that may ultimately cost far more than the original speeding issue.
Sometimes the problem isn't the situation itself but our interpretation of it as requiring change. This is particularly relevant for helping professionals who may unconsciously impose problem-solution frameworks on family dynamics that are actually functioning well according to the family's own values and needs. (For exploration of how adapting external environmental factors can promote healthier authentic change, see the Changing People series, particularly Part 5: Adaptation.)
Some situations we label as problems are actually the natural expressions of our values and priorities. The weight that reflects generous hospitality and appreciation for good food isn't inherently problematic; it becomes one only when viewed through cultural narratives about ideal body sizes. The family chaos that results from prioritising children's emotional needs over household efficiency isn't necessarily dysfunction; it might represent conscious choices about what matters most.
Attempting to solve these "problems" can create genuine difficulties by dismantling the very relationships and practices that provide meaning. The challenge lies in distinguishing between authentic expressions of our values and patterns that genuinely compromise our wellbeing or capacity to live according to those values.
The most complex human difficulties exist where our values, survival needs, and psychological patterns intersect. These rarely respond to single interventions or solution-focussed approaches. They require patience, understanding of interconnected factors, and willingness to work with multiple aspects simultaneously whilst accepting that progress may be slow and non-linear.
Effective response depends on accurate problem categorisation:
Immediate survival problems have time-sensitive consequences that worsen with delay. Financial crises, health emergencies, safety issues, and legal deadlines require direct action regardless of underlying complexity. The goal is stabilisation, creating space for longer-term consideration of deeper issues.
Complex adaptive problems involve multiple interconnected factors and resist simple solutions. Weight management, relationship difficulties, behavioural patterns, and personal development issues typically belong in this category. Forcing quick solutions often tightens the knot further.
Pseudo-problems are natural variations or expressions of values that become problematic only through cultural interpretation. These require questioning assumptions rather than implementing solutions.
The most challenging situations contain elements of all three types. The unemployed person faces immediate survival needs whilst also confronting deeper questions about career direction and life priorities. The weight management situation involves health risks requiring attention alongside complex emotional and social factors.
For complex adaptive problems, effective engagement resembles the careful unknotting of tangled wool more than surgical intervention. This approach requires:
Patience with non-linear progress. Change often occurs in ways that aren't immediately visible, and apparent setbacks may actually represent necessary adjustment processes.
Multiple simultaneous approaches. Rather than seeking the single key solution, gentle engagement works with various factors at once, understanding that progress in one area may create space for movement in others.
Respect for existing systems. Before attempting to change patterns, understanding why they exist and what functions they serve prevents inadvertent damage to important relationships or coping mechanisms.
Tolerance for complexity. Some situations don't have clear solutions and require ongoing management rather than resolution. Learning to live skillfully with certain problems may be more valuable than solving them.
Recognition of interconnection. Changes in one area inevitably affect others. Effective engagement considers these ripple effects rather than pursuing isolated interventions.
Whether as parents, teachers, managers, or helping professionals, recognising problem types affects how we respond to others' difficulties. The child struggling academically may need immediate educational support, long-term patience with their learning differences, or simply acceptance that their strengths lie in non-academic areas.
Family problems particularly resist solution-focussed approaches because they involve multiple people with different needs, established patterns serving various functions, and cultural contexts that shape what's considered problematic. The family whose household runs on creative chaos may not need organisation systems; they may need support for their chosen lifestyle.
Professional helping relationships can inadvertently create problems by applying solution frameworks to situations that require acceptance, adaptation, or gradual change. The therapeutic goal of removing symptoms may ignore their protective or communicative functions. The educational aim of improving behaviour may overlook the environmental factors that make current behaviours necessary.
Perhaps the most radical insight is that some problems don't require solving. They require living with skillfully, managing wisely, or accepting gracefully. The chronic health condition that must be managed rather than cured, the family member whose personality creates ongoing challenges, the financial limitations that require creative adaptation rather than resolution.
But where is the knotted ball of wool in these situations? It doesn't disappear simply because we've shifted our approach. For the unemployed person focussed on immediate survival, the deeper questions about career direction, identity, and life purpose form that tangled ball sitting way behind the urgent need for income. It's not gone, just temporarily deprioritised whilst basic needs take precedence. For the weight situation, the complex web of emotional eating, social connections, and psychological patterns remains somewhere to the left of the simple cultural message "you do need to lose a few pounds." The complexity hasn't vanished; it's simply not being addressed by quick fixes.
And for helping professionals whose identity centres on being "the fixer" - there's often a ball of wool sitting right in front of them, demanding to be untangled even when patience and acceptance might be more appropriate responses. Their professional training and role expectations can make it difficult to resist the pull of that obvious strand.
This doesn't mean passive resignation but rather active engagement with reality as it is rather than as we wish it were. Sometimes the most helpful response to a problem is developing better ways to live with it rather than eliminating it. The ball of wool remains, but our relationship to it changes - from urgent untangling to patient coexistence, from frustrated tugging to gentle awareness of its presence.
Our solution-obsessed culture struggles with this concept, yet it may be essential for psychological wellbeing. The constant pressure to fix, improve, and optimise every aspect of life can prevent the acceptance and adaptation that actually reduce suffering.
Problems are indeed problems, but they are not all the same type of problem. Some require immediate action to prevent deterioration, others need patient, gentle attention to complex interconnected factors, and still others may not require solving at all but rather accepting or reframing.
The art lies in accurate assessment: recognising when to act decisively, when to proceed gradually, and when to question whether the situation actually requires intervention. Our cultural bias toward solutions can blind us to the wisdom of patience, the value of acceptance, and the reality that some of life's most meaningful experiences arise not from solving problems but from learning to live gracefully with complexity.
For families, professionals, and individuals facing difficulties, this recognition can reduce frustration, prevent iatrogenic harm from inappropriate interventions, and create space for the kind of thoughtful engagement that honours both immediate needs and long-term wellbeing. Sometimes the most helpful thing we can do with a problem is to understand it deeply before rushing to solve it.
Yet understanding must not become paralysis. The skill of problem triage - rapidly distinguishing what needs immediate attention from what can wait - remains essential. When the house is on fire, you don't gently tease apart the complex factors that led to the blaze; you call the fire brigade and evacuate. When someone is having a panic attack, you don't explore the deep psychological roots; you help them breathe. When the bills must be paid this week, you find immediate income, even if temporary.
The wisdom lies not in avoiding solutions altogether, but in matching the response to the problem type: urgent action for genuine emergencies, patient engagement for complex adaptive challenges, and thoughtful questioning for situations that may not be problems at all. Some problems do indeed need immediate focus and fixing, even if only temporary - creating the breathing space necessary for longer-term understanding and sustainable change.
© 2025 Steve Young and YoungFamilyLife Ltd. All rights reserved.
This essay was developed collaboratively using AI assistance to research academic sources and refine content structure, while maintaining the author's original voice, insights, and "Information Without Instruction" philosophy. No part of this essay may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the copyright holders, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
For permission requests, contact: info@youngfamilylife.com