If the problem can't be solved, why worry?

Life is strange sometimes. Not everything can be solved. In situations where solutions are not available, try not to be an overthinker and swiftly move on to other problems. Because they are other (n-1) number of problems waiting to be solved, which desperately requires your attention and energy. It is a truth universally acknowledged that talking through your problems makes them go away. Well, not exactly.

There is a fine line between processing the experience to make it manageable, and thinking about it over and over again, re-traumatising yourself. It is vital to know that there are some things in life that we cannot control no matter how hard we try. Knowing what we can control and what we cannot it tells us to focus our efforts on changing what we can and helps accepting what we cannot. The effect of a problem or trauma is diminished when you take a fly-on-the-wall view and write an account of the problem, referring to yourself in the third person. This creates a distance from the difficult, painful problem, giving you the chance to be more rational about what you cannot fix without being self-destructive.

There is a type of talking about a traumatic event, usually, a breakup or situation where the person feels they have been mistreated and are certain they were in the right, that sounds obsessional to the listener. When someone is obsessive about talking about their problem, it sounds like they are feeding rather than diminishing it. This is the psychological equivalent of scratching a mosquito bite. If you don’t stop scratching it, it is going to continue to itch and may become infected. The cure for this is to develop self-awareness so that you can steer thoughts rather than being at their mercy, and you can move on rather than staying stuck.

Doing this helps remaining stress-free, happier and more importantly not making things worse. Sometimes shifting your frame of reference can help. For example, it may be true that you can’t do anything about a particular problem. At the same time what do you want in your life. When you focus on what you want (rather than on what you don’t want) you often expand your options. A personal problem may be “I hate my job but I’m stuck in it for now.” Restating your problem as what you want: “I want a job that I love.” This gets you thinking about “what do I love to do?” “who might hire me to do this?” This isn’t a magic bullet that fixes everything. However, I personally, feel better and more hopeful when I redirect my attention from my problems to what I actually would like to have. Give it a go and see if this approach helps you.

First, I would ask myself whether this problem is something that is meant to be fixed. I cannot control everything and if the problem is one that I simply cannot control, then I will need to let go of it. If, on the other hand, the problem is one that I cannot personally fix, but I know it is reasonable to expect that there is a solution, I will ask for advice either from my friends or from someone professional whom I could expect has knowledge about the solution. If we can’t fix a problem, personal or not, we have to stop for a while. We need to loosen up and remove that stressing feeling because we cannot fix the problem we are trying to solve.

And if we continue fixing it with a negative feeling we had been controlling for a while,So, we wait believing that we are nearing our goal fixing it, and yet, it was not, at that point, we really have to sit for a while. While sitting to calm our nerves, we heaved a deep sigh. It means we are removing in our chest the weight that have been there because we have not found the solution to it. It was not that we are not capable to solve it, but we need to rest our mind and emotion after we found ourselves unsuccessful in the firs try.

We stopped fixing just to rest our mind and emotion after some moments of failure, failure; which could bring us down. So, we wait until the nerves were calmed, too. When all are clear and calm down, we continue with fixing our problem. It is impossible that we cannot find solution to it. In any unlucky time that we do not solve it, sometimes we have to give up. Sometimes fixing problems may be resolved in its own, and sometimes we have to let go of it. Let the future fix it if it can. But we leave it to stop thinking about it. Cheers!