11. Working with ‘problems in living’ is more useful than grappling with ‘problems of the psyche’

Creating a life you want to live is part of the process of dealing with difficulties and making progress, not just the result

As Chair of Sunday Assembly Edinburgh, the city’s ‘secular congregation’, I get to meet a lot of interesting people doing wonderful things around Scotland’s capital. We meet monthly on a Sunday morning and do things that look a bit like church – but with no religion whatsoever. The Sunday Assembly movement started in London in 2013, founded by comedians Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans. There are chapters all over the world, all with the motto Live Better, Help Often, Wonder More. The idea is that there is a benefit to doing the things folk do in church – singing, reflecting, listening to inspiring talks and poems, chatting to others and having tea and cake – even if you don’t buy the god bit. It’s a revolutionary idea and I love it. You can see us featured on BBC Scotland in 2018 here:

Every month we have a guest speaker at the Assembly, and in March it was DJ Sage! Angie Disney (as she is also known) is a lively Australian lady who offers specially arranged experiences for groups (teams/organisations, families, schools and celebration parties) based on using silent disco technology. Everyone dons wireless headphones and dances along. These events can be enjoyed indoors and outdoors. Angie leads the group like a kind of benevolent Pied Piper. These events are not just fun, they are a powerful experience of healing, togetherness and liberation.

Angie has a background in teaching, drama and coaching which equips her well for this role. She has been on a tough journey too; over 10 years of alcohol addiction leading to a long rehab period. Angie spoke very movingly about her experience and how her positive skills and passions have come together in her DJ Sage persona. She even led the assemblers in a dance to Meghan Trainor’s I Feel Better When I’m Dancing. And it struck me that she does indeed feel better when she’s dancing and helping others to dance. Here’s a short video about her work:

‘Problems in living’ – a useful idea

It seems to me that part of Angie’s story is not only her recovery but the way she has found a new life to live where her challenges are everyday rather than insurmountable. One of the key aspects of Solutions Focus working is taking people’s challenges, difficulties, demons and frustrations as ‘problems in living’ rather than any kind of internal disorder, repressed subconscious, psychological symptom or other internalised cause. The phrase ‘problems in living’ was first used by interpersonal psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan in the 1920s. Sullivan had trained as a psychoanalyst and then developed the idea that mental illness was more down to interpersonal relationships and cultural forces than anything to do with the individual patient.  He wrote:

“One must pay attention to the ‘interactional’ not the ‘intra-psychic’” 

This was a fore-runner of the Interactional View espoused by Gregory Bateson and his colleagues at the Mental Research Institute Palo Alto (about whom I have already written in piece #4 (Why ‘Solution’ in Solutions Focus doesn’t mean what you think it means) and piece #8 (If t’were done., t’were best done quickly: The advantages of working briefly). This is an absolute game-changer in terms of our understanding of people and how we operate in the world. Indeed, Sullivan worked with Margaret Mead who went on to marry Bateson, so the connection is there and direct. Broadly, people act in response to what’s going on around them (including other people). So what might appear to be some kind of internally-driven behaviour can also be understood by looking out and around the ‘inbetween’. In Chapter 4 of The Solutions Focus we refer to this as looking at ‘what’s going on between the noses, not what’s going on between the ears’.

When someone is suffering, there can be great benefits to re-casting the situation as a ‘problem in living’. If the ‘cause’ is some inner disorder, then it’s hidden away (by definition) and becomes harder to work with. If the focus comes away from this and onto ‘how might life be without the suffering’ and ‘what are you doing when the suffering is less’, then we are into seeing the situation not in narrow terms (how to get rid of the suffering) but in much broader and connected ways (a better life, involving who else, doing what, when, and so on).

Carts and horses, chickens and eggs, molecules and meanings

“But isn’t that just too simplistic?” I can hear some people crying.  There has been a lot of mystique built up around the transformational powers of insight, introspection and ‘working through the issues’ inside. It may even be useful – but it’s not our way of working. It’s quite surprising how our clients can start to come alive in a different way very rapidly when they engage with questions about what living better would be like, as opposed to how to be rid of suffering.  They get to be rid of the suffering, for the most part, or bring it down to an acceptable level – not by focusing on it but rather by living in (sometimes slightly) different ways.

I think that one reason why this kind of approach appears unfeasible to some is because it works with a different logic than physical ailments. Let’s say I break a leg. I go to hospital, it’s diagnosed and set, and I face several weeks with reduced mobility while it heals. I have to wait for the injury to cure before I can get back to my life of running for buses, striding the streets and generally being mobile. There can’t be progress until the disorder is cured.

This is an impairment with a clear physical cause and cure. For the kinds of things with which we use Solutions Focus (mental health, anxiety, stuck relationships with people and things), there is usually no clear physical correlation. Some people would like to claim that there may be something like an imbalance of chemicals in the brain that causes these things – but that doesn’t stand up. Your headache can be cured by paracetamol, but lack of such a drug wasn’t the cause! That’s because these are not so much disorders of molecules as disorders of meanings (in the words of philosopher Rom Harré).

If we are working with meanings first (not molecules) then there is no such need to wait for a cure to arrive before seeing any progress. Unlike a broken leg, new meanings can be made instantly (and evolve over time). So it is quite feasible that progress can start to be seen, felt and experienced right away. Starting to be aware of a better life is itself a powerful driver of new experiences, more new meanings and new understandings about what it is (or could be) to live better. And yes, the internal experiences of the client/patient will start shifting too. Chemical balances in the brain can and do start to change without any further physical intervention.  The new life is part of the cure, not (just) the result.

You’re an addict! But for what…?

A notable feature of Edinburgh is Arthur’s Seat, our extinct volcano, which rises above the city centre on its eastern flank. It is the backdrop for a key scene in the film Trainspotting T2, directed by Danny Boyle in 2017 as a follow-up to his successful Trainspotting twenty years before. Both are based on characters created by Scots novelist Irvine Welsh.  Both movies are about addiction, following four men (Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie) who struggle with heroin, sometimes embracing it, sometimes avoiding it and sometimes looking for other things to do. They’re classic movies, not the easiest watch, and hold up a light to an under-seen world. If you’re going to watch them (and I recommend them both) then take in the first one first, and brace yourself for the ‘worst toilet in the world’ scene which comes early on (the link is to an interview with Danny Boyle about it, not the scene itself which should be taken in context).

During the second movie Renton, who has now been clear of heroin for twenty years, is trying to help Spud, who hasn’t. He gets a pair of running shoes and drags Spud on a run up Arthur’s Seat (with fine views of the city interspersed). At the top, Renton sets out his view to Spud:

“You’re an addict. Be addicted to something else!”

Spud doesn’t like the idea of being addicted to running. But he turns out (spoiler alert) to be addicted to writing, and has his work published. Renton is using the idea of ‘problems of life’ very well here; you don’t have to be rid of the addiction in order to start moving on. Indeed, an addictive personality might be very useful when working in fields requiring endless focus and dedication… See the scene in this under-2-minute clip.

Life happens inbetween (as well as individually)

In Solutions Focus we use questions about ‘noticing’ a lot.

• “What would you be noticing on a better day?”

• “Who else would notice that things were better?”

• “What did you notice that time when things went well in the past?”

I think these are rather subtle questions; they invite attention to go more to the outside world of inbetween, not the inside world of individual. Of course you can notice yourself feeling something – and then the questions move on to what others noticed and what you did next. One of my favourite Ludwig Wittgenstein quotes is about this:

An inner process stands in need of outer criteria (Philosophical Investigations 580)

Wittgenstein is saying that anything happening ‘inside’ must also have an outward aspect. Changes to the inside are noticed outside, and changes outside are reflected inside. I don’t deny the inside; I merely observe that the outside is easier to work with, publicly accessible and surprisingly profound. We have become used to seeing people as driven inside to out. Wittgenstein and the current enactive philosophers and cognitive scientists offer a different and more tractable route.

In working with organisational challenges, it can be very useful to start seeing workplace problems in terms of ‘ways of living together’ (interactional) rather than rooted in an individualistic viewpoint. The latter leads much to easily to blaming – “everything would be OK if it wasn’t for them/the marketing dept/the suppliers/whoever”. Finding ways to live better together can be instigated by anyone involved, and can involve all parties (or at least the willing ones) in working to find better ways to interact. The subsequent conversations can be constructed in terms of noticing and doing, much less threatening than blame and problem-pointing.

Conclusion

We started with DJ Sage appearing at Sunday Assembly, showing her wonderful life and work to help us move through challenging times and celebrate success. Angie feels better when she’s dancing – and she expresses it in a ways that is as contagious as it is joyful. Sunday Assembly’s motto of Live Better turns out not to simply be a good headline but also a quite profound way to address the most awful situations. The route to organising humanely and effectively lies in seeing people and their lives in the round, not compartmentalising work/diagnosis/job-title/family/problem/responsibility. Are we offering the chance to work well, hard, creatively, in a way which doesn’t burn people out? Find ways to work which are not only tolerable but engaging, fulfilling and exhilarating. As they say in Trainspotting;

Choose life!

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Dates and mates

Angie Disney – DJ Sage - has a new web site where you can find out all about her work: https://www.dj-sage.com/about.

I am participating in the next BMI Dialogic OD authors salon on Monday 24 April at 4pm UK time. The theme this time is ‘How do we support leaders in generative change processes?’. Aimed at consultants and those working with organisational change, free, all welcome. Registration required: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bmi-dialogic-od-salon-supporting-leaders-in-generative-change-processes-tickets-567792732347