3.5.10 Problem Solving - Male and Female

Most people who come looking for help want their problem solved.  Or, specifically, they want their suffering eased – or taken away altogether. Now – of course – no-one can have suffering taken away altogether. In fact, it is a sign of health that we recognise the inevitability of some suffering in our lives.

Sometimes suffering can be, if not taken away completely, greatly alleviated simply by listening.

And sometimes when people’s suffering is eased (or even temporarily held – as I say above) they can begin to solve the problem themselves, because they experience hope.

And where would a website like this be if we didn’t mention problem-solving!

Prior to discussing various ways of problem-solving I will critique the two modalities I dealt with in some detail above, Person Centred and Cognitive Beharioural Therapies.

In the area of solving the problem, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Person Centred Therapy differ.

PCT usually involves a considerable amount of two way knowledge flow including an emotional flow as well.  The flow in CBT is often one-way where clients follow a programme, guidelines or take advice.

There may be two-way knowledge-flow up to a point in CBT, but if the knowledge from the client is incoherent or delivered in an angry manner it is often seen to be part of the problem.

Then it is moderated by the helper, the helper often coaching the client so that the anger can be expressed coherently, lessening the chance that it will get in the way of getting the help that is needed, and thereby contributing to the person’s problem solving abilities.

And that is very good!

In PCT, however, incoherence and anger have meaning and the meaning is explored by client and helper together – perhaps hidden in the anger or incoherence lie gifts or positive attributes, potential etc. that the practitioner has not spotted himself in his measured thinking that comes from years of formal education.

One-way knowledge-flow implies that positive regard is (almost always) biased towards those who accept the messages in the knowledge imparted to them by the practitioner.  In this respect it is likely that the goal will be that they will develop skills so that they can feel happier within their circumstances, perform better and in that way solve the problems that they presented with in the first place.

On the other hand, two-way flow implies that the person has expertise herself to solve the problem, perhaps in a way that is different to that imagined by the practitioner – and that the practitioner will learn also.  I believe that in cases where problems are symptoms of a greater dis-ease of the psyche, (a deeper distress, if you like), two-way knowledge flow is even more important.

There is a joke (well – maybe it’s only a joke to people like me) about a definition of what a therapist is.  The answer is a person who knows what’s wrong with you but won’t tell you.

The practitioner does have expertise, but it is more in awareness, reflection, affirmation and presence rather than cognitive knowledge as such.

And inviting the person’s chaos into the therapeutic space – as PCT does – indicates, in itself, that the practitioner is willing to struggle with the person in distress to try and find a satisfactory solution.

There are, undoubtedly, differences in the way men and women approach problem-solving. (Whether this is cultural or genetic is often debated – it’s probably a bit of both). I have mentioned these differences already – and I will expand on them a little now.

‘Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus’ was a popular book of the 1990’s, written by a man named John Gray.  The stated purpose of the book was to assist women and men in problem-solving and conflict-resolution in their relationships.

It proposed that men used methods that we usually associate with characteristics of the planet Mars (in mythology the God of War – very logical) and women use those we associate with Venus (the Goddess of Love – very emotional).

When I was thinking about the differences between Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Person Centred Therapy, I thought of the book – in particular one of the messages from the book; that we men like to offer solutions and women want us to listen, and vice-versa.

The book has often been challenged (and indeed I was a bit sceptical of some of it myself) but it is true that, in general, most people believe (and we will go along with this belief here just for the exercise) that, typically, when solving a problem, a man tends to deny the emotion underlying it whereas a woman revels in it.

I was reading someone’s life story recently and the writer said that the person who was the subject of the story ‘was brought up under the firm hand of his father and the loving care of his mother’.  It struck me how familiar that kind of statement sounded to me.

It doesn’t mean that Mammy can’t have a firm hand or that Daddy can’t offer loving care – it just points to the dominant characteristics of each parent.  Daddy, typically, avoids emotions – the firm hand – because he’s not really hard-wired – there’s that electronic word again – to be emotional, whereas Mammy offers loving care because she is.

Maybe there’s something about the root foundation time here too.  Men don’t value emotionality in general so perhaps they don’t have time to be getting emotional.  Women do value emotionality, so time is almost irrelevant when comes to being emotional.  (This might explain the wait-till-your-father-gets-home stuff).

Very often, the woman will be too caught up in the emotional interaction to be the planner, strategic thinker, problem solver.  She (traditionally anyway) teaches that humans have emotions and the man teaches the more rational skills of living.

So while the classical male way of solving human problems is to do it logically, (fully confident that the application of logic will make a difference), the classical female method is to get emotional about it, (fully confident that getting emotional will change things).

Of course, as I will argue in the following post, both are of equal value, and whether we are male or female, we all lie somewhere along the continuum of very emotional – very logical.

Almost all workplaces – that I know of anyway – are dominated by Men Are From Mars thinking that was described in the previous post. This is because in workplaces we have to get things done, achieve goals, follow logical procedures, plan strategically, have outcomes and outputs and not be held up, i.e. slowed down by dealing with emotionality.

Since women entered the workforce in greater numbers one would think that this might have changed but from my observations it hasn’t changed that much really.

Even maternity (and paternity) leave and parental/caring duties are governed by logical rules and leave is taken in accordance with company procedures (and the law of the land). Someone doesn’t head off on such leave, or to attend to their own emotional needs, or care for someone at home just when they feel like it!

Of course, most workplaces have some flexibility around this for emergencies but in the long term the employee will be called to account for absences. Also, if a worker is certified to be sick then they are out, and they can’t just wander in, before their cert is up, if they themselves feel better.

I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with this – I’m just stating it so that we remind ourselves that the logical, left-brain world is in the ascendancy in the workplace and this has implications for the modality we choose, that is, the way that things are done, in the workplace that is set up to alleviate hurt in people who have suffered trauma.

While I think of myself as quite a logical/rational kind of person – I often feel that one of my life’s missions is to fight for the right of illogical/irrational people to be heard.  Firstly, they have a right to be heard, but also I believe that if illogic and irrationality are not heard the non-hearing will create a lot of trouble for us as a society.

Another thought that I have about this matter is that irrationality must have a very important role in humanity. If it didn’t it would have died out over tens of thousands of generations of evolution. Perhaps it is linked to the survival role that our intuition has – I’m not sure, but my openness to thinking that it is leads me to esteem it highly.

Discouraging irrationality (perhaps spontaneous anger, spontaneous love, or indeed, sometimes, doing something because we feel sorry for someone, and for no other reason) to the point where it is imperceptible, is denying part of our humanity. All workplaces are enriched by the inclusion of what I might call typically female values.

While organisations that are concerned with banking, manufacturing, or even farming and teaching etc. can probably get by affording irrationality lesser status I believe that it is very important to give it some status in workplaces that support families in distress, as such a workplace should try and mirror, in some respects, the good enough family.

Now (and this is important) I am talking here about values – not numerical proportion of males and females. While it is true that most support workers in family support agencies are women, the dominant values tend to be those that abound in the Pillars. 

Those values are typically male, left brain, logical and they continually filter almost unnoticed into the Pillars from the corporate world.

Another reason for the inclusion of right-brain, intuitive parts of us is that unconditional positive regard is a typically female quality.  Despite your experience (I am fairly sure) of your mother’s love being conditional on how how got on in exams, or which boyfriend/girlfriend you went out with, etc. I would say that loving someone no matter what they do, even if there is anger mixed up with the love (in fact, the anger is part of the love), is more typically female than male.

(As an aside, you may be interested in what Greek philosophers believed to be the four types of love, also mentioned here [1].  One of them; agape is identified as a type of love that mothers have, that makes sacrifices for others, asking for nothing in return – i.e. unconditional. I already referenced Mary, the mother of Jesus, as an iconic example of this in the Christian tradition. So this thinking goes back a long way).

I was brought up in the CBT world of mainstream education and employment.  And I did well out of it! But one outcome for me was that for some of my life I was coaching myself to behave in a way that pleased others and I was not really aware that I had intrinsic value myself. (See a later post in the Chapter on Myth And Reality for clues as to how this might happen).

On my therapeutic journey, experiencing unconditional positive regard allowed my root foundations to flourish. This is probably why I value it so highly.

It was when I became aware that the more creative, intuitive parts of me had as much validity as the logical, rational parts that I began to have confidence to actually (ironically) do something about the values that I wanted to live my life by.

I think that I was very lucky because if that part of me had been ignored – i.e. if conditions had been placed on my learning and/or growth – then I don’t think that I’d have got the message that I was really of value and I could choose. 

I am going to finish this post by looking back quickly to the last post but one above.

I believe that it is just as necessary to include the typically male values of logic and rationality in the workplaces supporting vulnerable families and assisting them in the very important task of solving their problems.

Indeed, like the good enough family, strength lies in the synergy of the two, not the dominance of one over the other.

[1]. The Greeks identified four types of love.  Eros (romantic, sexual), philia (affection, family), storge (dutiful) and agape (unconditional)!