Is this your problem? Are you sure?
I frequently ask my clients these two questions.
Is this a solvable problem?
Is it solvable by you?
Two simple questions, but I ask them often because we sometimes miss that step.
Why do we try to solve problems that aren’t ours to solve?
Some of it is habit, some is good faith. If I come to you and say can you fix this for me, the assumption underneath the question is that it is fixable. And it is fixable by you.
We would consider it mean spirited trickery if one person asked another to open a window that was painted shut if the asker knew it was painted shut.
Another reason we try to solve problems that aren’t ours to solve is that we’ve been misled. As a woman, I’ve been trained since childhood to do the emotional labor of making the people around me feel comfortable.
Many of us have been trained to try to solve systemic problems through individual effort. Which means more and more of us are standing in front of that window that is painted shut, straining at the sill, pushing up with all our strength and then wondering why we aren’t strong enough to open the window.
Our culture is deeply invested in stories where everything is about individual effort.
And yet we are interconnected beings who are deeply impacted by the systems around us. If you get your insurance from your job, that impacts your healthcare. If your parents aren’t able to afford assisted living, that’s connected to funding for social services and social security. And yet, so often when we are faced with these issues and how they impact our ability to work, it is framed as a personal problem. Ours to solve alone, ours to feel guilty about, ours to carry.
Here's an example.
Childcare is so expensive that parents work long hours to pay for it. Now it’s about to get worse. The childcare cliff, as it’s being called, happened when government funding started during COVID ran out at the end of September. According to The Century Foundation, “three million children are projected to lose access to childcare nationwide. Seventy thousand child care programs are likely to close.
The loss in tax and business revenue will likely cost states $10.6 billion in economic activity per year.
In addition, we project that millions of parents will be impacted, with many leaving the workforce or reducing their hours, costing families $9 billion each year in lost earnings.”
In spite of efforts by the Democrats, no legislation has been passed to keep us from going off this cliff. (For more about this, as well as action you can take, follow emilyinyourphone on Instagram.)
The parents who are impacted by this are most likely going to be told that they were the ones who decided to have children, and finding childcare is their problem, as individuals.
We know how to fix many of the problems with childcare. We just did it during the pandemic. Subsidies, bonuses for childcare workers, multiple programs put in place to help keep nurses like my daughter at work during the pandemic, all worked. A systemic approach helped solve the individual problems of childcare. Which, if we want people to go to work, isn’t actually an individual problem, is it?
This is one example of the way in which women, since it’s most often women, are told that it is our responsibility to fill in for a systemic failure. And if we can’t or won’t, then we are criticized for it as a personal failure.
What are the implications for this? People are blaming themselves or feeling shame or despair because they aren’t able to fix something that is not fixable or is not fixable by them.
Take a minute here. Think of something that is troubling you. Something that feels big, insurmountable, difficult, that you are being asked to fix and manage, you, personally.
Is there a systemic component? Is it about healthcare or insurance? Do you have a sick kid and you have to juggle your work sick days to get her to all the appointments she needs? Is it about your job? Are you overworked, asked to do the work of many? Or are you being forced to return to the office in a job which can, and has been effectively done remotely?
Are you facing racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia? Have you been told it’s your attitude, tone of voice, inability to stay quiet?
You can see in those brief examples how each has a larger systemic frame. My friends with sick kids spend so much time navigating overwhelmed healthcare systems and the vagaries of for-profit approval systems that it could be a part time job. I did that when for my son when he was alive.
Layoffs continue as companies make record profits or do lucrative buy backs. For many jobs, return to office is just a power play, it’s not needed to make the business run.
What do you do? Well, the first thing is to stop blaming yourself. This is not a personal failure; it is a systemic failure. Really sit with that.
Depending on your energy and drive, you might want to get politically active or organize to change the system. Or you might need to just keep your head down and do what you can.
If you can, name the truth. To your friends, to co-workers where that’s safe.
Consider the difference between the narrative “I’m going to have to cut back to part time because this country doesn’t prioritize the care and education of very small children with childcare subsidies so it is no longer feasible for me to have my kids in full time childcare.”
How is that different from this story: “It’s too much for me to handle, I’m going to have to cut back to part time, we just can’t swing the childcare costs for two kids full time.”
When a leader tells you to “improve morale” and “get people excited to be back in the office” he’s asking you, as an individual, to fix a systemic problem. Return to office is still a power play. He’s essentially asking you to slap some lipstick on that pig. It’s still going to be a pig. Which you are expected to wrestle to the ground to apply lipstick.
I’m not saying don’t try anything. I’m not suggesting that we all give up and go home. We can’t, most of us. What I am saying is that we all, especially women, need to critically reframe the narrative any and every time we are asked to address a systemic problem as an individual one and are told we are the individuals who are supposed to fix it. Nope. Not doing it. Not going to fall into a shame spiral or blame myself because I can’t solve for systemic issues.
Let’s call a halt to that kind of systemic cultural gaslighting, shall we?