How to Stop Turning “You” Problems into “Me” Problems

[00:00:00] Rachel: I remember 18 years ago when my second child was about three months old, I was talking to a woman in the toddler group where I used to go every Wednesday morning with the kids. And she had had a baby about a month ago and it was her second child as well. She was very upset and annoyed. She said to me, I don’t understand. I thought that being part of this group, we were supposed to get a meal rota when we have our babies.

[00:00:26] Rachel: And I remember feeling absolutely awful about this. And I scurried off and I texted all my friends, anybody I could think of and said, nobody’s organized any meals for this lady and we really need to do something about it. Now at the time I was having an extension done and we hadn’t got a kitchen so I was camped out in the freezing cold using half of my sitting room with a sink and a microwave. So the last thing I could do was cook any meals for this lady.

[00:00:55] Rachel: So I went to the local Indian shop and got some amazing curries in a box and sort of delivered them round to her, but spent most of the rest of the day trying to organise a meal writer.

[00:01:06] Rachel: Now looking back at that, it was total madness. She was probably just expressing disappointment that nobody had thought to organise a rater for her, but as soon as she had mentioned it, I took it on as my problem, my responsibility that I had to sort out, and took on a lot of unnecessary guilt and shame and blame for the fact that she didn’t have any meals.

[00:01:28] Rachel: The actual fact was, she didn’t really need them, she had family close by. They had plenty of money, they could have gone and bought some ready meals and stuff like that. But I guess she was feeling disappointed that nobody had thought of it themselves, and that nobody had taken the time to organise it for her.

[00:01:42] Rachel: When I look back on it, I often wonder, why did I think it was something that I needed to take on? Why did I take the responsibility and why did I take the blame for that? Because there were 20 other women in this group. It wasn’t just me that had forgotten, all of us had. But somehow I internalised it as my problem, that there was something wrong with me, and I was just really thoughtless.

[00:02:08] Rachel: This is a You Are Not a Frog quick dip, a tiny taster of the kinds of things we talk about on our full podcast episodes. I’ve chosen today’s topic to give you a helpful boost in the time it takes to have a cup of tea so you can return to whatever else you’re up to feeling energized and inspired. For more tools, tips, and insights to help you thrive at work, don’t forget to subscribe to You Are Not a Frog wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:02:35] Rachel: And I think we do this all the time, don’t we? As professionals, as people who like helping people, whose job it is often to help people. As soon as anybody expresses that they have a problem, we turn what’s a you problem into a me problem. And a lot of the time people are only too happy for us to turn a them problem into a me problem.

[00:02:56] Rachel: This was brought to my mind the other day when a friend of mine was telling me about a conversation that she’d been having with somebody else. And the issue that the person was expressing to her was obviously an issue for that person to sort out. And my friend had been very good at actually resisting taking all the responsibility onto herself and had been able to set some boundaries. And the phrase that had helped her was this is a you problem, not a me problem. And I thought, wow, that is so helpful.

[00:03:24] Rachel: And it’s early December as I record this and I know that many of us are going into winter pressures not only at work but at home as well with maybe the kids off school, relatives coming over for the holiday season. There’s going to be a lot of people telling us that they have you problems that they’re going to try and turn into a me problem. And this phrase for me just helps inoculate you from that mindset that, that it has to be me dealing with it because I’m responsible for everybody and everything.

[00:03:54] Rachel: And over the years in our work, we’ve often taken on things that are other people’s problems because we want to help, because we know how to deal with it. But often we just take on too much responsibility for things that are outside of our control. Because we care deeply about them. Because sometimes there are some things that we can do about them. And let’s face it. Society is only too happy to let doctors and other healthcare professionals take on all the responsibility and all the burden for health. and social care, when in fact there’s a huge amount of stuff that we just can’t do, that people need to deal with themselves.

[00:04:33] Rachel: Now it doesn’t mean we don’t support and offer advice, but when we end up taking on you problems that are not me problems, we end up in all sorts of trouble. We feel guilty when we can’t actually do anything about it. We feel guilty that it’s happened in the first place. We feel shame that we can’t do anything to help, even when nobody could do anything to help. And we take a lot of the blame for stuff that’s just not ours to take the blame for.

[00:05:00] Rachel: It causes us to overwork, to forget what our own priorities are, and to get very muddled up about consequences. And I’ve talked about this before on the podcast, having that rescuer mentality, having that superhero mentality that I’m responsible for everybody and everything therefore I need to rescue everybody is really, really bad for our health, our mindset and it’s really bad for other people as well.

[00:05:23] Rachel: Because when we rescue people We keep them in victim. They then don’t feel responsible for anything themselves. They go on repeating the same mistakes. They don’t experience any consequences that make things change. Let me give you a really stupid example.

[00:05:37] Rachel: The other day, my daughter didn’t have any clean tracksuit bottoms and it was 11 o’clock at night. She needed them for 8 o’clock in the morning the next day and she had run downstairs, put a load of stuff in the washing machine. The washing machine wasn’t gonna finish until half past 12 at night. And she said to me mum, mum can you hang out my washing when it’s finished because I need those tracksuit bottoms for tomorrow.

[00:05:58] Rachel: And I felt incredibly frustrated because I had been telling her for the past three days I needed to do some of her washing. It was all over her floor. I didn’t know what was dirty and what was clean. I said, please, please, please bring your washing down so I can sort it out. And she just didn’t. She said, yeah, I’ll do it in a minute when I’m off my phone, blah, blah, blah. And it turned up 11 o’clock on a Sunday night.

[00:06:21] Rachel: This was definitely a you problem. And I was very tempted to turn it into a me problem. I felt really bad. I thought, well, maybe I should have told her another time to do the washing and what’s she going to do tomorrow when she’s got nothing to wear? And I said, so don’t you have anything else to wear? Don’t you have any other clothes that you could wear? She said, Oh no, I don’t have any other tracksuit bottoms. And I thought to myself, okay, I’m just going to have to wait up till the washing is finished and put it out to dry. Then I thought to myself, hang on a sec, hang on right there.

[00:06:51] Rachel: what good is it going to do me if I wait till half past midnight to hang out those clothes? None whatsoever. I was really, really tired. I had a really big week the following week. So I thought, well, what am I going to do about it? And I thought, actually, she could get up at half past 12 and hang out those clothes herself. And more to the point, how are we going to avoid this happening next time? Because if I get up and hang out those clothes, then it’s just going to happen again and again and again.

[00:07:17] Rachel: So I thought about it and I said to her, I said, I’m really sorry, but I’m not going to wait up. You’re going to have to set your alarm for half past 12, get up and hang out those clothes on the heated dryer so that they’re ready for tomorrow morning. Was she happy about this? Of course she wasn’t. But she went to bed, she said, all right, I’ll do that. Because I knew if she didn’t experience the consequences, then this behavior would just be repeated and repeated.

[00:07:39] Rachel: And so often when we turn someone else’s problem into a me problem, that just means that they avoid the consequences of their actions. They never learn and nothing changes. And we can see this on a micro level, we can see this on a system level. If we keep absorbing the extra work the system gives us because they haven’t got themselves sorted out, they haven’t funded it properly, they haven’t provided enough locums or enough doctors, we’re the ones that end up suffering, rather than making it the problem of a system that needs either more funding, more workers, or just to be organized in a completely different way.

[00:08:14] Rachel: Now actually the next morning my daughter was going to school and I said to her, Hang on a sec, what are you wearing? She said, oh I had some other tracksuit bottoms that I just put on instead. What?! She’d miraculously found a solution, because she didn’t want to be bothered getting up and hanging that out. So I’d been prepared to sort of sacrifice myself and my sleep for something that she could solve herself. So by not taking it on as a me problem, by keeping it as a you problem, she’d been forced to find a solution. And you know what? She’s now doing her washing in good time.

[00:08:43] Rachel: So the risks are if we keep making other people’s problems into me problems, they don’t learn and nothing changes. We take on all that extra responsibility on top of the stuff we already had and it’s also very difficult for us to find solutions. I wasn’t aware that there was a spare pair of tracksuit bottoms hanging around. But if we continue to make the distinction between something that’s a you problem and something that’s a me problem, we’ll just have far less on our plate. We won’t feel so guilty about everything. And we won’t get so defensive when we actually do say no, because we won’t be thinking, well, I should do it really, I ought to do it. We’re able to make a positive choice. We could choose to take on an issue for somebody else, we could choose to help out, but also we could choose not to. And I think that is crucially important. Because other people can solve their own issues far better than we can.

[00:09:35] Rachel: And I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I’ve interfered with stuff and turned somebody else’s problem into a me problem, I’ve often ended up making things a lot, lot worse.

[00:09:44] Rachel: So what sorts of you problems are we dealing with? Well when it comes to kids, stuff like, I’m bored, I don’t have enough money, I’ve broken my phone because it wasn’t in a phone case or I didn’t have a screen protector on it. These are very common things. What about people having health problems or relationship problems? Staffing problems. Or they’re too busy to do stuff, or they’ve forgotten, or they’ve just massively overscheduled themselves, or an emergency’s cropped up at work, which means they’re stuck in other ways, maybe for childcare, or can’t get to important meetings and things like that. When is it a you problem? When is it a me problem? Well, here’s what I think will help.

[00:10:24] Rachel: Firstly, do a zone of power on that problem. Who is in control of what happens? And more importantly, how much is in their zone of power? And how much is in my zone of power? The zone of power, for those of you that don’t know, is a simple circle that tells us stuff that we’re in control of inside the circle and stuff that we’re not in control of outside the circle. So, if it’s a you problem, there’ll be a lot of stuff that I’m not in control of that’s outside my circle. There might be one or two things I can do to help inside the circle, but most stuff is outside my circle. And when you look at the consequences of what happens about that, most of the consequences are experienced by the other person, not by me.

[00:11:05] Rachel: So if one of my children forgets to do their homework, well they’re going to experience those consequences, are they? Not me. And the only thing I can do about that, in my zone of power, is to remind them, maybe help them out a bit. But if I see my children doing their homework as a me problem, then I’m feeling responsible for all sorts of things that are outside my zone of power. Like, how much eff they put into it, when they do it. I have teenagers, so I don’t have a lot of control over when they do their homework or how well they do it. So we need to think a little bit more about the consequences.

[00:11:35] Rachel: The next question to ask is, does it matter? What are the consequences to me if this doesn’t happen? You know, the consequences might be huge. They might be consequences I really, really care about, in which case I may well choose to take action. But if I’m honest, sometimes I really get bothered about stuff that’s a you problem that I don’t need to because I think the consequences are going to affect me.

[00:11:57] Rachel: For example, if we go out on a winter’s day and one of my children doesn’t want to bring a coat with them, you know, I used to have massive arguments with them. I used to say, you’ve got to take a coat, because I knew that if they were cold, I’d have to give them my coat. I now say to them, up to you whether you bring a coat or not, but I’m not sharing my coat. And believe me, it only takes them getting cold for a little bit to finally realise that actually when they go out, they are going to take their coat. But it does depend on me not rescuing them from the consequences of their decision.

[00:12:27] Rachel: Because we need to let people feel the consequences of their actions and their decisions without rescuing them all the time. This is the only way that people learn, this is the only way that things change or get better. But so often when we take a you problem on ourselves as a me problem, we’re the only ones that suffer and nothing changes.

[00:12:49] Rachel: There’s another question I think we need to ask ourselves when thinking about is it a me or are you problem is is why do I care about this?

[00:12:57] Rachel: Why do I think it should be a me problem? Because a lot of the time when we think we should we ought to do something it’s because we’re feeling guilty we’re feeling afraid of what might happen, or we’re feeling shame that we can’t actually do anything to help, therefore we sort of over help and over burden ourselves. This is the amygdala response. It’s our fight, flight, or freeze response. And often it’s because we’re stuck in perfectionism or people pleasing. So we take stuff on that we don’t need to take on.

[00:13:26] Rachel: So if I realise I’m making a me problem because I’m backed into the corner because I’m scared about what might happen or I really want that person to think well of me, like in that time where I was asked to provide all those meals for that lady, that’s not a great place to be. We don’t think straight and we tend to attribute everything as a me problem. We tend to think, oh, what have I done wrong?

[00:13:47] Rachel: So often focusing on how we’re feeling about that and the stories we’re telling ourselves is really, really helpful just to go, hang on a sec, this might be a you problem as opposed to a me problem.

[00:13:58] Rachel: Let me give you an example. I was in the gym the other day. I was getting dressed after I’d had a shower, and there was a lady next to me who was drying her hair. I started spraying some hair mousse onto my hair, and suddenly, this lady, who was maybe 15, 20 years older than me got extremely panicked. She threw the hairdryer down, she grabbed her bag, she flung all her stuff out of the locker, and she ran out of the changing room. She then came back and she’d forgotten something and I said to her, Oh my goodness, are you okay?

[00:14:26] Rachel: She looked at me and she yelled, I cannot deal with spray. I said, Oh, I’m sorry. She said, I have a lung condition. I hate sprays. And, uh, I sort of stood there, didn’t know what to do. I said, Oh, it’s a mousse, not a spray. Cause I would never have sprayed hairspray in anybody’s direction. But she just glared at me and, and hot footed it out of the changing rooms and I was left really shaky. I was thinking, Oh my goodness, what have I done wrong? This was so awful. Ah, and I felt absolutely awful.

[00:14:58] Rachel: Now. It was obviously so much of a, her problem that I could just stop and go, Oh, you know what? There’s obviously something going on with her, she’s obviously very worried about her health, did I do anything wrong there? Um, no, I don’t, I don’t think I did anything that I don’t normally do, it’s definitely a her problem. But so many times people have a, a difficult reaction to us. We take it on as we have done something wrong, it’s our problem, when most of the time it’s about them. It’s a you problem.

[00:15:28] Rachel: The next question to ask is, do I care? Do I care about this? So most of the time, the answer would be yes. And then I’ll ask, how much do I care about this? Because there are so many issues in this world that we care about, but we can’t carry everything. So, am I going to choose to do something about this? How important it is to me? And more importantly, if I’m choosing to take this on as a me problem, what does it mean that I can’t address? What does it mean that I can’t do?

[00:15:54] Rachel: Because doing anything out of guilt, shame, fear means we’re probably just adding more to our plate that we aren’t choosing to do but we feel we ought to do. And that always, always displaces something else that’s just as important but it means we’re not doing, maybe like spending time with our families. So how much do I really care about this and what am I choosing to carry and make into a me problem?

[00:16:17] Rachel: Because we can, we can choose to do stuff. Of course we can. And if there’s somebody that really needs helping out in a sticky situation, then of course I’ll choose to help. but so often I’m helping out of fear, shame or guilt rather than the fact that I’ve thought it through and actually I really want to help.

[00:16:34] Rachel: And finally, when we’re thinking about consequences, don’t think about, well, what are the consequences of not helping out, of not making this a me problem, think about, well, what are the consequences of making it a me problem? Long term, what does that mean for me? In terms of time, in terms of energy and resources, and what does it mean for them? In terms of not actually sorting out the root of the issue, not actually changing their behaviour at all in the future, or making sure it’s not going to happen again. Because the long term consequences are so important.

[00:17:07] Rachel: I remember reading in a parenting book somewhere that this guy was at dinner with his neighbours and halfway through the dinner, he needed to go to the loo, the bathroom was upstairs and he found the host of the dinner party where she was tidying up her 14 year old son’s bedroom. Annie took one look at her and said to her, Oh my goodness, I feel so sorry for his wife. And that was a brilliant reminder that a lot of what we do with our families, we’re training them, we’re training them for the future. With our patients, we’re helping them take responsibility for themselves. And our friends, we want to be there, but we can’t be there for everything all the time.

[00:17:44] Rachel: Now, if you think this sounds really mercenary, then I would say that there are mistakes we make in this. We can be so Teflon that we never help anybody out, and act as a complete island, and never do anything that we don’t want to do, just because everything is a you problem, not a me problem, and we can’t possibly think that about everything in the world. We can’t all think that climate change is a you problem, or that health inequality is a you problem. Yes, there are things we can do about it. But if we spend our lives thinking that everything is a me problem, that means that all our energy is concerned with other people’s priorities and sourcing other people out rather than focusing on what we want to do long term,

[00:18:21] Rachel: So I’m recording this at the beginning of December and I’m looking to the holidays and I can imagine there will be a few you problems that get tried to turn into me problems when it comes to my family, possibly my work. And I know for many, many of you, you’ve got huge amounts of responsibility both at home and both at work.

[00:18:40] Rachel: So when people are making unreasonable demands of you. When they’re moaning at you, when they’re complaining, can I suggest the first thing you say in your head is, is this a me problem or is this a you problem? Because even if you don’t say it out loud, but you’re thinking, actually, this is a you problem, that will free you up from some of the shame and the guilt. You’ll be able to decide what you do and you’ll be able to cope with pushback a lot, lot better.

[00:19:07] Rachel: So, work out what’s in your zone of power, what’s in their zone of power. Ask yourself, does this really matter? And then work out what are the consequences of you making it a me problem, or you not making it a me problem?

[00:19:21] Rachel: And finally, ask yourself, what is it I actually want to do? What is it that I’m going to choose to do in this situation? So in all the challenges at the end of the year, going into 2025, just bear this question in mind. Is that a you problem or is that a me problem? And what am I going to choose to take on?