A Tangle is a kind of problem that can’t be solved in the usual way…
A Reader writes:
I’ve heard that your Untangling™ work is for a certain kind of problem and I’m not sure what that means. Could you explain?
Dear Reader:
Absolutely. We tend to expect that problems can be cleared up with logic and action. Figure out what to do, and then do it. Many problems are of this type.
But there is a kind of problem which is complex in a special kind of way. Trying to solve this kind of problem can be frustrating because it seems to resist change. We call it a “Tangle.”
In a Tangle, we are so stuck, so completely enmeshed in the problem situation, that every way we try to get out of it actually makes the problem worse. Whatever we try seems to fail, and years can go by with no perceptible progress. Pretty soon we start criticizing ourselves or blaming other people, which really makes us feel even more powerless. And new problems start to arise because we can’t solve the original problem, but now we are trying to manage the fall-out around the fact that we seem to be up against something impossible.
Tangles seem hopeless, impossible. No way out, no way through. We alternate between frustration and giving up. But either way – struggling with it or saying “Forget about it” – doesn’t work. We don’t really give up. And the struggle doesn’t let us go.
Is there something in your life like that? I’ve had a lot of them! Writer’s block…addiction to alcohol…persistently feeling less than other people…a longing to be met in a certain kind of relationship…
I am proof that a Tangle can be untangled. For the past 21 years, Barbara McGavin and I have been studying Tangles. We’ve studied them first of all with ourselves, on our own tangled issues. We’ve also worked with hundreds of other people. We now know how to do Untangling™.
A warning, though. You don’t just remove a Tangle and everything else stays the same. Your life will change in unexpected ways. That will be good – but it will also shake things up.
Untangling™ your Tangle will transform you – and your world. With untangling, you change, you get bigger, you become more of who you were always meant to be. Old hurts heal. Old beliefs lose their grip. In a funny way, you could even say that the Tangle itself is inviting you to live a fuller, truer life.
On the other side of the Tangle is ease, joy, fulfillment…and still some trouble and pain, but you’ll have so many more resources for dealing with it.
Yes, I too did Focusing for many years with many good results EXCEPT for in the most stuck areas of life. That is why Barbara McGavin and I developed Untangling, which is Focusing-Plus. So interesting that you are discovering some of the beliefs that are in your Tangle…
Thank you for articulating my situation so clearly! “so stuck, so completely enmeshed in the problem situation, that every way we try to get out of it actually makes the problem worse. Whatever we try seems to fail, and years can go by with no perceptible progress . . . hopeless, impossible.
No way out, no way through.” I’ve been Focusing for 25 years, and still feel up against the wall with a situation that governs my life.
Mulling over your blog post on tangles this morning I discovered something in me that is fixated–that’s the word–on the belief that if I can be with the part that is struggling and let it shift, then I won’t need to actually fix the things in my life that desperately need fixing! That all that I’m really entitled to is to find a more comfortable way of carrying this baggage. Now to be present with that without an agenda . . .