Why Men's Problem-Solving Minds Get Stuck — and How to Unstick Them
Men tend to process difficulty by trying to solve it. It's a genuine strength in most areas of life. But in situations like parental alienation and family court — where the problem can't be solved in any straightforward sense — that same instinct can trap a man in exhausting loops that go nowhere. This piece is about understanding why, and how to redirect that energy somewhere it can actually work.
The problem-solving mind
Men, broadly speaking, are wired to solve problems. This isn't a stereotype — it's a recognisable neurological reality. When something goes wrong, the instinct is to investigate it, analyse it, find the cause, develop a solution, and act. That instinct serves men well in most areas of life. It's a genuine strength.
The trap springs when we encounter a problem that can't be solved.
Family court proceedings, parental alienation, the aftermath of an abusive relationship — these are not problems that yield to investigation and action in the way most problems do. You can analyse the situation perfectly, understand every mechanism, prepare every document, and still not get the outcome you want. The court makes its decision regardless. The other parent does what they do regardless. The children are where they are regardless. And yet the problem-solving mind keeps trying. It's doing what it's designed to do — it just can't find the resolution that would tell it to stop.
Why the brain won't let it go
Neuroscience and evolutionary psychology are clear on this point: the human brain was not designed primarily to make us happy. It was designed to keep us alive. As the neuroscientist Rick Hanson has written in Buddha's Brain, the brain evolved to prioritise threat detection and threat resolution above almost everything else. For most of human history, survival meant paying close attention to dangers, learning from them, and making sure the same catastrophe didn't happen twice.
So when something catastrophic happens — a relationship that turned out to be abusive, children taken away, a legal system that didn't do what it should have done — the brain identifies it as a major unresolved threat and does exactly what it's designed to do. It keeps running the situation. It keeps looking for the lesson. What do I need to understand here so this never happens again?
This is useful, up to a point. There is real thinking to be done about situations like these — strategic thinking, legal preparation, understanding what happened and why. If you're still in proceedings, that kind of purposeful engagement genuinely matters. The brain's drive to analyse and understand isn't the enemy.
The problem starts when the useful thinking tips over into uncontrolled repetition. When the brain keeps running the loops not because there's still useful insight to extract, but because there's no resolution available and it doesn't know how to stop. What if I'd done this differently? Why didn't I see it sooner? How do I make them understand? That tipping point — from purposeful thinking into uncontrolled rumination — is the trap.
The imagination specifically
There's a particular dimension worth naming: the imagination.
The imagination doesn't switch off. It's always working, whether you're directing it consciously or not. And left to find its own direction in a difficult situation, it tends to gravitate toward the thing causing the most distress — replaying what happened, imagining what might happen, rehearsing conversations that will never occur, picturing the children in moments you're not part of.
I still experience this. Not long ago I dreamt about my sons — I can't remember the details, but I woke up knowing that's what I'd been dreaming about. Five years on, the imagination still goes there sometimes.
But here's what I've also noticed, gradually, over those five years: the imagination can be retrained. Not through constant discipline — not through having to redirect it every single time it starts up — but through giving it somewhere else to go. When you invest enough imaginative energy in something else, something that genuinely engages you, the imagination starts to find that other place on its own. It develops new grooves. And over time, when it sparks up unexpectedly, it's more likely to go toward the new thing than toward the old loops. The difficult thoughts don't stop entirely. But they compete with something now, rather than filling an empty space.
Give the imagination something positive to do
The practical move is to give the imagination something positive to work on. Not a distraction in the passive sense — something it can actually build toward. Something with a creative dimension, a forward direction, a sense of progress over time.
The range is wide, and the specific thing matters far less than the principle. It doesn't have to be large or impressive.
For me, the kitchen has been one example — spending more time thinking about cooking, trying new recipes, the small creative pleasure of making something good from raw ingredients. Walking in the woods has been another — at one point I found a quiet corner of local woodland that no one else seemed to use, and I started imagining setting up a small bushcraft camp there, learning the skills, understanding the environment. At work, the everyday problem-solving and creativity that goes into running a community centre has given the mind something useful to chew on. And then there are the larger, longer-term things — building SoulForge Community has been a significant part of my own version of this. The creative energy, the problem-solving capacity, the imagination that might otherwise have kept running on the situation with my sons — much of it has gone into this instead.
Your version might be redesigning your garden. Learning a skill. Taking on something creative at work. Redecorating a room. Something physical and practical outdoors. The specific thing doesn't matter. What matters is that it's genuinely yours, that it asks the imagination to move forward rather than backward, and that it grows over time as you put energy into it.
What gradually changes
This shift doesn't happen all at once. Early on, you're consciously redirecting — noticing the loops starting and choosing to put your attention elsewhere. That takes effort and doesn't always work. The loops are strong, especially in the early stages.
But over time, as the new thing takes root, the balance shifts. The imagination has a richer alternative landscape to explore. The old grooves are still there, but they're not the only place it can go. And eventually — not always, not completely, but often enough to matter — you find it firing up on its own in the new direction, without you having to tell it to.
The problem-solving mind is not the problem. It's a strength, misdirected.
A man who, five years on from the worst of his situation, has built something — a skill, a project, an organisation, a body of creative work, a garden he designed, a set of practical knowledge he's developed — is a different man from one who spent those same five years running the loops. Not because the situation resolved differently. But because one of them gave the imagination somewhere it could actually grow.
Give it something positive to work on. Let it do what it's actually good at. And notice, over time, what it makes.
For more on building resilience and managing the psychological impact of these situations, visit soulforge.org.uk/resources-building-resilience and soulforge.org.uk/resources-understanding-impact.
— Mike B, founder, SoulForge Community