How Do We Deconstruct a Problem Systemically?

Every symptom sits inside a system, and the same eleven variables are acting on every one of them. Learning to see all eleven is a skill, and the way to build it is to run a real problem through every variable. Below are three problems run all the way through: a teenager falling apart at school, a couple who say they cannot communicate, and a community mental health clinic burning out its staff.

In each case the people around the symptom have already named the problem: the kid, the spouse, the staff. The eleven questions are a way of declining that answer long enough to see what else is in the room.

This is the third post in a series. The first, What Does It Mean to Think Systemically?, makes the case that the identified patient is too narrow a frame. The second, When Should We Set a Boundary and When Should We Stay Open?, looks at how open the wall between two systems should be. This one is practice. It is an aptitude post rather than a solving post.

We ask all eleven, every time, because the ability to see the whole system is what we are building.

The Theory in Short

The Three Symptoms

The worksheet that goes with the first post asks for a rating, 0 to 10, under each variable for how much it is influencing the symptom. Those ratings are left off here on purpose. Reading the three examples and deciding where the weight lands is the exercise, and the Deconstructing a Symptom worksheet is where to write the numbers down.

The questions are the ones an ecologist asks of a dying organism: the climate, the food source, the species that arrived last year, the water. A symptom becomes a problem when the system cannot accommodate what the symptom needs, which is the argument I made in the first years of this site and have not found a reason to revise. The eleven variables ask, one at a time, what the system is failing to accommodate, and for whom.

1. Near Environment

What is pressing on this from close by?

The teenager. He goes to a school that does not fit his unique way of learning: a building organized around sitting still, listening, and recalling, for a kid who learns by doing and moving. Every school day begins with that mismatch, and the rest of the day is built on it.

The couple. They are overworked and undercompensated. Two full-time jobs, two commutes, the children’s schedules, and the only hour that belongs to the two of them arrives after ten at night, when neither has anything left. The near environment is full, and the relationship is what gets squeezed out of a full day.

The clinic. It is a nonprofit community mental health clinic, and its business plan fundamentally cannot generate enough money to fund itself. Reimbursement rates sit below the cost of the clinical hour, the sliding scale slides further every year, and a grant covers one position for one year at a time. Donations fill some of the gap and never enough of it to hire the personnel the clinic needs or to compensate the personnel it has. The pressure in the near environment is structural, and it was there before anyone currently on staff arrived.

2. Recent Change and Loss

What changed in the last year?

The teenager. His parents have recently separated and are fighting all the time, and they do not have the money to run two households, so they are still living in the same one. The fights happen at dinner and through the wall at night. The separation happened and the distance did not, which is a specific kind of loss: the end of the family as it was, with none of the relief that distance would have brought.

The couple. One spouse’s mother died in the spring, and the other is grieving alongside. They moved that summer for a job, and in the new town they know their coworkers and nobody else. Two losses, the person and the place, in the same stretch of months.

The clinic. They were just in jeopardy of losing an accreditation. The review landed in the same quarter as two clinician departures, and the resources for the accreditation process are being pulled from faculty, managers, and administrators who were already taxed, and the clinical director is writing policy documents at night. The threat has not resolved, and the response to it is being paid for out of an account that was already overdrawn.

3. Body and Physiology

What is the body spending before the day starts?

The teenager. The system around him is under-resourced and under-structured. There is no consistent dinner time, so he eats what he finds when he finds it, and the school does not have the funding to provide lunches, so some days the first real meal is at nine at night. Some of what looks like behavior is a body that has not eaten.

The couple. They are so overloaded with commitments that exercise and eating well have slipped, and their sexual relationship has gone from regular to rare. The lack of physical relationship is also impeding the oxytocin that could be helping them bond, so the body is both a casualty of the disconnection and one of the things maintaining it.

The clinic. The stress is costing people sleep. Clinicians finish their notes at eleven at night and lie awake with the cases. A staff that is not sleeping has less to give the clients and less to give each other, and both of those show up later as morale.

4. Emotional State

What is being carried?

The teenager. He is constantly tired and overwhelmed by the negative emotions of his parents. He can tell from the sound of the front door closing what kind of evening it is going to be. The emotional state that most determines his day is not his own. It is the climate of the house, which he absorbs and has no way to put down.

The couple. Grief is present, and loneliness, and a desire for co-regulation that is not happening. What they are calling communication is, underneath, connection: each wants to be the one the other turns to, and neither is turning. Because the connection is not happening, resentment is growing that they are not helping each other.

The clinic. There is a high level of fear, neuroticism, and blaming of each other. The blame has a shape to it: if the front desk only scheduled better, if the clinicians only finished their notes on time, if the director only fundraised harder, it would all be fine. In reality there is a fundamental problem underneath, which is that nonprofit helping professions carry a complexity and a failed business plan that make them susceptible to burnout on their own, and blaming each other is what people do when the structural problem is too large to see.

5. Triggers and Trauma

What gets activated, and what does the situation resemble?

The teenager. What gets activated is a shame response. He believes what people are saying to him, that this is his fault. The trigger is the framing itself: all of the focus is on the symptom and his misbehavior, and none of it is on compassion for the situation he is living in. A teacher who says you are better than this means it kindly, and he hears that this is who he is. That framing is a kind of gaslighting, because it tells him his reaction to an impossible situation is a defect in him.

The couple. Both of them carry attachment fears. One grew up with a parent who left, the other with a parent who stayed and was never available. The fear each carries is the one they grew up with, and the fear is that this is where the relationship ends up. It turns into questions of self-worth about why their partner is not meeting their needs, which is a harder question to raise than the logistical ones, so it goes unraised.

The clinic. They are in a field where they help people with triggers and trauma, and many of them are vicariously traumatized themselves. Many also came to the field because of their own histories. And something new is becoming traumatic: they are realizing that most of their clients are there because they are marginalized, and that nonprofit systems in this country are themselves inherently marginalized. A clinician works out that her own salary would qualify her for the services she provides. The people helping the marginalized are discovering that they are in a marginalized position too.

6. Constructs and Beliefs

What rules are being applied to this, and by whom?

The teenager. The operating belief is that if he just tried harder, this would resolve, and that he is doing this because he does not respect people. Respect is the word used at home and at school. The alternative, that there is an emotional barrier, is not on the table in either place.

The couple. They hold the belief that if you love somebody, you accept them for who they are. You knew who I was when you married me. So neither of them is engaging in what they need to change, or how they need to evolve, to meet the other person’s needs. The construct sounds like love and functions as a reason not to grow.

The clinic. A capitalistic belief that if something is being done well it should be able to grow and be profitable, which quietly erases the fact that helping the helpless is inherently non-profitable. Beside it, the simplicity construct: you are just not doing it right, or why don’t you just get that donor to give you a million dollars. That donor does not exist.

7. Family of Origin

What did the people around this learn about it growing up?

The teenager. The family of origin teaches him to just deal with it. In his father’s family, what happens in the house is not discussed. In his mother’s, you get up and go to work no matter what happened the night before. The family has no system of awareness for seeing that his trouble is related to the difficulties in the household, because neither parent grew up in a house that looked at itself.

The couple. Both of them grew up in divorced households, and both learned the same two lessons from watching their families: you get your needs met from your friends, and when there is tension in the house you avoid it and pretend it is not there. Both of them are doing exactly what they were taught, and it is producing exactly the marriage they watched.

The clinic. What did the staff learn about how to handle this? Rather than advocating and fighting, they continue to accept the lack of compensation. Nobody on staff has asked for a raise in years; the family of origin of the helping professions is a long tradition of taking less and saying nothing about it.

8. The Relationships Around It

Who regulates whom, who is carrying what, how do the adults regulate each other?

The teenager. The parents cannot regulate themselves or the marriage, and they have no resources left to regulate the children. Nobody in the house is the regulated one. Everything the first post said about co-regulation is missing here, and the child is being asked to produce from the inside what the system is not providing from the outside.

The couple. Both of them are now leaning on relationships outside the marriage for regulation: one has a coworker who listens, the other a sibling on the phone most nights. Seeing that other people are able to be attuned and emotionally available is creating even more resentment inside the marriage. The outside relationships are keeping each of them afloat and reminding each of them what they are not getting at home.

The clinic. The system around the clinic blames the clinic. The board asks why the numbers do not look like a business. The donor’s annual visit carries the tone of a landlord inspecting the property. The staff are treated as lesser because the organization runs on donations, with the philanthropist cast as the one who made the money and the nonprofit as the taker, whether the money arrives as a donation or as tax. The relationship that most shapes the staff’s emotional life is with a system that does not respect them.

9. Developmental Fit

What is being asked of this person, and does it fit where they are?

The teenager. He is expected to show a level of independence and executive functioning that his development cannot yet carry: manage his own homework, his own mornings, and his own feelings, at fourteen, in a house where the adults cannot manage theirs. The expectation itself is causing him to give up. His response to his own emotions has become a chronic shutdown, which then reads as more evidence that he does not care.

The couple. They are in the foundation stage of adult life: two children under six, one career at the point of promotion and the other restarting after the move. The developmental variable is that there is a real and true lack of time, for the relationship and for either person’s individual needs.

The clinic. The staff are expected to operate with a high level of independence and executive functioning inside a system that inherently does not fit the capitalistic model it is being measured by, and is therefore always going to be more dependent than it wants to be. The expectation and the structure do not fit, and the staff live in the gap.

10. Community and Culture

What does the community encourage, and what does the culture model?

The teenager. He is lonely and isolated. The other kids around him mostly have similar problems and similar households, and the place where they bond is the symptoms themselves: skipping the same classes, smoking behind the same building. His friends are doing what he is doing, and for him it is working, because it makes him feel less alone. A community of peers has formed around the behavior, which is the one thing in his week that is meeting a need.

The couple. Social media is saying the same individualistic things to both of them. Protect your peace. Never settle. If it is hard, it is wrong. The advice erodes relationships by telling each person to guard their own position, and it is causing them both to dig in.

The clinic. The culture shares the idea that people who make money are making something, and people who are given donations or require taxpayer assistance are lesser. The staff work inside that idea every day, and so do their clients.

11. Resources and Access

What is available here, and what is missing?

The teenager. There are not resources. There is one public school in the district, and no other available school that would accommodate his learning style. Each parent is in individual therapy for their own overwhelm, and nobody is treating the family as a system.

The couple. Resources are very low. The quick-fix suggestions, date night and the rest, are not financially viable, since a babysitter for the evening costs what a session would. Between the kids and work, therapy and anything like it is not available to them.

The clinic. All of the resources are too low. There is no business plan that makes enough money and there is not enough staff to do the tasks. Everyone’s job description is the job description of five people, compensated at half of one.

The Three Side by Side

Variable	The teenager	The couple	The clinic
Near environment	The teenagerA school that does not fit how he learns	The coupleOverworked, undercompensated, no space for the relationship	The clinicA business plan that cannot fund itself
Recent change and loss	The teenagerParents separated, still in one house	The coupleA parent died, and a move with no community yet	The clinicAn accreditation nearly lost
Body and physiology	The teenagerNo consistent dinner, no school lunch	The coupleExercise, eating, and sex have slipped	The clinicStaff are not sleeping
Emotional state	The teenagerTired, carrying his parents’ emotions	The coupleGrief, loneliness, growing resentment	The clinicFear, neuroticism, blame
Triggers and trauma	The teenagerShame, and the framing that it is his fault	The coupleAttachment fears, questions of self-worth	The clinicVicarious trauma, and discovering their own marginalization
Constructs and beliefs	The teenagerTry harder, and he does not respect people	The coupleLove means accepting, so nobody changes	The clinicGood work should be profitable, so just get a donor
Family of origin	The teenagerJust deal with it	The coupleNeeds met by friends, tension avoided	The clinicAccept less, say nothing
The relationships around it	The teenagerParents cannot regulate themselves or him	The coupleLeaning outside the marriage, resenting inside it	The clinicA system that blames and belittles them
Developmental fit	The teenagerIndependence his stage cannot carry	The coupleFoundation stage: no time	The clinicIndependence demanded of a dependent structure
Community and culture	The teenagerPeers bonding over the same symptoms	The coupleIndividualistic advice, and both dig in	The clinicMakers and takers
Resources and access	The teenagerNo other school, help aimed elsewhere	The coupleDate night and therapy out of reach	The clinicFive jobs per person at half the pay

What the Three Have in Common

Read across the table rather than down it and the same variables keep carrying the weight in all three examples. Resources and access are low in every one. Developmental fit is violated in every one: a child, a couple, and a staff are each being asked for a level of independence that their stage or their structure cannot supply. The constructs are the same construct three times, the belief that the problem is effort, that trying harder or doing it right would fix it, when in each case the problem is structural and the effort is already maximal.

That repetition is why the exercise works. A teenager, a marriage, and an organization look like three different fields with three different vocabularies, and the eleven questions show them to be the same structure at three altitudes. A clinician who can run all eleven on a family can run them on an agency, and the first post’s claim that all systemics are on all levels stops being a slogan and becomes a method. In The Architecture of Human Systems I call this capacity ecological intelligence, and two of its working parts are what the table exercises: recognizing the same pattern across scales, and moving between nested levels of context without losing our own position in them. A clinician who can see only the family, or only the agency, has the intelligence in one register.

Why Not Skip to the Solution

Dialectic and Deconstruction Solutions deconstructs with a destination (the full method and its public blueprints are at SolveSomething.com): find the viable entry point, name the tension, build the solution. That is the right tool when the task is to solve something. This exercise is upstream of that. It builds the capacity DDS depends on, the ability to see all eleven variables before choosing among them, and it does so by refusing to let us skip the ones that seem irrelevant. The teenager’s body, the couple’s family of origin, the clinic’s triggers: each one seemed like a minor variable until it was asked, and each one turned out to be holding part of the symptom in place.

None of this is a case against treating the individual. I am a both-and kind of guy: the teenager still needs an adult in his corner, the couple still needs an hour, the clinic still needs the grant renewed. The deconstruction is what keeps the individual intervention from being the only one.

Solutions will still arrive. When a clinician or a parent or a couple finishes all eleven, the entry points are usually obvious, and they are usually not where the symptom pointed. The teenager’s parents, the couple’s time, the clinic’s business plan. None of those is the identified patient, and all of them are where the symptom lives.