Problem Admiring vs. Problem Solving
Author: Kimberly Tierney, Director of Academic Coaching
Read time: 3 minutes
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In grad school, I had a professor, Dr. Brady, who used to tell our cohort something that has stuck with me ever since: "We are not in the business of problem admiring. We are in the business of problem solving."
At the time, it was a one-liner. Now, years into working as a school psychologist and academic coach, it's basically become my professional philosophy, and I bring it into my sessions with students all the time.
Two Ways to Face a Problem
When something goes wrong, we have two options. We can sit with the problem and complain about it, replay it, and dissect all the ways it's unfair. OR we can ask what we're actually going to do about it.
That first option, problem admiring, feels productive in the moment. It doesn't feel like avoidance. It feels like you're taking the problem seriously. But admiring a problem and solving a problem are not the same thing, and psychology research backs this up.
Psychologists Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman described two broad ways people cope with stress: emotion-focused coping, which manages how we feel about a problem, and problem-focused coping, which manages the problem itself, identifying it, weighing options, and acting. Both have their place. But research on rumination, led by psychologist Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, found that dwelling on a problem doesn't just fail to help, it actively gets in the way, impairing problem-solving and interfering with the very action needed to move forward.
In other words: admiring the problem doesn't just waste time. It can make solving it harder.
The 3-Minute Rule
When I have a student who's stuck in problem-admiring mode, venting, spiraling, stuck on how unfair something is, I don't tell them to stop feeling that way. Instead, I set a timer for three minutes and give them full permission to complain, vent, or "crash out" as much as they want.
When the timer goes off, we shift gears. We talk about what we can actually do.
This isn't just a classroom trick. It resembles a technique from clinical psychology called worry postponement, developed by researcher Thomas Borkovec (a Penn State professor emeritus, fittingly enough). The idea is to set aside a specific, contained window for worry rather than letting it bleed into the entire day. Studies have found that this kind of contained processing reduces overall worry and frees up mental space rather than suppressing the feeling entirely.
The goal isn't to skip the venting. It's to give it a boundary, so it doesn't take over.
Solving Sometimes Means Changing Your Mindset
Solving a problem doesn't always mean fixing it outright. Sometimes it means taking concrete steps, like emailing a professor, rewriting a schedule, or asking for help. But sometimes "solving" means changing how you're relating to the problem: accepting what's outside your control, reframing a setback as information, or deciding what you can influence even when the whole situation isn't fixable.
Both are problem solving. Neither is problem admiring.
Try It Yourself
Next time you catch yourself stuck in a loop, complaining, replaying, dwelling, try Dr. Brady's distinction. Give yourself a few minutes to feel it fully. Then ask: what's one thing I can actually do about this, even a small one?
That shift, from admiring to solving, is a skill. And like any skill, it gets easier every time you practice it!
