The Problem Isn't Where You Think It Is

How many times have you tried to solve a problem, but you just can't seem to find the answer?

Probably too many!

You're someone who's good at figuring things out, but when you can't seem to find an answer despite your best efforts, it's often because the problem doesn't live at the level where you're looking for it.

Why Your Logical Brain Can't Always Find the Answer

The brain we use to solve problems is called the neocortex. This is the part of us that wants things to make sense, plans, organizes, analyzes, and looks for solutions it can follow. 

When you feel stuck, you want the answer from A-Z fully formed so that you can solve it and move on. Unfortunately, things don't usually happen that way.

When you can't seem to find the answer, that's a clue that the problem lives deeper at the subconscious level. At this level logic doesn't exist. This is where you want to feel loved, understood, and like you belong.

Sometimes, the core of the problem exists even deeper at the survival level. At this level, the only thing that counts is whether you feel safe and have everything you need for survival like food, shelter, a mate, and a tribe.

Your logical brain isn't fully able to search those levels, and this is why getting outside perspective to help you see or connect patterns is so important. 

How a Childhood Event Becomes an Adult Pattern

When we're children, we're not able to depersonalize situations because we lack life experience. So, when something upsetting happens, we think it's our fault. This creates a type of origin event where we store unprocessed feelings and traumas. Eventually, our subconscious creates patterns around our experiences that don't make logical sense. 

Here's an example: 

You're five years old and you ask your mom or dad for ice cream. They say no. Maybe it was about money, or a dentist appointment coming up, or any number of reasons that had nothing to do with how they felt about you.

But your five-year-old brain didn't know that. What it heard instead was something like: I'm not worthy of this. What I want doesn't matter. They don't care about me or what I want. 

That single moment can wire a belief that keeps running subconsciously in your adult life as things don't tend to work out for me or when I ask for what I need, people don't come through. You would never logically trace that back to ice cream incident when you were five years old, but your subconscious never forgets. 

In sessions with clients, I guide them through the Rapid Regulation Method and the Figure It Out framework. 

I look for those origin events where a piece of you made a decision about how the world works and has been running that program ever since. Finding it is what ultimately solves your problems because the logical brain is desperate to understand what's really going on. Once it sees and knows the true problem underneath, change becomes easier. 

When Emotions Get Trapped in the Body

Similar to stuck thought patterns and beliefs, sometimes emotional pain can become trapped in the body. This often happens when you have a physical ailment that you've been unable to find a cause.

I first discovered this in medical school when I was trying to recover from a back injury that I could not heal, despite doing everything I knew how to do.

Western medicine, Eastern medicine, acupuncture, homeopathy, massage, energy work. It didn't shift until I discovered that emotions can get trapped in the body and act as an obstacle to healing.

Once I found the origin event and the belief I created to explain it, my logical brain finally had the information it needed. My back healed when my logical brain understood the problem, and my body felt safe to fully let it go. 

If you're doing amazing things for your health but still getting trickle-flow results it could be because a stuck emotional pattern is blocking the flow of healing.

Think of it like a crash on the freeway that takes three lanes down to one. The road is still open, but nothing is moving at full speed. Clearing that specific block is what lets everything else you're doing work better.

Why Subconscious Problem-Solving Requires a Different Toolkit

Going beyond your logical brain is an enormous asset. When you're willing to explore answers that don't "make sense" to your logical brain, you have an opportunity to grow and learn significantly faster. If you're open to answers coming from different directions, you'll get more of them. 

Sometimes you can't see the shape of your own patterns because you've been inside them long enough that they've stopped looking like patterns at all.

It's like living inside of a box. The box has become so familiar that you no longer see it as a box at all until someone on the outside shows you where the edges are. Then, you get to decide if you want to stay in the box or change the patterns that kept you inside the box in the first place. 

That's the work I do in Decode and Amplify, my private one-to-one coaching programs. We work with all of it: mind, body, spirit, emotions, energy. The Figure It Out framework helps locate what's actually running the show, and once the source is addressed, the rest tends to follow.

If you'd like someone to help you connect the dots and find your blind spots, then you can book a consultation HERE. 

Dr. April Darley is a brain-based neuroscience coach and subconscious strategist who specializes in high-level brain coaching for professionals and leaders She helps high-capacity leaders identify and recalibrate the hidden patterns between the survival, emotional, and logical brain so their decisions and execution become clear, stable, and powerful.