Why Do I Keep Trying to Fix Problems Nobody Asked Me to Solve?

Sometimes people are telling us what happened. They aren’t necessarily handing us an assignment.

Years ago, a friend was venting to me about her teenager.

She was overwhelmed by everything she was doing and everything her kid seemed to need.

From where I was sitting, the answer looked incredibly obvious.

I said:

“Just tell them no.”

There.

Solved it.

You’re welcome.

Her face changed immediately.

Then she said:

“You don’t have a teenager yet. You don’t know what this is like.”

And instead of hearing information, I heard rejection.

I went home and replayed that conversation for weeks.

What did I say wrong?

Why did she react that way?

Should I have explained myself differently?

I gave myself an emotional hangover over a sentence that took about three seconds to say.

Years later, when I had teenagers of my own, I finally understood what she meant.

I had been looking at the no. She had been living everything that came after the no.

The guilt.

The pushback.

The second-guessing.

The discomfort of knowing somebody you love is unhappy with your decision.

But there was another problem I had missed completely.

She never asked me to solve it.

She was venting.

I heard a problem and immediately arrived carrying a toolbox.

I’ve done that more times than I can count.

Someone tells me they’re overwhelmed and my brain starts building a plan.

Someone tells me they’re upset and I’m already three suggestions deep.

Someone says, “You would not believe what happened today,” and apparently some part of me hears:

Kelly, please report immediately to the Solutions Department.

Sometimes the ideas are even good.

That isn’t necessarily the point.

A perfectly good screwdriver is still annoying when nobody asked you to repair anything.

What I eventually had to learn was that hearing a problem does not automatically make it my job to solve the problem.

Sometimes the person wants help.

Sometimes they want another perspective.

Sometimes they genuinely want ideas.

And sometimes they want to say:

“This sucked.”

And have another human being say:

“Yeah. That really does suck.”

So now one of the simplest questions I can ask is:

“Do you want ideas, or do you mostly need me to listen?”

That tiny question tells me whether somebody is actually handing me the toolbox.

And if they aren’t?

I can leave it on the damn shelf.

Because sometimes support isn’t finding the answer.

Sometimes it’s understanding what kind of help was actually being asked for in the first place.

A solution nobody asked for can still feel a lot like being unheard.