Once we have some idea of what needs to change and what can actually be influenced, we need to determine the direction of that change.
Before deciding what to do, we need to know which way the situation needs to move.
Consider someone who is exhausted. If they have been working too hard, sleeping too little, caring for others without enough recovery, and continuing to push themselves despite increasing fatigue, the direction seems fairly clear. Something needs to decrease. More room for recovery needs to be created.
But another exhausted person may be living very differently. They have gradually become less active. They rarely leave the house, spend most of the day sitting, and have become weaker as their activity has declined. Further reducing activity may move them in exactly the wrong direction. Something needs to increase.
Both people are exhausted. They don’t need the same change.
This is why the name of a problem cannot determine its direction. Anxiety doesn’t automatically mean that someone needs to calm down. Fatigue doesn’t automatically mean more rest. Weakness doesn’t automatically mean strengthening. Withdrawal doesn’t automatically mean more social contact.
We have to understand what is contributing before we can tell which way change should go.
Someone who is continually overstimulated may need less stimulation. Someone who has become increasingly shut down may need more engagement. A person carrying more responsibility than they can sustain may need demands reduced. Another person may have lost so much structure, activity, and participation that rebuilding them becomes important.
The same principle applies to emotional life. Someone who is overwhelmed by feeling may need greater stability and containment. Someone who has spent years tightly controlling what they feel may need more room for feeling and expression. Encouraging both people simply to “open up” ignores the very different conditions they are starting from.
This is what we mean by direction. We are describing the change that appears necessary without yet deciding how to produce it.
Does something need to increase or decrease? Does the person need more activity or more recovery? Does something need support, or does a burden need to be reduced? Does something need greater movement, or greater stability? Does the situation call for opening, or for containment?
These aren’t diagnoses, and they aren’t methods. They are ways of describing the difference between the present condition and the condition we’re trying to move toward.
That distinction is important because a good thing can still be the wrong direction.
Rest is valuable, but more rest isn’t necessarily helpful to someone whose capacity is declining through prolonged inactivity. Activity is valuable, but increasing it can further deplete someone already exceeding what they can sustain. Emotional openness can be valuable, but pushing someone toward greater openness when they’re already overwhelmed may make things worse. Structure can provide stability, but more structure can become constricting when a person’s life is already rigidly controlled.
The question is never simply whether rest, activity, structure, expression, support, challenge, or anything else is good. The question is whether more or less of it moves this particular situation in the needed direction.
Sometimes what needs to increase is obvious: support, nourishment, stability, movement, connection, recovery, capacity. Sometimes what matters most is reduction: workload, stimulation, conflict, pressure, isolation, excessive effort, or some other condition that is continually adding to the problem.
And sometimes the needed direction isn’t primarily about the person at all. The workplace needs to become less demanding. The living situation needs to become safer. The relationship needs to become less destructive. More practical support needs to become available. If the conditions surrounding the person are helping produce the difficulty, changing those conditions may be the most important direction.
At this point, we still aren’t deciding how to create any of these changes. If someone needs more recovery, there may be many ways of supporting it. If someone needs greater activity, there may be many ways of restoring it. If a demand needs to decrease, there may be several places where reduction is possible.
Those questions belong to the means of influence. First we need the direction.
What is there too much of? What is there too little of? What needs to increase, decrease, move, settle, strengthen, open, or become more stable?
Once we can answer that, even provisionally, we have something much more useful than the name of the problem. We know which way we’re trying to go.
But a person doesn’t always need only one kind of change. Sometimes two apparently opposite directions are true at the same time.