The reason we gravitate towards the symptom fix

Whenever we feel sick, the first response of most people is to try to feel better. We reach for medicines that can relieve the horrible symptoms that we experience. We want to get rid of the headache. We want to stop the running nose. We want our stomach to feel less achy.

So we reach for the medicine cabinet to see what instant fixes are available. We take the medicine assuming this is going to help us get better.

But the medicine is designed to take away the symptoms not the underlying illness. We mask the illness so we can go about our day without too much disruption and discomfort.

The symptom fix is what we think we need in these instances. We just want relief from the discomfort of the problem. The problem itself (being sick) isn’t the focus the symptoms are the focus.

Sometimes this is fine. Our body is attacking the illness and most of the time can handle eradicating our body of the germs that are causing us to be sick. So we can shift our attention to the symptoms while our body handles the actual root problem.

When people start to take this approach it seems to make sense. We use how we feel as the measurement and then address what is causing us to feel horrible.

But there is an inherent problem with this strategy. We aren’t looking at the problem, only the symptoms. So we don’t do anything different to either 1) better avoid getting sick in the future or 2) fix the underlying problem of the illness.

From a systems perspective this is one of the main archetypes that we find. In Systems Thinking for Social Change, David Peter Stroh says, “Fixes that backfire is the story of unintended consequences… People implement a quick fix to reduce a problem symptoms that works in the short run… however, the quick fix also creates long-term unintended consequences that exacerbate the problem symptom over time.”

In other words we have to be careful using this approach because often it expands the underlying problems while it covers up the symptoms.

Years ago a friend of mine had developed poor eating and exercise habits. He was gaining weight and becoming less healthy each day. So he reached for something that would reduce the symptoms (weight gain) without addressing the root problem (unhealthy habits).

His quick fix was the Adkins diet. He cut out all carbs and lost about 50 lbs quickly. He felt great. He eliminated the symptom with a temporary fix.

But the problem grew. As soon as he reached his goal he stopped the diet and went back to eating unhealthy. This time he kept saying that he would just go on Adkins again if he gained too much weight so he didn’t worry about how much he was gaining or how quickly.

So he gained back the weight relatively quickly and then kept going. He would try to find the motivation to cut carbs again but kept failing. His quick, easy fix was no longer helpful to relieve the symptoms.

Instead, if he worked to change his unhealthy habits he could have created lasting change. It would probably not have worked as quickly to relieve the symptoms as Adkins, but he would have been able to enjoy the benefits for years and years.

We all have options when we want to improve. The systems and habits approach to improvement works to get to the underlying problems and then correct them slowly over time. Instead of the quick symptom fix, we work to do the hard work to change our behavior that created the symptom.

The symptom fix seems like the quickest, easiest way to feel better. But it comes with caution because we don’t do anything to fix the actual problem and only work on addressing the uncomfortable symptoms. Most people would benefit from avoiding this system archetype and instead get to fixing the root cause.