Do you know the "Chinese finger trap" puzzle? (click on the picture to see a bigger copy)


You stick one finger into each end of the braided tube. When you go to pull your fingers out, the tube tightens up and grips your fingers -- tighter, the harder you pull. It feels like an unsolvable puzzle as long as you panic and keep pulling. Once you get the hang of getting out of it, it turns out to be so simple that you wonder how you could ever have fallen for it.

For me, one issue typically does lead to another. There are some ways of looking at them, or some mindsets I can look at them from, where I just seem to be adding to the pile by pulling up one unrelated thing after another. That seems to happen especially when I've asserted that it's going to. "It's no use, I have way too many issues. Watch, I'll prove it..." There's another way of looking at issues, though, where I only pull up stuff related to one specific issue while looking at that one issue from every possible direction. That tends to make the issue break up and float away. That seems to happen when I let go of believing whatever I've been telling myself about the issue, and start noticing what's actually so for me at the moment.