problems

life coach - An advisor who helps people with problems, decisions, and goal attainment in daily life.
empathy, sympathy - Empathy denotes a deep emotional understanding of another's feelings or problems, while sympathy is more general and can apply to small annoyances or setbacks.
gravity - Comes from Latin gravitas, from gravis, "heavy, important"—and it can apply to situations and problems as well as to people.
insoluble - Can be applied to problems that cannot be solved as well as substances that will not dissolve in liquids.

Problems/Solutions

As rust eats iron, so care eats the heart —Auguste Ricard
Being a new employee … it’s like picking up a screenplay and starting to act your part, only it’s Act Three and you have not been in Acts One or Two —Carol Clark, New York Times, July 28, 1986
Burdensome as a secret —French proverb
Carry your problems with you from place to place like a Santa Claus sack —George Garrett
Ceased to be an apparent problem … the way crumbs swept under a rug cease to be an apparent problem —Rick Borsten
Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body —Seneca, The Elder
(Doubt … ) dug at his peace of mind like a broken fingernail —F. van Wyck Mason
(The electronics-crammed production booth is beginning to) resemble the bridge of a destroyer under air attack —Michael Cieply, writing about taping of a Bill Cosby television segment that ran into problems, Wall Street Journal, September 26, 1986
Face a problem with all the joy of a team preparing for a game it expects to lose. —Anon
Felt speaking about one’s personal problems was rather like talking about one’s surgery scars … a subject of consuming interest only to one’s self —C.D.B. Bryan
Heading toward disaster, as certainly as a four-year-old behind the wheels of a Maserati —Vincent Canby, New York Times, February 28, 1986
He was like a mathematician with an abstruse problem, worrying over it, but worrying very calmly and impersonally —James Hilton
I am a man smothered with women and children, like a duck with onions —Sir Charles Napier
Napier made these comparisons when he reflected on his life in England after retiring as commander of British forces in northern India.
An international crisis is like sex, as long as you keep talking about it, nothing happens —Harold Coffin, Reader’s Digest, September, 1961
It’s [being on a losing streak] like a little time box that’s going to explode —John Pennywell, football player on Columbia University’s Lions, New York Times, November 8, 1986
(I was) living as if I were squeezed in an iron hand —Honoré de Balzac
(The whole of) my life has passed like a razor … in hot water or a scrape —Sydney Smith
(My immediate) problems … as untouchable as a raw wound —Norman Mailer
The problem stayed in the front of his mind like a sheer cliff he could not begin to climb —Ken Follett
Pry at the mousehole of a solution like a cat with infinite patience —Bill Granger
Second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily on and off —Charles Dickens
Sign of trouble … like seeing a cannon muzzle poke out of the woods —James Sterngold, New York Times, March 22, 1986
The solution rushed on him like a fire storm —T. Coraghessan Boyle
They’re [troubles] piled on my head like snows on a mountain top —Bernard Malamud
They would gnaw on it for days like two puppies with a rubber bone —Charles Portis
Troubled as a plane with one wing —Anon
Trouble … fell across her shoulders like a cloak. It was as if she had touched a single strand of a web, and felt the whole thing tremble and knew herself to be caught forever in its trembling —Ellen Gilchrist
Troublesome as a wasp in one’s ears —Thomas Fuller
Troubles visited from above like tornadoes —Marge Piercy
Weaponless deterrence is like bodiless sex. It gets you nowhere —James Morrow
Women like to sit down with trouble as if it were knitting —Ellen Glasgow
Work like an antitoxin … before the complications come —Clifford Odets

Translations

problematica

Problems