Ya’ gotta look out for deep holes when you’re walking in unfamiliar territory. Deb and I do a fair bit of hiking, and in fact, she does twice as much as I do, often in our preferred Wisconsin state park, Devil’s Lake, but anywhere we are, whether in the U.S. or Europe. Since we are often in unfamiliar territory, we have learned to be careful where we walk. If we are on some kind of unfamiliar precipice, we need to use great care because one false step could be life-threatening. On the other hand, hikes to both familiar territory are always enjoyable and hikes to unfamiliar territory are always exciting. Sometimes, these deep holes are of one’s own making. Literally, we have often made the mistake of doing some kind of yard project and stumbled over the block, the wood, or the tool as well as having tripped into the hole we dug for the post we were putting in on the fence line. Sometimes Deb has dug a hole that I didn’t know about and then I stumbled on it. So deep holes can come by someone’s own making or someone else’s making. Additionally, sometimes you have to watch out for massive holes that seem to come out of nowhere.
Holes of your own making
These are things that you have created on your own that now suck energy out of you or otherwise impede your progress in life. They may be major holes, like a marriage that you shouldn’t have entered, a profession that you shouldn’t have entered, or a house that you shouldn’t have bought. Almost always, you know at the time that you shouldn’t have done these things but for some surface reason you went against your better judgment, intuition, or deep feeling. You married the woman because you loved her despite the fact that you knew she had a lot of psychological baggage; you went into the profession because you were good at math and could make a lot of money in accounting even though you hated the tediousness of such work; you bought the house because it was a good deal even though it was way too big for you. These are holes that you have created for yourself. You have tried to justify your errors by citing the love, the money, or the beauty, but because these big holes continue to bother you, you continue to be in this hole. Furthermore, you are inclined to complain about your wife, your job, or your house to anyone who will listen, always to no avail. You created the hole; you have to get out of it. By the way, this doesn’t mean that you should get a divorce, quit your job, and sell your house. It does mean that you need to admit that you are in a hole, and you created it. Then you can…see later.
There are other holes of less significance, or shorter duration, and of only moderate distress, but they are self-made holes nevertheless. You make too much food for dinner just before you go on a two-week vacation, and you can’t use the leftovers like you usually do; you bought the wrong size shoes and you can’t easily get back to Chicago where you bought them, or you agreed to take on that Sunday school class for preteens that has become a burden. These short-term errors are holes, but not deep ones.
There are self-made holes that lie somewhat between holes of marriage, job, and house on the one hand and buying the wrong pair of shoes on the other. These holes are often related to the avoidances-come-addictions that most people have. A hole for many people is the undue use of alcohol, which then causes other holes like money spent, or days in jail. There are, in fact, more behavioral addictions than those of chemicals, namely gambling, hoarding, and working. In addition to addictive substance and behavior, the most common self-created hole are physical illnesses. Overweight people use 50% of the medical dollar spent in America (and probably elsewhere), but continue to overeat and under-exercise with the result of their talking about their various body ailments as if someone else created them.
You can actually deal with these self-made holes if you admit that you made them. Sadly, most people don’t admit to their part in the hole-making. The holes that are more difficult to deal with than the self-made holes are the ones that other people or situations have created for you. Almost all self-created holes have been created to compensate for the larger hole that was created by your family of origin. But before we get to that part of the discussion, let’s discuss holes that are “just there” coming out of nowhere.
Holes that are created from nonhuman external circumstances
The most obvious hole is the current lockdown due to the coronavirus. This is a large hole. It is frustrating, scary sometimes, uncertain always, of unknown duration, and certainly not something that you created. It is clear to all of us that, for the most part, there isn’t much we can do but wait and try our best to be careful. But in this circumstance there is no absolute rule. Some people don’t care a whit about social distancing while others are wearing hazmat suits. You are probably somewhere in the middle. Note that however difficult the lockdown is, it is actually easier to deal with than the holes that you created in your life because you can talk about “it” that has control over you or “they” who have control over you. It’s much harder to face the holes that you created in your own life.
There are many less profound holes that nonpersonal external factors have caused for you. You get fired (or these days, “laid off”) from your work; your wife dies; you lose much of your life savings due to a market turn-down. Externally created holes can be less profound, like losing your cell phone on a trip west, find yourself facing an unexpected real estate tax bill, or some unknown person failed to clean up the dog poop in your yard. These are holes that you can step around, fall into (hopefully not the poop), and recover pretty quickly. Not necessarily so easy when people have put holes in your way.
Holes that are created from other people
These are holes that other people have put in your way, almost always without intention to do so, but rather just due to the way they acted in life. Some of these holes are profound, and some much less so. It is a delicate time for you because it is way too easy to “blame” other people for the hole you stepped in and then continue to blame them for the fact that you’re still in the hole. We’ll deal with these other-created holes, and all holes, in a moment. First, look at the profound holes.
Profound holes (big ones) come primarily from your parents. All parents do their best when they raise children, but their best is often not good enough. Very simply stated, parent-caused holes come from parents who neglected their children, indulged their children, judged their children as lacking in some way, or demanded too much of their children. As you look back at your childhood, you will see some element of at least one of these tendencies, possibly two. It is easiest to see the neglect (or abuse) of children, but the larger issue that I see these recent decades is indulgence, namely where children are not given responsibility to take care of themselves, property, and other people. Indulgence creates a huge hole in children, who then grow up to be big people with big holes in them. Such people think that the world will give them everything they want like their parent(s) did. Neglected children have a very different hole in them, which turns out to be a deep hunger for the safety, comfort and nurturance that they didn’t get as children. A subtler hole is created in children who have been criticized and judged for the way they went about life, or forced to abide by a set of rules and structures that was not consistent with how they truly were. A freedom-oriented child needs great freedom together with the consequences of using freedom to a fault. A deeply loving child needs the freedom to love all people and animals and slowly learn that loving such is not always good. They don’t need to be judged for loving freedom o4 people, nor do they need to be forced into other ways of life. While most of the big holes in people’s lives come from parents, it is occasionally true that some other person has created such a hole, like an abusive husband, a promiscuous wife, an intolerable boss, or a friend who abandons you. Usually, however, we meet, marry, befriend, or work for people who simply replicate the damage that was done to us as children. (Look up Freud’s “repetition compulsion” concept.)
Most people do not do well with any kind of hole, even the small ones, but when people have had holes created in their lives due to early life losses, they rarely recover. Instead, they find ways to avoid the holes with some kind of filler. Most often this filler is addictive in some way, but not just substance and behavior. Some people use their natural gifts to fill the hole but always without genuine success. They talk more or they talk less (if at all); they cry all the time or they fail to ever cry; they work 90 hours a week or they don’t work at all; they dream all the time with various theories of life or they just keep doing things to keep from feeling the hole inside. Unfortunately, this filler works for minutes, maybe hours, but not for long because the filler is not real: it is imaginary. They think that if they continue to work, play, dream, do something, eat something, drink, cry, or talk, they will fill the hole. A deep hole cannot be filled. It needs to evaporate. Sadly, they very often drag other people into the hole that is in them. They actually become psychologically dangerous, and occasionally physically dangerous. It is a task to truly befriend such a person and keep a safe distance at the same time.
Dealing effectively with people who have big holes in them
I want to be very delicate here so as to avoid offending people with holes that they have to deal with. We all have holes, some small, some large, and we usually find ways to deal with them, stepping around them, fixing them, or simply falling into them and getting out by hook or crook. On the other hand, many people have such large holes in them that they are often unable to muster up the courage or find the recipe for climbing out of the hole, that they become stuck in these holes or become psychologically dangerous to people around them. Most specifically, I want to avoid talking about what is “wrong” with such people, much less render some kind of diagnosis. Diagnoses could include depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or borderline personality disorder, but none of these diagnoses actually helps people suffering from having a deep hole inside. Sadly, it behooves people who are in their lives to protect themselves from being drawn into the hole. I can be drawn in by the person’s genuine complaints about some part of life, or all of life for that matter. I can feel sorry for the person, render some shoot-from-the-hip advice, or avoid the person altogether. In most cases, the last option is where people end up because they have become exhausted in trying to help their friend with words and actions. This leads to a kind of abandonment that only exacerbates the person with the hole because s/he feels bad about him/herself, and then looks for someone else to fill the hole. The important truth is that no one, and nothing, can fill the hole. So what can be done? We’ll get to it is a moment.
It is important to realize that that all people have holes and these very same people want someone else to fix the hole or fill it. You can do neither. In fact, if you have such a person in your life, you must do what your friend most does not want: limit. You have to say no to her/his requests for more information, more money, or more time. The more you limit, the less you will be frustrated by failing to help your friend with his/her hole. This, of course, will make your friend mad at you for hot “helping” him/her, but limiting your friend is the only thing you can do. Simply put, you give what you can, and no more. But people with holes always have “one more question” or one more request or need one more minute. From the people I have known with big holes in them I have heard the following: “I don’t want to go to the hospital where my wife is having brain surgery because it’s going to be all about him” (yes really); “If you gave me all the time you have, I would want more;” “All I want is all you have.” These are actual statements made by people, all good people, and all intelligent people, who have big holes in them. So you cannot fill their holes. Give, yes. Give in, no. Giving in is not giving. You know the difference because when you give in, you resent and you complain about your friend. Do neither. Just give, and then stop giving when you don’t want to give.
Dealing with the hole(s) in your life
Finally, I get practical. It is much easier to wax psychological. Effective dealing with the hole is getting the hole to evaporate. By this I mean that as you take responsibility for seeing yourself and seeing the world realistically, the hole that you have been living in begins to disappear. It is most certainly not filling the hole, whether with words, not with comfort, not with anger, and not with advice. You can deal with the small holes with some time, effort, and intelligence. It the larger, deeper inside of you, holes that require a good deal of work. This is the procedure:
- Recognize that you have a big hole in your life. This is painful, but it is absolutely the necessary beginning, and it is the only beginning.
- This will make you sad because you will see that you are missing something very central to life. You need to be sad for a period of time to allow you to move on.
- Moving on is not forgetting the hole or neglecting it. Moving on is finding ways to improve your life. This usually means admitting that you have wanted someone else to fill the hole or fix the hole. Giving up this dream is painful, and you will see that no one, absolutely no one can, or should, fill or fix the hole.
- Note the intrinsic fear that you have when you see that, whoever created this hole in you, it is now your hole and you have to deal with it. You need to reflect on what you missed in childhood, which will always be some combination of undue limitation, not enough limitation, neglect, indulgence, lack of understanding of your nature, some kind of true abuse, or a combination of these elements.
- Finding, facing, and feeling the cause for your hole will begin to give you confidence that you can climb out of the hole. Again, there is no fixing or filling the hole. You have to climb out on your own.
- You will not want to climb out. You would much rather have someone climb in or at least give you a latter. Won’t happen. Can’t happen. Just admit that you don’t want to climb out and you will soon find yourself climbing…hating it all the while.
- As you climb, you will notice your confidence increases. This kind of confidence is not based on what you’re good at like playing, working, talking, dreaming, or crying. It will be something different. You are, as you climb out, developing other skills that have long eluded you. I can’t tell you what skill you will learn, but it most certainly won’t be what you’ve been doing for years, which is, figuratively, using a fork instead of a shovel or a ladder to get out of the hole. Forks are great for eating, not for climbing.
- As you climb out, tell someone about your journey. Avoid the tendency that still resides in you, that someone else can rescue you. just tell your friend your struggle and ask your friend to keep quiet while you talk about your feelings and thoughts.
- Note that you are feeling better and the hole is smaller. Eventually, it will evaporate