sometimes you get stuck in a sinkhole for a few years

Kitty Kielland, Peat Bog at Jæren, 1901

You can get stuck in these ways of thinking that are antithetical to your flourishing. They’re sinkholes, gravity wells. There’s this meme floating around that as children we believe quicksand is a much bigger component of life than it actually is. Adult life has taught me that while literal quicksand isn’t around that much, metaphorical quicksand is everywhere.

It’s so easy to dismiss other people’s traps. We look at someone who falls into a weird cult or stays with an abusive boyfriend and think, That could never happen to me. But it could, and it probably has—it’s just likely less dramatic.

One hard-won piece of knowledge: if you’re in an unhappy relationship, it’s probably because you’re doing something wrong. Yes, it’s your fault, just as you suspected. Even if you aren’t actually doing something wrong, you at least chose the person. But often the way to get out of it is to go the opposite direction. Instead of doing more of what you’re already doing, try doing less. Instead of going left, go right. Think about what people do when they’re in quicksand: they struggle. What does struggling do to them? They sink.

When you’re in a sinkhole, your entire model of the sinkhole is probably flawed in some important way. Another way of putting it: the reasoning that got you here is not going to get you out. What you need is not a modulation of effort, but instead a change of perspective.

An exercise to try: think about the people you know who are in unhappy situations, whether professional or personal. How many do you think need to try harder, vs how many simply have the wrong approach? People’s problems are generally created by their approaches, which is why trying harder tends to just drive them in deeper.

The problem is that your approach has probably worked for you up until this point in time. As they say, coping mechanisms that hamper you in adulthood tended to be survival mechanisms in childhood.

When I reflect on the sinkholes I’ve been stuck in, I never think “Oh, I was so dumb.” I got stuck because I stumbled into situations that spoke to my deepest beliefs about what love meant, what care meant, what effort meant and what I deserved. There is no possible way I could have avoided getting stuck. Some drives are deeper than your self-concept, primal and irresistible. And yet: getting unstuck means fighting against your deepest drives, and winning.

Yes, it’s difficult. If it was easy, no one would ever get stuck. And it’s humiliating to put an incredible amount of time and effort into a problem and admit that you just haven’t made very much progress. But I try to think about it this way: humiliation is the beginning of freedom. If you can admit that you haven’t made very much progress, you can maybe admit that you should try something different. Which, again, is no guarantee of success, but at least you’re no longer pushing yourself deeper into the sinkhole.

Often people think: if someone only suffers enough, they will surely realize something is wrong. As someone who loves to suffer, I am here to assure you that’s not the case. You would not believe some people’s capacity for misery! What’s gotten me out is something different: the mundane passage of time and a growing disinterest in repetition. The thing with sinkholes is that they tend to involve a lot of cycling, and after a while you start to notice: this again? THIS AGAIN? You thought you were in a traffic jam, but suddenly you realize you’re on a ferris wheel. Of course, it’s up to you whether or not you want to get off. The view can be very nice from the highest point of the Ferris wheel, which is probably why you got on in the first place.