Dig This

Here is a parable originally told by the founders of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), Steven Hayes and his colleagues (1999) retold in Heffner and Eifert’s The Anorexia Workbook (2004):

The Story of the Child in the Hole

Imagine a happy child running through a wide-open field. That is how life is supposed to be: fresh and carefree. Try to imagine this scene vividly. Now, in a sad twist of fate, imagine the child running through the field and falling into a hole. The perfect life is now imperfect. The child struggles and struggles to climb out of the hole, but there is no escape. If climbing won’t work, there must be another way out. She thinks to herself, “Maybe digging is the way out.” So, the child squats down on her hands and knees and starts to dig. She digs and digs and digs... and keeps on digging.

Yet, after all this digging, where is the child? She looks around, and she is still in the hole. So she tries to dig much harder and faster, thinking to herself, “Maybe it will work if I just work harder at it.” After a while, she stops and looks around again. And where does she find herself? She is even deeper in the hole. All this effort. All this work. And what is the result? The hole has only gotten deeper and wider. It feels scary being trapped deeper in the hole.

Is this your experience? Clearly, the problem is not lack of effort. The child is giving all she has to dig herself out, but the effort is not paying off. In fact, the effort is only creating a bigger problem. The harder she digs, the deeper the hole gets. Her situation has actually become worse because now the hole is even deeper than when she started.

For you, anorexia, bulimia, binge-eating, binge-spending, drinking, drugging, etc., may be a way of digging yourself out of a hole that life has let you fall into. That hole can be a number of different situations: a bad relationship, a bad grade, a nasty comment someone made about your appearance, or any other difficult situation. Be honest with yourself: have your efforts to avoid your feelings or change your body made your situation any better? Has ‘working harder’ at any of these things actually worked for you?

There is a more useful way than digging yourself even deeper into the hole. Recovery starts with accepting the fact that “if you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” When you stop digging, you will be free to use your hands in a new, productive way. You will be able to do other things with your energy, with your life. It’s time to make a bold step and take a leap of faith. Are you ready to do something different?

With Love,

Ellen

Questions? Comments? Email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it