Tag Archives: healing

September 9, 2026

The psychology of holes

By Steve Hauptman

…

Listen to the audio version: https://stevehauptman.substack.com/p/the-psychology-of-holes

*

It’s supposed to go like this:

…..

We’re supposed to grow up in a good-enough

family, one nurturing enough to provide

adequate supplies of the 4 A’s:

…..

attention

acceptance

approval

affection

…..

The 4 A’s are the basic components of

love.

…..

If we get enough of these components,

we fill up in childhood, just like kids

fill up with good food.

…..

And we enter adulthood feeling reasonably

solid, reasonably valuable and lovable

and confident in our dealing with others.

…..

But if we grow up in a not-enough family

— one burdened by abuse, or addiction,

or mental illness, or parents who dislike

each other or themselves or their children

—  several things happen:

….

…..

1. We enter adulthood emotionally hungry,

carrying unmet needs that appear as holes

in our confidence and self-esteem.

…..

2. This hunger is so painful that it forces

us to try and fill those holes by getting our

needs met by others.

…..

3. We do this unconsciously, unaware of

why we feel how we feel or do what we

do or how it impacts the people around us.

….

4. We also do it covertly, hiding our true

motives from ourselves and others, trying

to control and manipulate other people

into feeding us what we didn’t get as kids.

….

5. Others often sense our hidden agenda

— even when they don’t understand it —

and react defensively by rejecting us or

distancing themselves.

….

6. The rejection and distancing increases

our hunger, triggering another round of

unconscious controlling and manipulation,

often followed by more distancing and

rejection.

….

This circular process continues until we

recognize what we’re doing and learn better

ways of getting our emotional needs met.

…

I’ve known many, many people like this.

….

I’ve been one myself.

.,…

There’s no shame in it. 

….

Emotional hunger is the common cold

of emotional problems.

…

But if I’ve learned anything about this

whole business, it’s this:

….

We will never feel adequately loved

until we finally identify our unhealed

holes and understand the ways in which

we keep ourselves hungry.

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August 27, 2026

About hidden agony

By Steve Hauptman

.

I’ve written here before about emotional

constipation, a kind of unfinished business

left over from childhood which makes it

difficult for us to feel and function like

grownups.*

.

For recovering people, though, there’s

another kind of unfinished business —

another unhealed emotional wound —

that is important to understand.

.

And this wound is not one we’re likely

to discover on our own.

.

It is rooted in how our mothers responded

to us when we were infants.

.

Mark Epstein describes it in his book

The Trauma of Everyday Life, drawing

on the seminal work of British child

analyst D.W. Winnicott.

.

Here’s a simplified version of how Epstein

explains it:

.

One of a mother’s most important jobs is

to teach her child how to identify and

handle feelings. 

.

She does this by modeling a combination

of empathy (Oh, you’re having a feeling) 

and reassurance (Everything will be fine).

.

Anyone who spends any time observing

mothers with their children sees this happen

over and over.

.

Oh, you’re wet?

Here, let’s get you changed. 

Oh, you’re hungry? 

Let’s warm up your bottle. 

Oh, you hurt yourself? 

Here, let mama kiss it.  

.

And so on.  This ability to pay attention

to and respond appropriately to the

infant’s experience is called attunement. 

.

When attuned to the infant, Winnicott

writes,

.

mothers become able to put

themselves into the infant’s shoes,

so to speak. That is to say,

they develop an amazing capacity

for identification with the baby,

and this makes them able

to meet the basic needs of the

infant in a way that no machine

can imitate, and no teaching

can reach.**   

.

Mom’s attunement is essential to the

infant’s emotional development,

because it models for the child how

to attune to itself. 

.

She is teaching her child Here’s what

you do with a feeling: You notice it.

You respect it. You pay it attention.

You decide what it’s trying to tell you,

and you respond accordingly.

.

An attuned mother provides a kind of

emotional container — an experience

of holding, attention and safety —

which the infant absorbs and learns to

provide for themself.  

.

But what if the mother can’t attune to

her infant? 

.

What if something else is occupying

her attention or draining her energy? 

What if she is sick, or exhausted, or

depressed, or frightened, or angry, or

being abused, or self-medicating with

some substance?

.

“An infant who is held well enough

is quite a different thing from one

who has not been held well enough,”

writes Winnicott.

.

You see two infants: one has been

held…well enough, and there is

nothing to prevent a rapid emotional

growth, according to inborn tendencies. 

The other has not had the experience

of being held well and growth has

had to be distorted and delayed,

and some degree of primitive agony

has to be carried on into

life and living.**

.

What Winnicott calls primitive agony is

the experience of being left all alone to

deal with incomprehensible and

uncontrollable feelings.

.

This is not an agony that simply fades

away over time.

.

Instead those afflicted carry it into

adulthood, where can take in two forms.

.

The first form is a chronic background

anxiety, which occasionally erupts as a

fear of breaking down, “losing it,” or

going crazy.

.

The other form is a damaged ability to

deal in healthy ways with their adult

emotional life.

.

(To be continued.)

________________________

*”The psychology of shit”

**All Winnicott quotes from The Trauma of Every Life by Mark Epstein (Bantam, 2014).

* * *

Buy here.

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May 21, 2026

The smell of the bait

By Steve Hauptman

.

Last night I replayed a conversation

for the eleventh time.

.

I was trying to get it right.

.

Not the conversation itself; that

was over and done with.

.

But how I felt about it.

.

I did not feel good.

.

So I reviewed

(a) what I said,

(b) what I should have said,

(c) what I shouldn’t have said,

(d) what the other person said,

(e) what they really meant,

(f) what they might be thinking now.

.

Each pass gave me a flicker of relief.

A sense that I was getting closer

to something.

.

But the longer I stayed with it,

the crappier I felt.

.

Which told me I was monkeytrapped.

.

By now you’re probably familiar with

this analogy:

A banana is placed inside a jar with a

neck just wide enough for the monkey’s

paw to slip inside. The monkey grabs

the fruit, then finds its clenched fist is

too large to pull back out. It could free

itself easily; it just has to let go. But it

really really wants that banana. So it

hangs on. And it’s still hanging on when

the trappers come to collect it.

.

That’s a literal monkeytrap.

I write about the psychological version:

any situation which tempts us to hang

on when we really should let go.

Any discomfort which pulls us to try

and control what can’t or shouldn’t

be controlled.

.

Last night I was hooked by the promise

that if I just thought a bit longer,

analyzed more carefully, revisited

the conversation one more time, I’d

finally feel better — less tense, or

uncertain, or uneasy, or guilty, or

whatever the hell it was that I

was feeling.

.

Relief seemed just one more attempt away.

.

And then I noticed something new:

I’d been trapped by the smell of the

banana.

.

It was the irresistable smell of relief

that kept me obsessing over that

conversation, long after I should

have realized that its promise of

relief was a lie.

.

And lately this is something I’ve

come to see more and more clearly

in my work with clients:

.

Monkeytraps trap us because they work.

.

Just for a moment, they work. There’s

this tiny flicker of relief that comes

from replaying, analyzing, obsessing,

rechecking feelings, trying to think

our way into certainty.

.

Just enough relief to answer the inner

voice whispering You need to fix this.

.

So we set about trying to fix, and it

feels like we’re doing something,

clarifying something, moving toward

some kind of answer.

.

That moment is the hook. Because

the flicker of relief is real.

.

Then it fades. And we have to grab

for it again.

.

And again.

.

Psychologists call this negative

reinforcement. Negative refers to

removing something unpleasant,

reinforcement to encouraging the

behavior that removed it.

.

Translation: Controlling behavior

relieves just enough discomfort to

lead us into more controlling behavior.

.

It’s what makes controlling an addiction.

.

So it’s the smell of the bait that leads

us to review the conversation one more

time, or read another person’s mind,

or ask others what they think, or

doubt our perceptions, or beat

ourselves up for mistakes, or …

.

You know.

.

Over time, this becomes less of a choice

and more of a reflex. The moment

something feels off we move automatically

into managing it, or trying to.

.

Anyway. Last night all this flashed through

my mind pretty quickly, like a sudden

mental ZIP download.

.

Followed by one of my favorite aphorisms:

Where you put you attention is what grows.

.

So I took a deep breath, and suspended

the replay

.

I felt around in my body.

Found a small tightness in my chest.

.

It was the discomfort I had been

trying to fix.

.

Now I just looked at it.

Just looked.

.

I imagined it as a rubber band around

my heart.

.

I took another breath.

.

I kept looking.

.

There was no dramatic shift, no

immediate relief or resolution.

.

But the rubber band began to loosen.

Not all at once, and not completely.

.

But I felt better.

.

Not because I had figured anything

out.

.

Because I’d stopped trying to.

.

.

Bert and I recently began

publishing on Substack.

Come follow us.

https://substack.com/@stevehauptman

.

.

.

.

.

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