Climbing Out of Your Rabbit Hole
Overcoming houdini syndrome and your escape artist tendencies
Have you ever had an idea to get away from something as fast as you possibly could?
Have you ever had a hare-brained idea that led to all kinds of other problems?
Have you ever had a hare-y idea that was merely an escape tactic?
A Hare-y Idea
Most of my life I have had hare-y ideas.
And the most hare-brained idea of all was my impulsive option to obsess about the pain and terror that incessantly overtook me in my nightmares.
Especially my growing fear of shadows hovering in the dark turning into monsters. For as the experts all say, we are each responsible for our own reactions. Thus, that must mean we have a choice about how we will react. Right?
Even when our fears haunt us. Even when our fears became tormenting realities like a disastrous marriage and a deepening anxiety about the game of existence.
And I was as anxious and as desperate as Abishola, (Folake Olowofoyeku) in the tv comedy Bob Hearts Abishola. Her son was being kept from her by her ex-husband. She told Bob (Billy Gardell), “We’ll wait until nightfall, hop over the wall, find Dele — and make our escape.”
I, too, was seeking an escape. Yet I couldn’t find the wall to hop over. And I didn’t even really know what or who I was trying to escape from.
But I definitely was looking for someone to say to me what Bob said to Abishola: “You know I will do anything in my power to help you.”
Instead everyone seemed to be saying what popped out of Bob’s mouth next: “Hopping is not in my power.”
So, I just kept hopping, alone and frantic in my fight with life … and ended up married and fighting with an alcoholic husband. Until …
The Fantasy of Escapism
I found myself in a homeless shelter.
And I was eventually forced to face myself and my own “escapism.”
And I’ve recently discovered what I was experiencing has been called “the Houdini Syndrome.” Psychologist Jennifer Delgado says such escapism is “the tendency to evade the real world [by]looking for the desired security and tranquility in a fantasy world.”
My fantasy was that I could just keep hopping away from reality and never have to face my problems. For that was my strategy for coping.
According to Delgado, “not all coping strategies are effective, mature and psychologically healthy. Some may even create more problems than they solve by making you hit bottom emotionally.. Escapism is one of them.”
Delgado explains we all have our fantasies of escaping. And those fantasies come in all shapes and sizes. For anything can become a way to escape. My husband chose alcohol as his fantasy escape.
Can Fantasy Escape be Healthy?
Delgado also says, “In today’s world, the preferred form of escapism is the compulsive need to be constantly involved in electronic life, looking for apparently important information, playing or rummaging through social networks.”
But WAIT! Before you get all defensive and hit the back button on your way to another fantasy, just to escape these words, understand that escapism is often a good thing. For we all need our moments of escape from the real world.
Delgado quotes Dr. Sigmund Freud who said, “People cannot survive with the little satisfaction they can steal from reality.”
Are You Playing a Fool’s Game?
But escapism becomes a problem when we start spending most of our time fantasizing, letting all the modern distractions completely take over our lives.
For when we are avoiding life, rather than facing it, we have, according to Dr. Delgado, “a problem in capital letters.” Because when we refuse to face reality, when we begin to avoid it at all costs, we are engaging in self-sabotage.
We are playing a fool’s game.
For most of my life, I was playing that game. Playing various fool’s games. And didn’t realize why I wasn’t winning. In fact, I couldn’t even seem to discover the rules. Much less even know what the game was called.
Hopping Around the Gameboard
So, I bounced around from gameboard to gameboard. Sometimes I was the like a rabbit hopping around the monopoly board. I ran around the board spending money like crazy. Until the money ran out and I was out of the game.
Other times I was the marble in Chinese checkers — and I was hopping around the board and never seemed to get all my marbles together where they should be.
Then I was the checker in the checkerboard who was knocked out of the game before the game really got started. For nobody ‘kinged’ me.
So, all this chaotic game playing left me exhausted. Frustrated.
And even more harebrained than ever. Until …
The Ins and Outs of the Rabbit Hole
One day I realized I had unwittingly jumped into a rabbit hole a long time ago … and had been hopping around in the dark all this time.
So, no one could see me to help me. And I couldn’t see anything, much less see any offers of help that were available to me.
It took a long time for me to finally get the courage to leap out of that dark rabbit hole of isolation. But when I did, I found people who really cared.
For I saw things in a totally different light.
Three Steps to Freedom
If you’ve discovered that you too have fallen in a rabbit hole, Delgado says there are three steps you can take to stop the cycle of escapism.
1. The first step to freedom is to become aware that you are seeking to escape.
In other words, you have to recognize that you are in that rabbit hole because you are trying to escape. Delgado says that even though everyone needs to escape sometimes, it’s not healthy to make it your sole occupation.
The day I finally became aware of my escapism was thee first day of a new journey for me. It was the first day of adventure, the first step away from all the terror I had known.
For I finally saw my scared inner rabbit and became aware of the hare-brained idea I had to escape anytime I felt uncomfortable and frightened.
2. The second step is to become aware of exactly what you are trying to escape from. You start by experiencing your feelings instead of running away from them. You start by facing your fears, anxieties, and terrors.
And you begin asking yourself questions like “why do I feel the need to run away? What would happen if I didn’t run? What would it feel like if I just said to heck with being scared and I faced this?”
When I finally faced those hare-y ideas, I discovered that I was scared about facing things all by myself. That I was also scared about being in a relationship because I couldn’t control what other people did. I’d found I couldn’t control my parents’ fighting. I couldn’t control my husband’s drinking. I couldn’t even control myself.
3. The third step is to actively seek solutions to the problems that you are trying so hard to avoid or forget. This step is often the hardest. For if you’ve felt so helpless that you’ve hopped into a rabbit hole in the first place, you may feel it’s impossible to change anything.
But when you finally stop hiding and step out of that rabbit hole, you begin to see things in the world from the view of daylight. You see things you’ve never seen before.
If You’re Stuck in that Rabbit Hole
Yet you could still be afraid. You could be stuck in that rabbit hole because it’s especially hard to change yourself. And that’s the point when you need to seek professional help. Or seek help from others who are going through the same thing.
Instead of going through it alone, you can find other people to lean on.
If you can’t afford professional help, you can seek out those who have also experienced that rabbit hole … by joining 12 step recovery programs in your neighborhood.
You can also start writing, start journaling through your problem, like I did. For writing about my problems helped me finally realize it’s possible to see yourself through the eyes of that peaceful neighborhood bunny instead of that scared hare.
The Writer’s Escape
Many people conquer their escapist tendencies by indulging in the fantasy escape called writing. Thus, you benefit from those all those hare-brained ideas instead of merely running away. Instead, you find are running towards the possibility of learning about yourself and others.
Writing can help you begin to face your problems instead of creating even more problems. Writing can take you to where you eventually may even find yourself hopping along happily on the path of purpose because of insights never-before garnered from your imagination’s noblest guidance. Guidance that moves you towards intentional new growth and progress.
Still Stuck?
But if you’re still stuck and feel powerless about ever being able to cope with the world’s complexities enough to climb out of that rabbit hole, please seek professional help.
You can read Dr. Delgado’s article Escapism: The art of creating problems by running away from problems at https://psychology-spot.com/