What is the shape of missing things in your life?

Emotional Regulation & Nervous System • December 22, 2019

Depth therapy is a form of counseling that moves beyond surface-level problems to explore the hidden feelings, unconscious patterns, and soul-longings beneath your everyday experience. It is not quick-fix advice or simple problem-solving; it’s a courageous dive into the parts of yourself that have been pushed aside or ignored. This matters to you because the ‘shape-shaped’ gaps you feel aren’t always clear or logical—they live in the subtle, often unspoken parts of your inner world. Depth therapy offers a way to sit with your complexity, to listen to what your soul is trying to say, and to find a language for your missing pieces that feels real and true. It’s an invitation to engage fully with your whole self, not just the parts that function well on the outside.

• You may be carrying a subtle but persistent sense of something missing in your life, a ‘shape-shaped’ absence—like a mandolin-shaped hole—that no achievement or external success has quite filled.
• That missing shape often points to deeper relational trauma or unmet soul needs that show up as creative, bodily, or relational voids, signaling what your inner self truly longs for but hasn’t yet been named.
• Understanding and healing these gaps comes through depth therapy, where you explore your grief and longings with curiosity and compassion, allowing you to discover and integrate the soul’s missing pieces into your daily life.

There’s a woman I know who once told me, “It turns out I had a mandolin-shaped hole missing in my life.”

A few years ago, after some very tough times, she turned to the mandolin after flirting with the idea of playing it for some time. 

She bought this beautiful instrument, attended music lessons, went to music camps. And brought the mandolin very fully into her everyday life. 

She fell in love with the music and really, more than fell in love. It became an integral part of her life, part of her soul medicine, part of her daily joy.

1. She had a mandolin-shaped hole missing from her life, and she filled it.
2. What’s the shape of missing things in your life?
3. Does the shape of the missing thing from your life resemble peace, safety, rest?
4. Signs You May Be Carrying Relational Trauma
5. And if it does, I want you to consider that the physical object may represent something bigger, it may be a conduit to something more powerful and archetypal.
6. Why paying attention to our soul is so very important.
7. But I do think that soul has something to do with the rise in mental health-related tragedies we see unfolding before us.
8. How do we better get in touch with what our soul is longing for?
9. Discovering Your Soul’s Missing Pieces Through Depth Therapy
10. All of these can be clues to the shape of things missing from your life.

She had a mandolin-shaped hole missing from her life, and she filled it.

I share this with you because, with only 10 days left in the calendar year and in this decade of the 2010’s, I’ve been reflecting on her and her mandolin, on the joy she now has from having filled that particular hole in her life, and what this may mean for me, for my loved ones, and for my clients. 

I wonder what it would feel like if, in 2020, we got more curious about the shape of things missing from our lives and made movements toward them and what the impact on our souls might be. 

If you’d like to join me in being curious about the shape of things missing from your own life, what your soul is longing for, please join me in today’s post where I elaborate on this and provide some gentle prompts to help you inquire about this alongside me. 

What’s the shape of missing things in your life?

“When you recover or discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life.” – Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD

Let me ask you: what’s the shape of missing things in your life?

Is it a mandolin-shaped hole? A potluck-around-the-kitchen-table shaped hole? A passport-shaped hole?

It is a missing piece the size of a cozy cottage to call home? 

Is it the exact dimensions of a rising and falling chest on the other half of the bed?

Is it one big hole? Or several little holes? 

Or – and this is important – are there pieces, perhaps, to be removed? Ways in which you need to actually make more holes in your life.

Does the shape of the missing thing from your life resemble peace, safety, rest? 

And if it does, what other proverbial puzzle pieces might need to be removed to help you have that other thing?

Would it look like removing contact with someone or someones? 

Might it look like leaving a lucrative but soul-deadening career? 

Could it, would it, possibly look like leaving old parts of you behind – the part that’s so concerned with what other people think, the part of you that always thought you would be a lawyer?

Bear in mind that sometimes bringing the shape of missing things into our lives means a letting go of other pieces that are taking up that precious space.

Also, when I invite you to notice what the shape of missing things in your life might be, I want to be clear that I don’t necessarily mean physical objects, though the shape of something missing from your life may include something physical like the mandolin did for one woman.

And if it does, I want you to consider that the physical object may represent something bigger, it may be a conduit to something more powerful and archetypal.

For instance, the mandolin was a conduit to creativity, to growth and mastery for that woman I mentioned.

And perhaps that potluck-around-the-kitchen-table-shaped hole might be representative of a desire to feel more connected to others, to feel like part of a community in your urban jungle.

Consider that the tangible objects you feel compelled to bring into your life may be a conduit to something so much bigger.

And one more idea I want you to consider: sometimes the shape of a missing thing in our life is already there; we just need to bring it forth and forward, more centered and prominent into the puzzle of our life.

I’ll tell you: I have a passport-shaped hole in my life. And a toddler-Buddha-belly-shaped hole.

Meaning, I have both of these things already in my life, but I want more time with them.

More time losing myself in kissing the sweet plump swell of my daughter’s toddler Buddha belly, of planning and embarking on international trips and feeling the thrill of being a stranger in a strange land.

I’ll be making more room for both of these things in 2020 because I know that’s what my soul is most longing for in the new year.

Why paying attention to our soul is so very important.

“I’ll tell you right now, the doors to the world of the wild self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door; if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much that you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.” – Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D.

So as the year and decade end, as the new one begins, instead of resolutions, I want to invite noticing.

Noticing around the shape of missing things in your life.

Which also means noticing around your longings, around what your soul is craving.

So often (if not always in some environments) we leave soul out of daily conversation.

It’s too California-woo, it’s too soft, it’s not empirical, data-backed or able to be measured by neuroimaging (at least not yet).

And yet, one thing I’ve been thinking about lately is the latest CDC research about the heartbreaking, tripling rates of suicides in children ages 10-14 in the last 12 years.

As a mother and as a therapist, this makes me so sad to contemplate.

What does soul have to do with rising suicide rates among our young people?

What does soul have to do with escalations of school shootings, domestic violence charges, increased rates of anxiety and depression?

It’s too simplistic to say that soul has everything to do with these tragedies when destructive, deeply entrenched systemic social structures and forces co-create the circumstances in which these things have the opportunity to occur.

But I do think that soul has something to do with the rise in mental health-related tragedies we see unfolding before us.

If we continue to leave soul out of the conversation about mental health, if we continue to focus only on prescribing medication without tending to the parts of us that are crying out for more – more connection, more creativity, more nourishment in various forms – we’re having half of the conversation. We’re solving half of the problem.

This is why, when I invite you to notice the shape of things missing from your life, I want to invite the question, too, of what your soul is most deeply longing for in order to feel nourished and good in this coming year and decade.

It may not solve everything to feed your soul; but it can likely help you at some level.

In my personal and professional lives, I’ve never once seen a prioritizing of soul nourishment be detrimental to someone’s mental health.

On the contrary, I’ve only ever seen the opposite.

So please, as we slide into the new year, into the new decade, as you fee compelled and possibly pressured by all those sneaky Instagram ads for weight loss coaching programs, better shapewear, the perfect leather loafer, and the critical everyday black work trouser, use each ad or resolution you feel internally driven to make as a kind of mindfulness bell to ask yourself, “will doing this, getting this, going after this, nourish my soul? If not, what will?”

How do we better get in touch with what our soul is longing for?

“Once we get used to listening to our dreams, our whole body responds like a musical instrument.” – Marion Woodman, Ph.D.

Some of my favorite ways to get in touch with what my soul is actually longing for (versus what my mind tells me I should prioritize) is:

• Paying attention to where my mind wanders when folding laundry;
• Keeping track of the recurrent imaginal scenes that bubble up in my mind;
• Reflecting on what my 8, 10, 12 and 16-year old selves really loved;
• Analyzing my own dreams;
• Asking my husband and friends to reflect back to me what I kept repeating I wanted across the past year;
• Seeing what my biggest pain points are – sometimes the root of what my soul is longing for is in that pain;
• Paying attention to what feels like it’s pulling me versus what I’m pushing myself towards;
• Noticing where and how my body feels best and my heart feels happiest;
• Allowing myself to daydream and following the threads of my daydreams.

Both/And: Naming What’s Missing Without Dismissing What’s Already Here

There’s a particular kind of guilt that can come with this inquiry. I hear it constantly from the driven, ambitious women I work with: Who am I to want more? Look at everything I have. Other people have so much less.

This is where the both/and matters enormously. You can be genuinely grateful for everything in your life and feel the ache of something missing. You can love your work, your partner, your children and still feel a specific absence that none of those things quite fills. Gratitude and longing are not opposites. They can coexist without one canceling the other out.

The grief of unmet soul longings is real. It doesn’t mean you’re ungrateful or selfish or impossible to satisfy. It means you’re paying attention. And paying attention to what your soul needs is one of the most generative things you can do — not just for yourself, but for everyone whose life you touch.

Nadia, a 44-year-old executive I worked with, had spent years dismissing her longing for creative expression as frivolous. She was a partner at a major consulting firm. She had a beautiful home, a loving marriage, two kids she adored. What was there to want? And yet she found herself crying, unexpectedly, at a street musician’s performance every time she passed one on her lunch break.

When we got curious about it together, we traced it to a girl who had loved to draw, who had been steered very firmly toward “practical” pursuits at a young age, and who had learned to treat her artistic impulses as something to be managed rather than honored. The mandolin-shaped hole in her life wasn’t frivolous. It was a doorway to a part of herself she’d left behind.

The both/and in Nadia’s case: she could be proud of what she’d built and mourn what she’d set aside to build it. She didn’t have to choose one truth over the other. She just had to let herself feel them both — and then get curious about what, practically speaking, she could begin to reclaim.

The Systemic Lens: Why So Many Driven Women Have Shape-Shaped Holes

It’s worth asking not just what’s missing but why so many of us are missing things. Because the epidemic of driven women feeling quietly hollow inside their impressive lives isn’t accidental. It’s systemic.

We raise girls — especially girls who are praised for achievement — to prioritize what can be seen, measured, and rewarded externally. Academic performance, professional advancement, social legibility. The inner world — creativity, spirituality, bodily pleasure, rest, play — gets classified as soft, indulgent, unprofessional, or just not quite important enough to protect.

And for women who grew up in homes where emotional neglect was present — where attunement to inner states wasn’t modeled or prioritized — the disconnection from soul longing runs even deeper. When no one around you was curious about what you felt or needed internally, you learned not to be curious either. You learned to look outward for direction rather than inward.

Gabor Maté, MD, physician and trauma researcher, author of The Myth of Normal, writes about how modern Western culture systematically suppresses the kind of internal listening that would allow people to know what they actually need. The relentless productivity imperative, the devaluation of rest and creativity, the emphasis on doing over being — these aren’t just personal preferences. They’re structural forces that make it harder to hear what your soul is trying to say.

Understanding this doesn’t mean throwing up your hands. It means knowing that the missing thing you’re searching for isn’t evidence of a character defect — it’s evidence that you’re human, and that some part of being human has been systematically undervalued in the culture you inhabit. Reclaiming it is both a personal act and, in some small way, a cultural one.

If you’re finding it difficult to even identify what’s missing — if the inner landscape feels foggy or inaccessible — that’s worth exploring with a therapist trained in depth-oriented, trauma-informed work. Sometimes we need a witness to help us hear what we’ve been trained not to listen for.

Discovering Your Soul’s Missing Pieces Through Depth Therapy

When you arrive in therapy feeling inexplicably empty despite checking all life’s boxes, your therapist helps you explore not what you think you should want but what your soul genuinely craves. Together, you investigate the “shape of missing things”—those soul-sized holes that no amount of achievement or acquisition can fill.

Your therapist guides you in distinguishing between mind-driven goals and soul-pulled longings, helping you notice that using your nighttime dreams to help clarify your new year’s goals often reveals desires your conscious mind dismisses as impractical or frivolous. Dreams, recurring imaginal scenes, and childhood passions all contain clues about what your soul needs for genuine nourishment.

This work often reveals that filling what’s missing requires creating space first. Your therapist supports you in recognizing which pieces need removal—the soul-deadening career, the identity that no longer fits, the relationships that drain rather than feed you. This letting go isn’t loss but preparation for what wants to emerge.

Through depth-oriented therapy, you learn that soul longings aren’t “California-woo” but essential data about your psychological wellbeing. When rising rates of anxiety, depression, and despair suggest something fundamental is missing from how we approach mental health, attending to soul becomes not luxury but necessity.

Your therapist helps you track where your mind wanders during mundane tasks, what pulls rather than pushes you, where your body feels most at ease. These become breadcrumbs leading to authentic desire rather than manufactured ambition.

Most importantly, you discover that sometimes what’s missing isn’t absent but merely needs more prominence—more time with your child’s Buddha belly, more creative expression, more moments of being a stranger in a strange land. The work becomes not about acquiring but about prioritizing what already calls to your soul.

All of these can be clues to the shape of things missing from your life.

So tell me, in 2020, what is the shape of things missing from your own life, and what might you consider doing to fold those things into your day to day?

The mandolin-shaped hole is real. The grief it carries is real. And the longing beneath the longing — that persistent signal that something essential hasn’t yet been given space — is your soul asking to be listened to. That’s not a problem to fix. It’s an invitation to get curious.

Leave a comment below. I’d love to hear from you and to know what you will be doing to nourish your soul.

Here’s to healing relational trauma and creating thriving lives on solid foundations.

Warmly,

Annie

“Practice listening to your intuition, your inner voice; ask questions; be curious; see what you see; hear what you hear; and then act upon what you know to be true. These intuitive powers were given to your soul at birth.” – Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D.

Related Reading

• What does it mean to be an ambitious, upwardly mobile woman from a relational trauma background?
• Attachment Trauma: How Early Relationships Shape Your Adult Connections
• Trauma and Relationships: When Your Professional Strengths Become Your Relationship Blindspots

Medical Disclaimer

Medical Disclaimer