Escaping Emptiness into Addiction

We numb ourselves with distractions and addiction to avoid unbearable feelings that accompany psychological emptiness, but we make it worse. Our inability to bear self-alienation and shame causes inner instability, restlessness, and anxiety. Inadequate love, empathy, and need satisfaction in childhood leaves a traumatic disappointment of ever getting our needs met . This hopeless despair that is usually unconscious creates a hunger and dependency on someone or something to help perform certain internal functions that otherwise would have developed normally. So, we turn to an external source, which may be a leader, another person, violence, or an addiction [11].

Externalization and Addiction

Addiction, whether to a substance, process, or person, is fundamentally an escape from the real self, independence, and self-expression [23]. This may include dependence on food, exercise, shopping, work, sex, thrill-seeking, or other distraction. Driven by an insatiable need for comfort, validation, attention, and understanding, our behavior can become compulsive. To observers, we may seem greedy, controlling, and indiscriminate. However, because we’re disconnected from our inner source of vitality, our attempts to find fulfillment can lead to self-sacrifice, further discontentment, and depression. This is particularly true of narcissists, who need constant validation to avoid their emptiness. They have an “intense form of object hunger” [28]; also referred to as “intense stimulus hunger” [29].

Eating Disorders

Emptiness is often associated with eating disorders. But it’s more than an empty gut. One woman explained that her binging filled her emptiness and the “deficiency” in her life [30]. Bulimia and anorexia are thought to be caused in part by spiritual emptiness or “hunger of the soul” in women who lack connection to themselves and others. Their primary relationship is with food, which affords them “an illusion of control and their authentic connection to self, others as well as a higher being, diminish” [31].

In describing her struggle with an eating disorder, Sandy Richardson calls her encompassing emptiness “soul hunger,” which continued on its “vicious, gnawing path” no matter how much she ate [32].

My eating disorder kept me safe. If I was just thin enough, pretty enough, maybe no one would look behind and see what a shameful, bad person I really was. The mask got heavier and heavier until I nearly collapsed under the strain of maintaining the lie. Once in treatment for my eating disorder, I discovered that dieting, food and weight were not the issue. I was trying to fill a void that food could not possibly touch — a soul hunger [32].

Codependency

Codependents addicted to love, relationships, and romance focus on people to provide motivation, meaning, and companion-ship. Their relationships frequently involve drama and emotionality, enlivening them to escape their self-alienation. Stable partners seem boring in contrast to addicts, unavailable partners, excitement, conflict, or dysfunctional work environments. Some codependents endure long, abusive relationships, living from one crisis to the next in constant trauma. After many years, they whither into empty shells, devoid of any emotion or sense of themselves. They’re neither alive nor dead but have frozen their feelings to avoid the pain of their marriages.

Loneliness and Anxiety

However, seeking relief from emptiness through distraction, addiction, and externalization provides only a temporary solution and further alienates us from ourselves. When the passion or the addictive high wanes, we become disappointed, and loneliness, emptiness, and depression return. Partnerships formed primarily to reduce loneliness may bring together two lonely people who remain lonely. Forty percent of spouses report feeling lonely sometimes or often [33]. Couples may experience emptiness even when they’re lying in bed next to one another while longing for a passionate, vibrant relationship.

Anxiety and emptiness intensify when we’re alone or stop trying to help, pursue, or change someone else. If we’re rejected or an addictive relationship ends, inner states triggered by loss of the attachment can be so unbearable that some people rather cling to an abusive partner. Letting go and accepting our powerlessness over others can evoke the same desperation and emptiness that addicts experience during withdrawal.

Switching Addictions

Hence, it’s common to switch addictions. Codependents may replace their preoccupation with a person with compulsive eating, working, drinking, or another compulsive activity. Similarly, when addicts build-up tolerance or stop one addiction, like Edward described below, they often add to it or replace it with another addictive behavior. Nothing satisfies what has become a biochemical need. They may go from drinking to gambling to sex addiction until they address the underlying problems of trauma, shame, and emptiness.

Hemmingway [34] poignantly described how his hunger persisted after he had enjoyed a wonderful meal, and that “the feeling that had been like hunger” continued on the way home, and even after he and his wife made love “. . . it was there. When I woke with the windows open and the moonlight on the roofs of the tall houses, it was there” (p. 48). Nothing could satisfy him. Later, he gave up gambling on the races, and then he understood that his emptiness couldn’t be filled by anything, whether bad or good. “But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better (p. 52).

Edward, a recovering alcoholic, wanted to leave his emotion-ally dull marriage to be with his mistress in another city. He periodically struggled with sobriety and was grateful that his new relationship helped him maintain it. During their separations, he described his yearning for her as a restless hunger. He desperately ached to be with her, despite his self-loathing about needing her and any suffering his affair might cause his family. As painful as his longing was, the buried emptiness and shame were worse. He thought he was a wretched failure, yet only felt “himself” with her. Gradually, he realized that his addiction to sex and romance was repeating the same pattern he had of escaping his anguish with alcohol, and that all his attempts to fill his emptiness had only caused more misery and shame. He’d been trying to be rid of his vile self and the dreaded void — but of course, that was impossible.

This is the fifth installment of several that examine perspectives on emptiness. Next up is “Facing the Void”. Stay tuned for strategies to deal with emptiness. Check footnote references and read the entire original article.

© 2019 Darlene Lancer