The Way Home

We eventually discover that we cannot run or hide from ourselves or our feelings. However, support is essential to endure our confusion and depression long enough to permit real change, especially where there has been childhood trauma―when the “no-thing” space becomes a horrifying black hole.

Existentialist Paul Tillich recognized that it takes courage to be oneself and “resist the radical threat of nonbeing” [41]. Beyond escaping and hiding, we must discover and express our real self and pursue self-determined goals. Sartre considered people-pleasing or living a role to meet others’ expectations to be inauthentic and in “bad faith.” To provide meaning to our lives in an otherwise senseless universe, his solution was to assume responsibility, live authentically, and become one’s essential self by “choosing one’s self.” The existentialists encouraged individual decision-making and determination of values that require us to go out on a limb and not be enslaved by social pressure, internal should’s, or fear of abandonment. Similarly, 12-Step programs urge action and personal accountability — living a moral life, taking daily inventory, and making amends.

In writing about food addiction, Geneen Roth [30] suggests a cognitive approach by challenging fear and emptiness with questions like: Where is this emptiness or abyss? Is there a hole inside of you? Would you actually fall into it if you stopped trying, running, or resisting? What might happen? Aren’t you still sitting in your chair? Still breathing, thinking? This creates objectivity, distancing us from our feelings.

Meditation can also create space for our feelings, cravings, and our urge to flee. Thai Buddhist teacher Ajahn Cha simply instructs [42]:

Put a chair in the middle of a room.

Sit in the chair.

See who comes to visit.

Westerners find it difficult do nothing, because the “visitors” are usually anxiety, shame, distress, or sleepiness, which, if not genuine fatigue, may itself be a defense mechanism. Nevertheless, be still―even if your mind isn’t, and welcome these visitors. Begin by observing but not identifying with them. Notice how thoughts, feelings, and images change and dissipate by themselves, because they’re merely empty mental constructs. So is the observing “I.”

Krishnamurti [37] taught that because we’re not separate from our emptiness and loneliness, they can only be understood, never escaped or overcome―except temporarily. “I” can observe but cannot act to change them. He advocated loving difficult feelings of loneliness, emptiness, and sorrow by bringing intimate, one-pointed attention―to be in direct communion with suffering without preconceived notions or objections, which turns suffering into love (p. 96). When we remove all barriers to being one with our experience, including thinking about it, the split between observing and experiencing disappears, and fear, loneliness, emptiness, and sorrow dissolve. In this way, emptiness and loneliness can be the doorway to a state of aloneness and contentment. By embracing our pain, we connect with our real self and feel integrated. In place of isolation and emptiness, we experience fullness. Our mind is still, feels no insufficiency, and is no longer seeking; it’s creative and independent, neither resisting, reacting, nor searching for happiness or something outside itself (p. 127).

Calming the mind through deep relaxation or meditation in order to become more present and feel into difficult states, even momentarily, creates a positive shift. Going deeper to uncover erroneous beliefs and emotional wounds provides healing. By following internal sensations and trauma that live in the body, we can transmute feelings into something else. This may resurrect memories of prior ordeals and release constricted emotion and energy to allow greater courage, vitality, and creativity to be devoted to the present.

For Mooji [10] emptiness and joy are synonymous. One patient who was severely ashamed of her appearance fell into a shame spiral [25] of hopelessness and emptiness during a therapy session. We tracked her visceral sensations and accompanying symbolic imagery, which she associated with her place in the family and her mother’s persistent shaming. The imagery evolved into a metaphoric liberation from her role in the family and the constant negative messages she received both from her mother and her own self. Over about 15 minutes, her suffering transformed into perceptions of bliss and inner light. This experience had a lasting effect that changed her self-concept and freed her restricted energy. It gave her the courage to return to graduate school and pursue the career she truly wanted.

It’s important to detoxify, understand, and integrate painful emotional states and not drown in them in a manner that reinforces internalized shame. Being alone for months with despair, shame, loneliness, and emptiness that spiral into hopelessness and depression isn’t helpful. It’s often a repetition of childhood trauma when no one provided comfort and nurturance.

Psychotherapy provides a method for approaching these states gradually in a secure environment. This is especially important for people with emotional dysregulation or who are newly recovering from long-term addiction. A non-judgmental, experienced therapist or spiritual guide can provide a secure holding space and artfully help to examine painful memories, integrate difficult or overwhelming emotions, and challenge and recast faulty beliefs that accompany states of severe shame and emptiness.

Conclusion

Although a variety of ego states and experiences are described as emptiness, only psychological emptiness is linked to depression. It’s predominantly attributable to deficits in early parenting that lead to self-alienation (Horney), abandonment depression (Masterson), a depleted self (Kohut), false self (Winnicott), and codependency (Lancer). The void not filled by a nurturing parent creates a gap from the authentic self that is later filled with shame, anxiety, depression, and often codependency and addiction as a means to cope with emptiness.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy, psychoanalysis, and other approaches are used to treat depression, shame, and emptiness. One technique to address both transient existential and psychological emptiness is to merge with the experience. Existentialists also emphasize living an authentic life, which is the path supported by Twelve-Step programs.

This is the final of seven articles in “Becoming You” that examine perspectives on emptiness. Check footnotes and read the entire original article. An earlier, abridged version of this article first appeared in 2014 as “There’s a Hole in My Bucket.” In Lancer, D., Conquering Shame and Codependency: 8 Steps to Freeing the True You.

© 2019 Darlene Lancer