Empty Inside - Grasshopper

I’ve come to believe that most, if not all, addictions stem from a feeling of emptiness inside.

Although all the evidence I‘ve acquired is anecdotal, it nonetheless points in the same direction: Empty.

Most of us experienced this emptiness in our teens. We deemed we weren’t enough. We weren’t smart enough, pretty enough, strong enough, and a bunch of other “not enoughs.” That produced empty feelings inside of us.

To address it, we looked for things to take it away. Young girls would wear tons of make-up. Young men would start to smoke to look “cool,” or start lifting weights to be like the ripped guys in the movies. Then many sampled alcohol or drugs. The attempt was to be older, hipper, one of the gang, hotter, or hunkier, anything other than empty.

But no amount of body piercings could deflate that empty feeling for long, or could any tattoo cover over the meaninglessness we felt.

The good news is many of us survived that period of emptiness and went on to live our lives. But too many others carried the void forward and deemed the only way to get away from that feeling was to fill up on something.

Pick your addiction, alcohol, drugs, food, gambling, sex, video games, compulsive overspending, social media, thrill seeking, just to name a few. And none of them satisfy the emptiness inside.

Certainly get counseling if addiction applies to you. But your counselor surely will tell you at some point that you have to come to the realization that you’re enough.

How do find your way to enough?

I’m not sure there’s one answer, but here’s one worthy of your attention. Notice that your “not enoughness” comes from the thoughts in your head. Then do this: Engage your imagination and pretend that all those thoughts are in a container that you take out to sea. Then when you’re at a point where all you can see is water on every side, empty those thoughts overboard and watch them get swallowed up by the ocean. Then notice the feelings you now have inside. You’re no longer empty. You now experience the feeling of enough.

This is not a one time exercise. It’s kinda like home teeth whitening; it needs to be repeated often until the feeling of enough is second nature. The goal is to end your addiction to empty and witness your other addictions head out to sea.

With a little practice you’ll fill up on enough, enough of it to keep empty, empty.

All the best,