Over the course of the past several months, I’ve written about self-medication—medicating those uncomfortable feelings that arise in response to life’s challenges. One of the feelings that often arises in psychotherapy, especially in the treatment of depression, is the feeling of emptiness. However, when I ask clients to try to describe their experiences of emptiness, their responses often reflect very different feeling states: numbness, the feeling of being overwhelmed, helplessness, paralysis. Indeed more often than not, the emptiness clients describe is not the absence of feeling. Rather, it is often quite the opposite: at its core, it is a painful hunger for emotional connection and nourishment. Emptiness signals a desire that has been subverted. Responses to emptiness, emotional hunger or deprivation can take many dysfunctional--even destructive--forms: addictions, compulsive behaviors (i.e., compulsive shopping or spending, gambling, compulsive sexual behaviors). Indeed, people with addiction often struggle with acute feelings of hungry emptiness—using substances or other compulsive behaviors to sate the hunger. Unfortunately, filling the emptiness with substances or compulsive behaviors usually fails because the substances (or compulsive behaviors) are poor substitutes for nourishing emotional connections. Indeed, there are never enough drugs (or alcohol, or sex, or money, or material goods) to satisfy the hunger.
The themes of emotional abundance and deprivation thread through psychotherapy sessions. Early family experiences with emotional deprivation reverberate throughout our lives, coloring our experiences of ourselves, our relationships, and the world. How our basic emotional needs were met (or not met) in early childhood form us and inform our beliefs about ourselves, our relationships, and our world. These beliefs are largely unconscious, but exert a powerfully out-sized influence on how we live. These unconscious dynamics inform the decisions we make for ourselves and drive a great deal of our behavior.
Moreover, the experience of deprivation brought about by prolonged confinements, profound losses, isolating illnesses, and other traumas magnifies the experiences of hungry emptiness, especially when the trauma puts you is in a position of having to actively suppress or repress your needs. When these experiences are coupled with earlier experiences of deprivation, the hunger--the need--can seem overwhelming.
One of the goals of therapeutic work is to identify and address unmet emotional needs--those gnawing hungers, the emptiness, the sense of deprivation. And as work on those issues progresses, other issues related to the theme of emotional deprivation emerge. Indeed, a question that will eventually arise: “what will be enough?” What emotional nourishment do I need that will ameliorate the pangs of hunger? How much emotional nourishment do I need? Will the nourishment I receive today be enough? Obviously, figuring out how to meet one’s emotional needs is also important, but the question of adequacy is one that also comes into focus.
Seeking emotional sustenance is really the whole of therapeutic work. And meaningful answers to these questions will vary from person to person and will probably emerge only over a long period of time.
It seems reasonable to start with the here-and-now. What can I do to meet my needs today? What will it look like to have my emotional needs met? How will it feel to have my needs met? To whom do I turn to meet my needs? Who do I trust with my needs? How can I meet my needs without engaging in an addictive or compulsive behavior, without getting hurt or without being betrayed? How can I manage when my needs are not met?
However at some point, the therapeutic work must turn to the past, looking at the origins of the addictive/compulsive behaviors and the feelings of emptiness/hunger that drive them. Approaching the search for origins with curiosity with a therapist can yield surprising insights, lead to the ability to accept your emotional needs, and even find new ways of addressing and satisfying them. Indeed, the connections made in therapy with the therapist and with yourself may open paths on to new connections that sate those hungers.