Have you ever felt this way? People looking at you from the outside assume all is good with your life, you smile, laugh, engage, and help, but on the inside you feel empty.
The world rarely recognizes it as suffering. If you are visibly falling apart, people may eventually notice that something is wrong. But if you are functioning well, if you are productive, successful, if people benefit from your overgiving, if your wound makes you useful to others, then the world often rewards the very pattern that is draining the life out of you.
The workaholic is praised for discipline. The emotionally unavailable achiever is praised for focus. The mother who erases herself is praised for sacrifice. The healer who cannot receive is praised for compassion. The person who never says no is praised for kindness. The creator who keeps producing while slowly losing contact with their own body is praised for consistency. And because praise feels better than rejection, the person may keep going for years without realizing that the applause is not healing the wound, but only decorating it.
I’ve already criticized achiever society in previous articles ( not enough) but still… Achievements can be dangerous as they can become a socially acceptable addiction. Some think of addiction as something obviously destructive: alcohol, drugs, gambling, compulsive sexuality, shopping, endless scrolling, or anything that pulls a person away from presence and into temporary relief. But work, success, helping others, and spiritual seeking can do the same thing. Even healing can become a way of escaping the pain underneath.
Why are we doing all this? Am I creating because I am alive, or because silence feels unbearable? Am I helping because I am called, or because being needed makes me feel temporarily worthy? Am I working because this is meaningful, or because rest would force me to feel the emptiness I keep outrunning?
Passion and compulsion have a slight difference. Passion can work hard, but it does not require self-abandonment. Passion can serve others, but it does not demand that you disappear or diminish yourself. It can build something meaningful, but it does not treat your body as an enemy or your worth as something that must be proven again every morning. Compulsion, on the other hant, is different. Compulsion says, “If I rest, I will feel worthless.” “If I am not useful, I may not be loved.” “If I do not achieve, I may have to face the fact that I do not know who I am without achievement.”
People who feel lost may have too many goals. They may have spent their entire life chasing goals, collecting proof, becoming better, refining their image, improving their body, improving their mind, their spiritual practice, business, parenting, relationship, content, or their value.
Constant self-improvement is the very thing that keeps us away from the self, since we keep believing we’re not enough, that we have to become better to finally be acceptable. And if we look for and try to get outside validation, it only works for a moment. Then the nervous system receives a small signal, thinking it’s ok, but soon it all fades away, and the old hunger returns. The person needs more proof, more praise, and more work. All of that happens because the thing they are trying to receive from the outside was never properly rooted on the inside.
No achievement can fully make you feel worthy, needed, and enough if it all arises from the wound. And in today’s world, many people are terrified of slowing down, as they will face the lack and emptiness inside, which makes them go look for approval in all the possible ways even if they don’t think about it too much.
All of that starts in our childhood. A child learns, sometimes without words, what earns love and what risks disconnection. Maybe love came when the child was good, quiet, helpful, smart, pretty, obedient, funny, successful, mature, or emotionally easy. Maybe attention came only when the child performed. While their mistakes were punished, anger was forbidden, sadness was too much, and needs were treated as burdens. The child then makes an intelligent adaptation: “I will become what keeps me connected.” The child becomes the version of themselves that the environment can tolerate.
Then adulthood arrives, and everyone calls that adaptation a personality. Being responsible, driven, caring, strong, never complaining, always working, being super spiritual or independent, or being mature beyond their years. But underneath the praised identity may be an abandoned child who never got to simply exist.
Growing through our wounds makes us perceptive because we have had to read the room. We become compassionate because we know pain. We become good at helping because we learned to manage emotions early. We become deep because surface life was never enough. We become spiritual because something in us needed a truth bigger than the family, culture, body, or the visible world.
It all changes when you start wondering which part of me is doing this? Am I creating from overflow or from deficiency? Am I working from passion or from fear? Am I helping from love or from the old belief that being needed is the only way to be safe? Am I building a life that expresses me, or am I building a monument to the self I had to become to survive?
The mind can justify anything. It can create noble reasons for self-abandonment, tell you a most amazing, believable story you’ll buy into. But the body will often tell the deeper truth.
Feeling pain in the body? Well it’s not just the tension in muscles, it’s psychosomatics and your body is speaking to you. Is there grounded tiredness after meaningful effort, or hollow exhaustion? Is there joy beneath the work, even when it is hard, or only pressure? Does your success make you more present with the people you love, or less available? Does your spiritual work open your heart, or does it help you avoid the pain in it?
If we get to disconnect from all the stories surrounding our lives, from pleasing people in every possible way, from looking normal, and we get to the quiet place with only ourselves.
And then return to the body, and honest desire. Return to anger where anger was forbidden. Anger is a good emotion since you can build boundaries and feel safe.
Return to grief where grief was postponed. Grieving, crying and feeling sad is ok, it’s your body letting go of all that you held in.
Return to play where life became duty. It’s ok to let yourself loose and enjoy life and Earthly pleasures — pizza, video games, beer, riding your bike. Whatever makes you happy. We’re so freaking busy trying to survive, be “hyper spiritual” and looking proper that we forget to live.
Return to rest where worth became labor. You are enough, you are amazing, you are worthy of everything, you are able and can do and achieve all you desire — I don’t care what your grandma, uncle Bob or Johny, or sister or whoever told you – YOU ARE AMAZING, WORTHY AND LOVED.
Return to the self that existed before acceptance had conditions. That childish version of you, full of wonder, resilience and being able to go for what you want, and expressing yourself however you want.
I see my kid, I see him crawling around and getting an obstacle in front of him. He’ll push, and roll over, and try to climb over and do everything to just get to his end goal. He can get disappointed or angry if it’s not happening. And I see that resilience, I see his efforts, I see him “fail” and try again, and “fail” and rest and try. And when there’s no emotion or story attached to it, telling him “You’re unable, you’re not good enough, you’re a failure, you can’t do it.” nothing stops him. He’ll crawl to me and make me pick him up and move him to where he wants to go.
And I find it amazing. The ability to get what you want, to express yourself to be you, to try and fail, and do it again until you achieve it. With no background story or phrases from anyone. Just you. It’s such a good reminder that if we shut off all the background voices, all the stories we heard about ourselves and repeated and told ourselves like a broken record, we’d be pure. There’s no story or identity telling you you’re not enough, not worthy, bad, guilty etc. There’s simply you and your desire.
Sure, we need to use our brains properly, but by trying to adapt and please everyone, we abandon ourselves. And then we feel empty.
So I want to encourage you and remind you if you need it.
YOU ARE WORTHY.
YOU ARE ENOUGH.
And while my words might be meaningless, I look at my viewers and clients trying to please their parents or not living to their fullest potential because momma, grandma, Sam or Jane said something to them. And they live 20-30-40 years of their lives, limiting themselves, and not allowing the bare chance to even try.
But you can. Just shut up the background noise and listen to your own needs. Love yourself without trying to achieve something and prove that you’re doing enough and that you should be noticed for those efforts and appreciated.
You might not ever be able to please anyone and they do not matter. This life is about you.
What do you want? Can you do something to please your own needs?
Can you love yourself?