Filling the viod

i'm not sure where to post this but i think this is the right place.

i feel like i have this huge hole inside me and i cant find anything to fill it. shopping is a temporary fix that only leads to more problems. and thats the only thing i can think of that has helped some. does anyone else feel this way and what do you do about it?

Hi, Stacy; very common feeling I think!

Here's a link I like explaining a little about it, where it comes from, etc., and how it can be worked on:

http://www.toddlertime.com/dx/borderline/when.htm

Yes, I fill a chronic emptiness. It's an awful thing; sometimes I will just wander around the house, so restless because of it. In the past and present, I have engaged in many behaviors to try to fill this emptiness-- sex, shopping, cutting, etc. Some of the behaviors I stopped engaging in; other is still engage in heavily. I *know* that none of these things will really feel the void...but emotionally, I just don't get it. The most frustrating thing is that I have passions and things that are important to me-- school, work, art, reading, writing, a husband... yet I never feel that this hole is filled.

Stacey, I wonder if its not more that fact that we need to "FEEL the void" rather than FILL? I think for me, the emptyness was all the mourning I had split off for all the needs that had gone unmet? Nothing can FILL that because it doesn't need FILLING, but FEELING. theres a lot to be said for finding someone that is willing to sit with you as you experience these FEELINGS and not try to buy you off.

Yes, I always related to the hollow chocolate Easter bunny.

Therapy for me is helping me fill up this emptiness, this nothingness that feels so bad and feels so hopeless. Therapy helps explore it to see what it's about and the process of therapy helps so much to relieve the hopelessness.

thanks. i wish i could say therapy was helping me but its not. nothing really seems to help it.

Perhaps these feeling that nothing helps is more about the past and your unmet needs? Recovery from BPD is a slow painful process.

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Mouse_ said:
I think for me, the emptyness was all the mourning I had split off for all the needs that had gone unmet? Nothing can FILL that because it doesn't need FILLING, but FEELING. theres a lot to be said for finding someone that is willing to sit with you as you experience these FEELINGS and not try to buy you off.

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Hello Mouse,

you have wonderfully expressed how I think about this. Thank you!

It cannot be filled, everyone who knows this void, knows that, too. So it seems the wrong way to further try to fill what can't be filled.

If I learned one thing here, it was that shopping, stimulants of various kinds, entertainment, becoming addict to something, self-hurting and self-damaging - that all this was and is useless. The lesson out of it was to me that I can stop trying it this way.

Obviously it is not emptiness what causes unhappiness, discomfort, tension and restlessness. I find this lesson precious.

Emptiness is (only) a good picture, a good symbol. It fits to describe this vage feeling of hunger, yearning, needing. The question remains, what the need really is about. Filling seems to me a kind of flight or a kind of looking away from what really wants to be looked at. Finding the answer is what is wanted, I guess. And that is something noone and nothing else can do for us.

I found it helpful to meditate over my pains and bad feelings, to go after them, to see where they led me. Pain is often there, where attention is needed, where something needs to be fixed so that it can heal.

One of my coaching friends advised me always to go where it hurts, since there would be the roots. And she was right. I proved that many times since then, and I could not disprove it yet.

More of the good times wishes
bluna