I read a short story last week that was about emptiness and love and in that funny thing that
happens sometimes three different people wrote to me within about a 24-hour period about emptiness
and love and I think a lot of us are thinking about those things right now there's this harsh
empty loveless feeling that keeps swooping into consciousness just for a sec during this
quarantine period of our lives but it's sounding the alarm that something huge might be missing
from our lives and like this one woman said I know you think I'm crazy for holding on to the
hope that some big love is gonna come into my life and save me well a lot of people might say
yeah that's crazy and they'd have some platitude about loving yourself or something but I won't I'm
an ER uncle also known as the crappy childhood fairy and I teach people how to heal from the
effects of trauma during childhood and one of the harshest effects of early trauma is the injury to
our ability to connect with other people it's like a chronic feeling that love can't get in
or a scared reaction when love does show up or a set of Defense's that block love from ever showing
up at all and as hard as it is to be staying at home right now with all the fears about money
and safety and the future that this triggers we we actually have an incredible opportunity
at the moment to go ahead and I can't believe I'm saying this experience that empty feeling
and I mean normally there's a lot to distract us from it whatever it was for you shopping
vacation plans work goals dating apps we meds money whatever made you feel like happiness was
just around the corner for you but with all those distractions diminished right now what
we're left with is all the crap that was under the rug everything we put there what all these
letters I'm getting are about that emptiness we're feeling the instinctive knowledge that we
are incomplete in a tragic way because we haven't fully experienced love now nothing could be more
important by the way just in case you're still beating yourself up and calling yourself crazy
I know I'm always saying how critical it is to face reality to not get stuck in blame and
fantasy that completely gives away the control of your own happiness because that's fatal to
your progress but real love is not a fantasy the fact that you long for it is natural and right
and needs to be listened to and that's why I'm saying that the emptiness you feel during this
lockdown is trying to tell you something it's a gift we all need the courage to accept this
gift which means facing that emptiness for now and letting the tears come if you have to and
letting the awareness come to that you've been suppressing about the nature of your loneliness
not so much where it came from we know that but why really is it happening now and what would
it take to free yourself to change and heal so that you could in increasing ways open yourself
to love and with childhood PTSD it's so common to feel especially after an experience of loss
like we're outside of love like other people are in this world of goodness but we're stuck
outside the gates like orphans but remember you can't be exiled from your own experience alone
is always where we start but our healing from all the false ideas that trauma taught us can bring us
forward into being inside in love inside it and by that I mean feeling it sharing it knowing it
having the highest experience of it that people can have at least for a little bit in your life
it's that full experience of love that everyone is longing for and it's not really a thing you do
or you that you get it's a state of consciousness that you go into and I think this is why it feels
like a walled city when you're on the outside of it trauma or no trauma it can be hard to come in
from that place but it's the place to aim and it's worth fighting for so I think before too
long this lockdown will end and I don't know about you but I want to face everything that isolation
has been teaching me because I have so much I want to learn and become and normally I'm making videos
and programs about practical changes to make life full right and I've got a bunch of new videos and
a new program lined up and that's coming out soon but today while this worldwide isolation
is still weighing heavily on us I wanted to make this one special video about not the fullness of
life but the emptiness especially now when so many people are feeling like it's too much to
bear and they want to escape it or control it somehow but what if you just let it happen with
all the dignity within yourself and the safety of knowing that the isolation is going to pass and
the distractions will return with full force very soon and you can hide in them if you want but what
if just for today you just faced it this emptiness this space in you or childhood trauma stole your
natural ability bility your instinctive knowledge of how to love and even though you've created a
lot of good in your life it drove you toward the sorrow and the regrets that are hunting you right
now I have great news there's still time and this is what I wanted to say to the people who wrote me
and I want to shine a light on a few myths that need to be set straight so that even as we take
practical common-sense steps to heal our lives we aim not at being just commendable or reasonable or
appropriate but at being fulfilled and at reaching the place that we're longing for that we were
born to find okay so first is real love is not a transaction and it can't be negotiated or demanded
of anyone what you didn't get as a child is gone and it can't be replaced by humans but real love
is still here and what shows up in your life is a gift to you from something far more powerful than
yourself and the reason this longing for love won't go away is because you're made for it and
the reason it's so liberating when it happens is because for once you don't have to be a genius
and work hard and make something happen it just arrives in our hearts one day as naturally as
hunger or sleep but it's not cyclical like that it's a transition a maturation something more
like puberty really and it takes over and you change whether you want to or not but it's not
coming merely from the body and we don't seem to be able to choose whether it begins we can choose
a lot of things including many forms of love like duty and service and being part of a family and
taking care of other people and those can go a long way toward healing that emptiness but
that big love that's signaling itself through the emptiness you feel is not something that you can
make happen it's more like it's making something happen through you and they're good things even
though it can make things pretty messy but good things that ultimately benefit you and the other
person and perhaps everyone now you can screw it up definitely you can distort it and try to
turn it back into some kind of negotiation or get obsessed on it or destroy it even because
everything good in life can be abused and if you have childhood PTSD you've already absorbed way
more than your share of that but you can't remove real love out of existence so long as
it's flowing through you it may be inconvenient or terrifying but when it's happening even with
all the emotional overreactions of see PTSD all you can really do is your best and you just try
to be honorable you don't be a jerk you don't act like an entitled little baby or you don't
pull emotional blackmail moves right we just have to do our best even when we don't know where it's
going even if it usually turns out that you don't get what you would have wanted there's a way to go
through it that deepens you and makes you stronger you've been conscripted into the greatest project
of all time which is to bring more love into the world and there is no greater good so let yourself
be part of it second I say this to a lot of women and man I've coached you get to want love to turn
out the way you want it to turn out now just because everything in your life so far was a
disappointment doesn't mean you can protect your heart by setting your sights way low down here if
you're going to struggle with love struggle for what you really want and you want the real thing
trust me the real thing when I ask people what they really want and they say oh a life partner
or they say a long-term relationship or companion or they talk about getting needs met and things
like that don't set your aim at what you think you'll likely have to settle for set your aim for
what you want and what you want is the one you'll have plenty of chances later to lose that person
or to never find them or to settle for number two or three or four there's no guarantees here but
I'm telling you get clear what you really want and wear it with pride don't act cool about it
don't crap fit you know that word I have a whole video about it you get so good at fitting yourself
to crap when you're a kid that you you can't stop you take a crappy person or a situation
and in your mind you make it okay you think oh I can make this work don't make it work don't try
to hedge your bets and pretend you're okay with whatever or you're gonna get whatever you've been
getting whatever all of your life and that empty space inside of you it's made of whatever okay the
only version of you that anyone's going to fall in love with with real love is the real you and
if your childhood PTSD is mucking that up with a lot of defenses and fear and anger and grab eNOS
than healing is very likely going to be a very big asset for you and you might need to heal first a
little bit and in that case you are exactly on the right channel and finally the third thing
and heads up I got to talk about God here and if you're not into that I invite you to just adapt
to what I'm saying to what makes sense to you but don't let anybody tell you that the idea of
perfect love is crazy it is the most real thing there is actually it's how were shown spiritual
reality and it's an experience of seeing through God's eyes if only for a little bit right so so
that we can know the truth of our oneness with all things that's the place where we want to be
that's where we truly live we're there all the time even though will almost never be conscious
of it now trauma can tear us out of knowing this ever but it can't actually take it away it can't
change what is our home you're part of it and through your love of another person if you can
keep healing and open up to it you can experience it that oneness that's the thing you're craving
oneness now maybe you've experienced this it's not a trick played by chemistry it's
it's your awakening and it's an intense spiritual experience for anyone and if you have that trauma
in your past your attachment issues can kick in and you'll want to like grab hold and stop the
fear and unfortunately this can take you right out of that experience and it doesn't always
work out like you'd hoped but whatever you do even if you screw it up it expands you and it
raises you up into who you really are now I get letters from people and they say oh but you don't
realize I'm almost 40 or I'm 51 or I'm 67 or I'm 75 here's what I learned from my friend Gladys who
found her great love at age 80 just a few years before she died there's still time and for all
you know the greatest love you could possibly know may still lie ahead of you especially if
you keep healing from what happened in the past and that longing you feel when you're lonely
especially now has a message for you that it's real and it's pointing the way toward your home