The Empty Woman Syndrome: Everything about the Empty Woman Syndrome
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The Empty Woman Syndrome
Back Story - What lead to my feelings of emptiness
My first internal crisis was in my late 20s, when I was completing my Bachelor of Arts degree in Filmmaking. In addition to a full course load, plus creative projects that took extra time, I also worked full time. It took 18 months for my senior project, a documentary on female sexuality, to make its way to the screen. I think I slept four hours a night, if that, for four years.
Shortly after college, I wanted to continue working on my films. My dad encouraged me to continue working with them, full time, and to do my film work on the side. I distinctly remember him saying that I would not be successful unless I had, “contacts” in the industry and, to my detriment, I believed him.
Over the next few years, I worked on a few independent films, went to some film screenings and even visited Sundance film festival. My film, My Sexuality: A Sensory Experience, won the "Audience Choice for Best Feature Documentary” at a film festival in New York. Not only did my editor go to New York with me, but so did my parents and we were all there to see it live on the big screen. It was surreal seeing people walk up to the ticket window, say the name of my film and purchase a ticket. To this day, it sends chills up my spine.
Even though my film was the least attended of each film at the festival, it still won the award.
Shortly after this whirlwind experience, I had the opportunity to intern for PBS in San Francisco, which was incredible. When I mentioned it to my parents, I was eager and excited to take it. I was still working full time for them at the time, and I remember them mentioning that they wouldn’t give me the time off and that the schedule didn’t work. When one of my college professors and friends heard, he encouraged me to reconsider saying that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Still, I made the choice to pass up the opportunity.
I want to emphasize that I made these choices and I take full responsibility for them. I am sharing the back story because it’s critical to the conversation we’re going to have today and it’s much bigger than individual people. It’s the energy behind our choices and the intention of our choices that end up creating the reality we are living in right now.
The next few years, my life was riddled with feelings of depression. I went to my doctor for only one reason: to talk to someone. I felt tired, burnt out, and exhausted all the time. I found myself lashing out at others, feeling really angry and moody. If it wasn’t anger, I spent hours on end crying and feeling hopeless. The mood swings were very real and I had absolutely no awareness or insight into what was causing this spiral.
I felt empty inside and I didn’t know why or what to do about it.
The Doctor’s solution, which I won’t go into here, did not work for me. After a few months of very little relief, I went the holistic route. I started leaving work on time and establishing boundaries between how much work I was doing, and when. I kept work out of home, for example. I made more time to see my friends, started taking vitamins, exercising and eventually began to lose weight. I spent more time in the sun, went for walks and started grounding myself with time in nature. After a few months of this, I quit my job.
I had no idea if these changes would make the difference I so desperately needed, but I was so fed up and unhappy, I was willing to try anything. This is where my journey began, long before I knew anything about spirituality, or holistic healing.
How the Empty Woman Syndrome Started
Everything and everyone in the world is connected through an invisible thread we understand as consciousness. In simplified terms, consciousness is is the energy that moves through everyone and everything. In childhood, we are essentially mirroring aspects of our environment, and the people in it, whether it’s beneficial for us or not. We become imprinted by the world that we live in.
If given the proper space, particularly in the first seven years of life, to simply play and exist without the burden of school or learning to do things in a certain way, we develop our personal genius: the creative way in which we exist in the world that GIVES us energy. Not only does embracing this genius put you squarely in your destiny, you positively impact the world around you and everyone in it.
Most of us, at least at the time this blog is published, did not have that type of upbringing. The general conditioning of society revolves around school, and doing things the same way as others. Round peg, round hole, don’t be different or you’re a target. This suppression of latent talent and creativity makes it nearly impossible to think outside of the box.
The symptom of this is the, “victim-mind”, a state of consciousness where your ability to create what it is that you want, with unwavering certainty, faith and trust, is inverted and it begins to feel impossible to change your circumstances.
A fear develops as well, and it’s the fear of being different. This fear comes with a feeling that you won’t be supported, loved, accepted and it’s generally true. These people are ahead of their time, like the Picasso’s and Einstein’s of the world. Their work is not understood or appreciated until they are gone because the collective consciousness is not ready for it.
When your true nature is inverted, the frequency of your body is lower, and this makes it far more challenging to change your circumstances. As adults, we have the ability to challenge our belief system, and the way in which our mind is creating our outer life, by working with our inner world to re-establish healthy foundations. This process is chaotic, and unpredictable, but it can be initiated with gratitude. The frequency of gratitude alone begins to shift your mind into thinking more positively and once you begin to focus on what’s good, instead of what’s bad, your frequency begins to rise.
Keep it Simple
I love the simplicity of this concept: life just is. We don’t need to work so hard to achieve because we’re often pushing for something we aren’t ready for, creating and causing our own resistance in the process while wondering, “why didn’t it work?”
It didn’t work because you weren’t ready for it. You pushed for something that you believe will help you to feel whole and complete, and herein lies the problem. Instead, you reacted from fear and created a host of problems for yourself riddled with challenges, fears, overwhelm, procrastination, lack of clarity, and low, if any, motivation.
When we’re on the right path, at the right time, the flow state is evident in how we feel. Even if things are externally chaotic, your internal state will be in a state of peace and contentment. This is how you know you’re on the right path, making the right choices at the right time.
Timing is affected by two critical factors: divine will and free will. If you feel internal conflict created by wanting to do what you want to do, but also recognizing that you are here to do as your soul intended you to do, you are in conflict with both your identity and your belief system.
Your beliefs are telling you that something is possible, and something else is impossible. The truth lies within your heart portal, nowhere else. When the timing is right, the step or answer will become so evident that your entire being floods with a sense of peace, and you feel absolutely no resistance to moving forward. Only when this feeling floods your awareness and body, are you ready to move forward?
Until then, you must wait, as difficult as it may be for you. If it is difficult for you, then you are learning the lesson of patience. Any rushing out of this lesson will cause you to create circumstances that you feel you must commit to, while you experience low energy, regret, and symptoms of burnout.
If you’ve never felt this internal peace and contentment, it is because you’ve never waited long enough for it to emerge.
When we stumble clumsily onto our spiritual path, it can become an identity that limits us to the role of seeker. Seeking is the first level of the journey because seekers are always existing in the past, or the future, but never the present. Seeking implies that there is an answer out there, and if you find the answer, or receive what you are striving for, you will feel at peace. This is a tool of the ego that is designed to harvest the energy of human beings into what I call the doing-doing-doing cycle.
The doing cycle is an intentional slave cycle built into the Earth, designed to siphon energy from the feminine in the form of overgiving. The feminine energy is so powerful that, if used with intention, has the power to elevate consciousness at rapid speeds on a global scale.
When women are in their natural cycles, living open-heartedly, giving and receiving equally, communing with nature, resting and trusting in their innate divine wisdom, they are the expression of pure divine consciousness and the embodiment of mother nature.
This grounded energy of an organically chaotic nature is a woman at her core. She understands herself, and honors who she is by responding and tending to her internal environment.
A woman in her shadow's feminine energy is unhealed. This wounding stems from the deep disconnection from her heart. A wounded woman feels overwhelmed, burnt out, and exhausted, at the very least. These turn into reactive, unpleasant and unpredictable emotional states that are nearly impossible to regulate. At this level, she has turned her consciousness against herself, as self-hatred.
So, why don’t women just reconnect to themselves, regulate their emotional states and live happier lives?
I wish there was a simple answer to this, but I don't believe it’s just one thing, so let’s start at the top.
There is an energy grid built into this planet that looks like an energetic spiderweb. We’re all connected to it just because we’re here. When we are born, we are immediately connected to it. In other words, we’re born into this and until we recognize it, it’s impossible to escape it. The awareness that it exists helps you begin to see it everywhere.
This grid is designed to energetically target your own shadows, which are unhealed fears or traumas, as well as the collective shadow. That’s why this dark web exists. It’s due to an insatiable hunger that we human beings have and we believe that if we stuff ourselves, we will finally feel full.
The Empty Woman Syndrome
Although holistic remedies helped my physical symptoms, I still felt unhappy and empty on the inside. My emotional body was in great suffering.
It was in my search for solutions to resolve how unhappy and empty I felt on the inside, that led me to the solution that was right in front of me all along.
After nine years of searching, and healing, I bought myself a little framed photo of a famous Confucious quote that said,
“Wherever you go, there you are.”
It reminded me of something important: I can no longer run from this problem.
In trying to solve this problem, through healing, and through seeking, I was preventing my own true healing from taking place.
You see, the empty woman syndrome doesn’t need to be healed. The empty woman does not need to do MORE.
She needs to do less.
She needs to be listened to.
She needs to love herself and learn how to do it properly.
She needs to accept herself, and all of who she is, without blame, judgment, or fear of being too much.
Anything but this leads to an even emptier woman who is so busy focusing on things outside of herself, she dies inside little by little.
Most importantly, she needs to learn how to speak up, stop trying to please others by being the good girl who never steps out of line, and she needs to stop giving her energy away to people and situations that are not deserving of it.
The Doing Doing Doing Cycle
The ego loves to run a mile a minute, reminding you of everything you have to get done, the business you have to run, the family, the laundry, and the pickup and drop-off schedule. The problem with this is, it doesn’t usually remind you that you’re running low on energy, that you forgot to eat, or that you really need a nap.
When you’re feeling disconnected from who you are, and what you need in order to feel happy, thriving and powerful, healing will feel like a task to be checked off on your to-do list.
You will bypass your body’s signals alerting you to something that you really need. You will bypass this signal by choice because you are elevating something as more important than and more pressing than caring for yourself.
If you have an infant to care for, this makes sense. There is another human being entirely dependent on you for everything. The problem is that most women reading this are not taking care of themselves, even without a child.
There are two energies that you can show up in your life that will determine the experience you have. Both men and women have equal parts of masculine and feminine energy.
The masculine energy is designed to DO, and to take outward action.
The feminine energy is designed to BE, and to take internal action geared toward healing, and opening your heart, or no action at all.
It makes sense to be in your masculine energy when working or moving the needle forward in your business, for example.
When you’re doing all of the things, you are in your masculine energy. That is perfectly fine until you’re unable to turn it off and sink back into your feminine.
As a woman, when you’re unable to switch back and forth between the two, it’s detrimental to your emotional well-being because it causes burnout.
What Causes Burnout?
Doubt is a very normal feeling that every single person in the world experiences at some point. When doubt is turned inward against oneself, it causes self-doubt.
Self-doubt causes a split in your identity resulting in a lack of belief in one or more aspects of yourself. This split causes relentless overthinking, where your energy is overactive in your mind. Overactive mind energy lives in two places. One is the past, which creates feelings of depression. The other is in the future, where it creates feelings of anxiety.
To escape the feelings of self-doubt, you may turn to problem-solving, which very rarely leads to the right action. In order to take the right actions, you must be in the present moment, where there is acceptance.
Taking action from the energy of self-doubt leads to wrong action, which is action based on a feeling of discomfort that drives a feeling of impatience, rather than from the present moment where the mind and intuition are one.
Taking the wrong action causes you to feel burnt out because you are using your energy in the wrong way, doing the wrong things. These symptoms are physical exhaustion, overwhelm, and procrastination, to name a few. This is not the only way that your energy may burn out though. Here are the other two:
Overgiving
Overgiving is the result of doing too much and like the others, it stems from the emotional body. If you have a feeling inside that what you are doing is never good enough, you will translate this to mean that you are not good enough. The root cause of overgiving is inadequacy.
Inadequacy is defined as, the “inability to deal with a situation or with life.”
It’s not about what you’re doing. No matter what you do, if you feel inadequate, it will never feel good enough and this will spur you into action to not only do more but to do it better. Perfectionism is a very real thing for over givers, but this too perpetuates the overgiving cycle.
Inadequacy needs to be addressed at the root cause in your life, so you can learn to properly deal with challenges as they arise, and cultivate a deep sense of belief in yourself and your ability to handle whatever comes your way.
People Pleasing
People pleasing is a nervous system response called “fawning.” Think of the little girl who wants to hide and become invisible to avoid conflict. This stems from a fear of rejection, and with people pleasing, you do what the other person or situation wants because it’s “easier.” This happens because you don’t have the energy to fight, or to flee. People pleasing is also a very conditioned response based on repeated rejection.
If you expressed any emotions, or vulnerabilities that caused your environment (friends, family) to reject you and withdraw their love, you likely developed a fear of rejection. No one wants to lose love. In this cycle, you’ll do whatever it takes to hang on to people, even if they’re unhealthy for you.
The symptoms of overgiving and people-pleasing are burnout, overwhelm, and anxiety, to name a few. The overarching feeling is one of deep sadness, emptiness, and a feeling of disconnect with yourself, others, and the world around you.
If I asked you how you generally feel, you would probably say, “Great!” or “Happy!” While those may be true on the surface level, in order to understand if you have the empty woman syndrome, we want to look for exhaustion.
The big question is, where does this feeling of emptiness come from in the first place?
The feeling of emptiness is what drives the quest to search for something that quenches this ravenous internal hunger. Answers can never be found outside of you. Yet, we must seek in order to discover this spiritual truth.
All answers exist within, and once you realize this, you simultaneously realize that there are no answers and that YOU ARE the answer. Life is full of paradoxes in this way. You are your greatest gift, achievement, truth, and answer. You are the end and the means.
Seekers seek to understand. Understanding pours back into more seeking and asking more questions which inevitably leads to a cycle of blame at the lowest levels of consciousness.
If seeking is used to propel understanding yourself more deeply through curious and playful energy, it’s the highest possible frequency you can embody. Once you can leave behind blame, and judgment, the seeking becomes fuel for deeper healing.
An Empty Woman:
Cannot take care of herself or others.
Has unbalanced relationships where others take more than they give.
Can’t say no without feeling guilty.
Won’t create more money because more money means more responsibility (and over-giving!)
Carries the weight of the world on her shoulders to try and make it easier for others.
If you’re dealing with empty woman syndrome, you need to re-establish yourself in a world that has taught you that you are not enough. You’ve learned that in order for you to be enough, you need to do more, be more and work harder. You must realize that you’re living in a world that will never be satisfied with you. You need to be satisfied with yourself.
You were born with a seed of potential buried within you that is trying to break free from the mundane. If you feel a deep disconnect from yourself, your passion, and your purpose in this life, it’s no surprise because you’re meant for so much more… and you know it.
The love, freedom, peace, and contentment you’re looking for have to be found on the inside first. Only then, all of the validation, acceptance, appreciation, and love will show up in your outside world.
Feeling like the abandoned, forgotten woman who no one cares about isn’t serving you. It’s time to cut ties with the behaviors that led to you feeling invisible. You deserve to be seen, heard, and loved, just as you are!
It’s time to learn who you are, what you want, and what you need without the relentless self-doubt that comes with shapeshifting to be who others wanted you to be. This is the source of your disconnect and it’s time to stop abandoning yourself.
