Is That All There Is? When "Having It All" Leaves You Feeling Empty

For many people, the meaning of "success" and "having it all"means making a lot of money, buying a big house, having a new car, and being married to an attractive spouse (not necessarily in that order).  For other people, "having it all" might mean being smart, having a graduate degree, and the prestige of being published and recognized as an expert in a particular field.  

Is That All There Is?  When "Having It All" Leaves You Feeling Empty

"Having It All," But Feeling Something is Missing 

But, more often than not, people who have attained their definition of "having it all," are surprised to discover that, instead of making them happy, after a while, they feel empty inside.  They're confused because they feel like there's something missing, but they can't understand what it is since they already have everything they set out to get, so what else could there be?

What Does It Mean to "Have It All"?

How we define "success"' and "having it all" usually determines our focus and the direction we take in our lives.  Early on, we're given implicit, and often explicit, messages about what it means to be successful.  In school and the world around us that usually means striving to be competitive and to get excellent grades so you're at the top of your class with the end goal of getting a well-paid job so you can have monetary success and prestige.

Is That All There Is?  When "Having It All" Leaves You Feeling Empty

Most people would agree that having a certain degree of financial comfort is better than struggling financially.  And while there's certainly nothing wrong with being smart and striving to have monetary success and prestige, if that's all you want, more than likely, when you get it, you'll be wondering, "Is that all there is?," like the song with the same title.  This can be a tremendous letdown, especially if you've invested years of your life to attain these goals.

When Disappointment Leads to Striving For More of the Same

Often, people respond to feeling this disappointment by striving even harder to have more...more money, more prestige, a bigger vacation house, a more expensive car, and so on.  They become even more competitive with their colleagues, friends, loved ones, and neighbors.  But the problem with this is that there will always be someone who is smarter, richer, and more powerful than you are, so where does this end?  For someone people, it ends with deeper disappointment. For other people, it ends with sudden cardiac arrest.

Getting Help When "Having It All" Leaves You Feeling Empty

At about this point, people who might never have come to therapy, seek help.  Striving more, working harder, being bigger and better, smarter and faster hasn't brought lasting happiness, and they're in emotional crisis.  They've done everything they've been told and everything they know how to do to be happy, but happiness eludes them, and they don't know why.  They often come to therapy feeling that their lack of happiness is, somehow, their fault.  

What Is a Meaningful Life to You? 

Rather than looking for a place to cast blame, when "having it all" leaves you feeling empty inside, it's important to take a look at how you're defining success.  Although it might sound like an old cliche, when your definition of success is only narrowly defined by the external things in your life, after a while, these things become less meaningful to you.  If you haven't broadened your definition of success to include a rich inner life and contributing in a meaningful way to the world around you, more than likely, if you're at all in touch with your emotions, you'll feel empty inside. 

Whether you call this empty feeling inside "a spiritual crisis," "a mid-life crisis" or a crisis by any other name, usually, when you get to this point, you can feel desperate because, along the way, you might not have learned any other ways for being happy other than to be more and to get more.  Perhaps you've also surrounded yourself with like-minded people.  And, when you compare yourself to them, they seem to be happy with their lives, so you might ask yourself, "What's wrong with me?"

Psychotherapy:  A Place to Explore and Discover New Aspects of Yourself

Psychotherapy is a place where you can explore and discover what it would mean to you to have a meaningful life.  In the privacy of a therapy session with an objective therapist who is empathetic and with whom you have a rapport, you can start to focus on your inner world, as opposed to being exclusively focused on your external world.  

Whereas friends and loved ones might have their own views of what it means to have a meaningful life, a skilled clinician can help you develop your own new definition of what it means to be successful in a much broader sense without judging you or imposing his or her own views.

Psychotherapy: A Place to Explore and Discover New Aspects of Yourself

Your psychotherapy session is a time and place dedicated to you where you have uninterrupted time to develop and discover aspects of yourself that you might not have even known exist.  It's a chance to discover and experiment with new possibilities of who you are and what might make you happy.

When continuing to do more of the same of what you've been doing continues to leave you disappointed, you owe it to yourself to work with a skilled clinician who can help you expand your definition of success and happiness.  

About Me:

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.  I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my web site:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 or email me: josephineolivia@aol.com.

Narcissism: An Emotional Seesaw Between Grandiosity and Shame

The grandiosity that is associated with narcissistic behavior is often a cover up for a great deal of shame.  For people who exhibit narcissistic traits, what appears to others as over confidence or even arrogance is really a thin shell that protects a deeply deflated and hollow sense of self.  Often, people with narcissistic traits are on an emotional seesaw between grandiosity and shame.  

Narcissism: An Emotional Seesaw Between Grandiosity and Shame

A Need for Ever Greater "Narcissistic Emotional Supplies"
To hide their sense of shame, people with narcissistic traits often need to constantly keep themselves pumped up emotionally or expect that others will pump them up.

If they're in high positions of authority, there are usually subordinates who are willing to engage in this charade for whatever they expect to gain from the situation.

Behind the scenes, these subordinates might be secretly laughing at their boss, especially if they see through the boss's grandiose cover up.  But in front of the boss, they're all too willing to continue providing narcissistic strokes.

The problem is usually that, eventually, the pendulum swings the other way and the person with narcissistic traits confronts his or her own deep seated shame and emotional hollowness.

If people with narcissistic traits are unwilling to acknowledge and take steps to overcome the deep sense of shame that fuels this dynamic, they often find themselves in a never-ending quest for more "narcissistic emotional supplies."

This can take many different forms, including an obsession with making more and more money, a craving for ever greater expensive possessions, an obsessive focus on appearance (e.g., a need to appear physically "buff" or having plastic surgery to hide the signs of aging), the need to have a lot of power over others or the need to be surrounded by very attractive  romantic partners.

These so-called "narcissistic emotional supplies" provide only temporary gratification.  Sooner of later, the shame that might have been temporarily kept at bay rises to the surface.

Narcissism:  An Emotional Seesaw Between Grandiosity and Shame

Often, people who are caught in this emotional seesaw between grandiosity and shame don't get help unless there is a significant emotional crisis in their lives.  This could take the form of a spouse getting fed up and leaving, the realization that this dynamic has alienated other close family members like one's children or  losing one's job and thus losing career status.

When people with narcissistic traits go through these types of losses that they cannot assuage in other ways, they're often in a lot of emotional pain, and they don't have the emotional resources to deal with it.

These deeply humbling experiences and the shame that cannot be pushed down any more sometimes brings them to therapy.  For others, who don't get help, they often feel impotent rage or depression.  They might turn to alcohol, drugs, gambling, sexual acting out or other mood-altering behavior to bury their feelings.  This often leads to a further emotional spiraling down.

The origins of shame are as varied as the people who suffer with it.  This kind of deep seated shame, which is covered over by grandiosity, often starts early in life.  It might start as early as the preverbal stage of life.  It can begin with emotional neglect or the lack of emotional attunement or mirroring between the infant and the primary caregiver.

Getting Psychological Help
Getting help to overcome shame takes courage, especially for someone who has spent most of his or her life trying to hide it.

Shame often keeps people with narcissistic traits out of treatment so that the people who usually need the most help never seek it.

If they do seek help, they must be willing to make a commitment to stick with it, and treatment is often long.

These are ingrained characterological traits and require a willingness on the client's part to do in-depth psychological work and the willingness on the therapist's part to do the work with challenging clients.

For those willing to do the work with a skilled clinician, freeing oneself from the emotional seesaw of  grandiosity and shame can be a life changing experience.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist. 

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my web site:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me,