There comes a moment in life when you finally see it: the way you reach for material things as if they’re salves for something deeper. Most of us don’t do it consciously. We just feel a discomfort, an ache, and instinctively look for something to soothe it. A purchase, a change of scenery, something to grab onto so we don’t have to sit in what’s hurting.
But the more you pay attention, the clearer it becomes: Void filling is never really about the thing. It’s about what you’re avoiding feeling.
And that makes this habit far more complex than it looks from the outside.
It’s not a lack of discipline. It’s not materialism. It’s not superficiality.
It’s emotion. Old emotion. Unfelt emotion. Emotion waiting for acknowledgment that never came.
The human tendency to fill a void with “something” is almost always tied to the parts of ourselves we haven’t tended to yet,
Grief that hasn’t been processed (this was my personal experience), loneliness we don’t want to admit to, a sense of inadequacy we inherited from somewhere we can’t place yet (another one of my personal experiences), the belief that we are only as valuable as what we accumulate…
It becomes a cycle; the desire, the purchase, the temporary lift, the inevitable letdown, the return of the discomfort or the ache. Then, another desire creeps in.
Not because we’re shallow, but because we’re human.
And yet — there’s one universal truth that feels incredibly humbling and freeing at the same time:
Nothing external is capable of filling a space that was created internally.
I invite you to read that again.
We know full well that there are certain kinds of care that can bring you back to yourself — a good, nourishing meal, a massage that releases tension, a haircut that makes you feel more like you. Those things don’t cover pain; they help you return to presence. They’re not void fillers; they’re reminders.
But anything purchased to replace your own emotional work becomes a temporary fix. A distraction dressed as comfort.
And like all distractions, the effect fades. The object loses its glow. The feeling dissolves. The discomfort resurfaces, unchanged — maybe even amplified. Your shame and frustration begins to boil at the surface.
This is the moment so many people miss — the moment when the desire to buy something actually holds the wisdom you’re seeking. Underneath every impulse to reach outward, there’s always an invitation inward.
The question is never “Do I want this?”
The real question is: “Why?”
Why am I reaching for this right now? Why does my body tense when I hover over the checkout button? Why do I suddenly feel like something outside of me is the thing that will make life easier to cope with? Why is stillness so radically uncomfortable that I need something to buffer it?
That one-word question can change the architecture of your entire inner world if you let it. Because once you start getting honest with yourself, your patterns stop hiding.
Maybe you’ll notice that you shop when you’re lonely or when you feel misunderstood. Or when a part of your life feels stagnant and you want to feel movement somewhere, anywhere.
Maybe you notice that you tend to upgrade your home when what you actually want is a shift inside yourself — clarity, connection, excitement, direction.
Or maybe you buy new versions of things because releasing the older version of you feels too destabilizing.
This, is where it gets tender. Self-awareness is rarely pretty. It’s abrupt. Unsettling. Sometimes extremely disappointing. You suddenly see how long you’ve tried to distract your way out of your own discomfort, but it also brings a steadiness that’s honestly, incomparable.
Because once you understand the emotion beneath the urge, the urge loses its power.
You no longer outsource your comfort. You no longer hand your wholeness over to the next “fix.” Instead, you meet your needs instead of silencing them.
A part of this work became deeply personal for me when my grief surfaced in ways I didn’t expect.
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