#203: How To Fix The Holes In Your Soul

Kamal Ravikant was very sick and getting worse. This had been going on for months. Some days, he couldn’t move or wake up. Other days, he had just enough energy to go outside, but only for a few minutes, then he had to go back inside. The doctors couldn’t help him; he was infinitely tired, feverish, in pain and was getting worse.

Kamal had been going through a hard time before he got sick. His company, which had once been doing well enough to raise a significant amount of money, was faltering, perhaps failing, he had recently broken off from a relationship and a close friend had died. Kamal could feel a deep void within him, an emptiness leading to

Kamal was trying to hold it all together, to be fair to everyone within his company - the employees, the investors and the customers. But his emotional body couldn’t handle it anymore. Then he completely broke down. He was just lying in the bed and couldn’t move. He had a high fever and was in too much pain. He thought he was dying.

We have all experienced some form of trauma in our lives. Sometimes it's of our own making; other times, it's beyond our control. Trauma can range from the capital 'T' kind, such as being abused as a child or losing your parents in an accident or war, to the lowercase 't' kind.

I read an account of a woman whose trauma stemmed from being alone as a child. Both her parents worked, and her grandmother was in a nursing home, so when she came home from school, she had to go to a neighbor’s house because no one was home. She ended up feeling like a burden to her parents, a feeling that lingered throughout her life, poking little holes in her soul. These feelings led her to compulsive buying, taking courses, or doing anything else she could think of to feel better, even if she didn’t have the money.

Little things that happen throughout our childhood accumulate, creating holes in our sense of self.