Don't Fill the Void... Feel it!

Overcoming the Oral Character Trait

One of the things that I’ve been forced to become aware of, over the last year, is the part of me that habitually tries to fill some inner void. I think the combination of lockdowns, the end of a relationship and travelling solo have all helped. My usual escape routes have become blocked off.

Often it seems to take a hold around mid-afternoon. Generally, I’ve finished work for the day. There’s nothing that I need to do. But suddenly I’m taken over by a subtle compulsion to get busy - to do something. Maybe I want to have a snack, or make a cup of tea. Maybe I want to check social media. The bottom line is that I don’t just want to be with myself.

Working as a body-based therapist, I of course recognise this sudden urge for busy-ness. I’m trained to not accept my mind’s justifications. I’m trained to challenge them.

So, I have to sit down and simply feel my body - to tune into just the sense of the body and to try and rest in that. And actually nothing so dramatic seems to be happening inside. But there are these regular bursts of anxious thinking, the bottom line of which is that I should get up and do something, that I need to change my state. I continue to sit and feel my body. After perhaps 3 or 4 minutes, I feel stable and content just sitting. The bursts of anxious thinking seem to have calmed down.

This is the core of the Oral personality. The sense of neediness is held inside, from the perceived lack of connection with the mother in the first year of life. It continues to rest there and demand “filling” with something. Because of the way the brain works, we often don’t even feel that emptiness that is sitting there beneath the surface. All we experience is an urge to get something, to do something, to consume something. We just seem to need… something.

The traditional ways of working with the Oral side of ourselves include:

• getting energy in the belly to support us to hold better boundaries

• using primal invocation exercises to fill us up with infant bliss

• opening up the chest area so that we can hold more feeling within us

These are all excellent. But the final way in which can overcome the Oral side is simply by coming to a place where we can actually feel that emptiness inside, purely as a sensation in the body.

Thank you for reading.