When the Dalai Lama hosted the first cross-cultural meeting of Eastern Buddhist masters and Western therapists, he heard one repeated thought from the audience.
It was the pervasiveness of “low self-esteem”. He went around the room asking, “Do you have this feeling? Do you have this?”. When all of the Westerners nodded yes, he shook his head in disbelief.
There is a word for this in Buddhism. It’s called gaki (餓鬼) in Japanese, which translates to hungry ghosts. In Buddhism, a hungry ghost is someone who is always ‘eating and never feeling full’. Someone who constantly strives, constantly overreaches to feel satisfied but never feels sated in a sustainable way.
What the Dalai Lama was noticing was the prevalence of such Hungry Ghosts in our Western world. The renowned addiction expert Gabor Mate brought the idea of Hungry Ghosts to the West with his book ‘In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts”. Published in 2008 the book looks at the epidemic of various addictions in society.
In the introduction, Mate describes that he begins his conversation with those who misuse substances with a question about what they liked about the substance and what it afforded them. He writes, ‘And universally, the answers are:
“It helped me escape pain; helped me deal with stress; gave me peace of mind, a sense of connection with others, a sense of control”. (p. XIX)
When you are physically hungry what do you reach for without thinking? Chocolate, crisps?
We do the same in the realm of hungry ghosts when we are emotionally hungry – we reach for strategies without thinking, and our autopilot reacts and goes into full swing. We all struggle with any attempt to regulate ourselves and satisfy these thirsts. Some of us may reach for obvious ways like alcohol, drugs or gambling while others resort to more socially acceptable behaviours like binge eating, anger, control, perfectionism, approval seeking or judgement.
It is no surprise that Hungry Ghosts are prevalent in our society, cultures and organisations; our long-held emphasis on individuality and autonomy, the breakdown of our communities and our dispersed nuclear families, and the relentless pursuit of achievement, can leave us feeling separated and longing for connection.
In the UK alone according to the BetterMe research team, 77% of professionals experience burnout, and 64% feel stressed and frustrated.
The tricky part comes when that which regulates us, doesn’t serve us in healthy ways. When the attempts to control create fractures in relationships; when the need for harmony and safety creates a pleasing self who cannot meet his or her own needs only those of those around us, when our contained anger cannot be used in all of its positive power but leaks out in passive attacks or floods out in unleashed rage. And so on…
Mate famously says: “The attempt to escape from pain, is what creates more pain.”
We only have to consider the latest burnout, stress, and mental health statistics amongst leaders in the UK to see the evidence of our own Hungry Ghosts. Our Hungry Ghosts attempt to protect our feelings of unworthiness with reactive emotions and actions and we become accustomed to taking false refuge in the unique ways that we self-medicate our lives.
It is here, when working with leaders for whom burnout is a close companion or those who feel pulled out of shape by the demands of the work, that I find a greater need for a deeper way of working.
The roots of our own ghosts need to be explored; it is within these roots that we discover the parts of ourselves searching for gratification in an attempt to fulfil old needs and discover that there time has passed. We create a possibility to see anew the impossible expectations that our ghosts hold and feel righted to have.
It’s a place where we can often meet Burnout as a way of Being. And whilst cognitive attempts to fix may give some short-term wins, the deeper work of getting to know our own ghosts is the only work that has a sustainable impact.
Without the awareness that depth coaching brings our hungry ghosts at our core remain obsessed with their unique fantasies and attempts to get their needs met.
They control us, not us them.
Only by working at depth and gaining a truer understanding do we discover the range of possibilities open to us, to reinforce a sense of optimism and self-esteem.
Our feelings of unworthiness and not good enough reside in these places waiting to be transformed into wisdom.
