Moving Through Liminal Spaces

Re-aliving ourselves in a dying world

The other day, I saw a video called Why you feel dead inside after 2020. RawBeautyKristi said a lot of interesting things that relate to what many people have been feeling and some of the themes that I’ve been writing about here for the last couple years.

RBK notices something “like a collective apathy” online.

Everybody is like dead inside and apathetic and I feel like this happened post-2020. I’m sure it’s the collective apathy of everyone after a literal worldwide pandemic where everybody was stuck inside. There was mass death. There was horrific things happening. But that apathy has led to things like this weird place in society where we are not connecting or excited about things the way we used to be. It feels sort of like that part of history is done and dead. It’s just really weird.

I think a lot of factors have intersected at a convergence point, leading to this strange sensation that many people feel, whether they subscribed to the narrative or not.

RBK said in her video, "The consciousness of people has shifted.” She mainly focused on the social media and internet aspects of this theme, how people interact and comment on online content, describing how the honeymoon phase of the internet is gone. “Now we are in the nit-picky part of the relationship.”

She also stated, “In the pursuit of everything being convenient, we’ve lost the humanity in things.” This is incredibly evident in online interactions and dating in the recent years.

RBK mentioned how things didn’t go back after the pandemic ended. Instead, there’s an apathy, like no one cares any more.

It feels sort of like we are kind of living in this place together and I thought we could talk about it together. Maybe it’s that the world got really heavy after covid. We all lived through something that not a lot of people ever lived through. And then to just come out and be like okay now this is over. It’s like WTF. It just feels kind of dystopian. It’s a really weird place to be in . . . What would bring you out of that dead inside? Is it more connection? Is it more connection with the people you’re watching? Is it longer form? Because everything has turned so short-form that it’s like valueless, you know?

Nothing feels the same as before the trauma. This is what every survivor realizes at some point. It will never be the same after disruptive, shocking and devastating life experiences.

Some related themes that came up in the comments and through RBK’s video were: collective burnout, depression and anxiety, the emptiness inside when everything feels fake, empty and pointless, how time feels different, that reality doesn’t feel real any more, craving less social media and more of an Amish lifestyle focused around the family, hearth and home, anhedonia, dissociation and lost time, financial struggles and limitations, a sense of darkness and the worst of humanity being brought out, increased social anxiety, loneliness, loss of depth and meaning, looking for instant gratification but not getting the same kick as before, information fatigue and paralysis, how it seems like everyone is doing fine yet feeling like these are just appearances, the confusing, mixed messages and cognitive dissonance such that "it’s exhausting trying to make sense of it all.”

Alec Zeck and I spoke about some of this in our interview last month on The Way Forward.

RBK and many others in her comment section are describing a state of learned helplessness that leads to feeling apathy. This is a defense mechanism that happens through psychological conditioning such as abuse (as I’ve written and spoken about regarding the events of the recent years in my presentations on the State of Captivity) as well as other traumas, which cause a person to believe that there’s nothing they can do to escape that feeling, change their circumstances or make it better. In such a state, there is often a sense of permanent and pervasive darkness.

RBK described the post-pandemic feeling.

. . . as if we’re all holding our breath, waiting for the next global crisis, an even worse one. We had no closure after COVID. So many questions remain unanswered. It’s like everyone knows the worst is yet to come and we’re all just hanging out, waiting.

Do you enjoy things the way you used to?

On RBK’s video, people shared their experiences and feelings about this topic. The comments are also quite similar to what people say after an abusive relationship or other trauma. They end up in a state of learned helplessness, which results in apathy and a loss of joy or motivation to do the things that once brought them joy and meaning before. This spiritual bankruptcy can deplete people of their faith, and when all faith is lost, the only thing left is emptiness. There is no feeling more painful than that devastating sense of nothingness.

These are some interesting highlights that I found in the comments.

For me, the reason everything has changed is because we can no longer trust the institutions that we used to trust to guide us and keep us relatively safe. Regardless of political ideology, the internets, mainstream media, politicians and corporations are all captured and beholden to one another. So trust and safety are down. Fear is up and now maybe we are on the brink of a world war, which nobody wants or voted for.

The world post-2020 has felt so different to me. Although I have traveled more and experienced more in the past year than before, I still feel an eerie lack of fulfillment, like I’m going through the motions. I’ve seen another YouTube video describing this collective post-pandemic feeling as if we’re all holding our breath, waiting for the next global crisis, an even worse one. We had no closure after covid. So many questions remain unanswered. It’s like everyone knows the worst is yet to come and we’re all just hanging out, waiting.

There has been a shift and things are still shifting. Coco 19 was the beginning and was used to propel the shift is the way I feel. Short form is nice when you need a quick distraction, but sometimes I do like the long form too. Short stuff just doesn’t give me the dopa-boost any more. I still binge watch stuff on YouTube but it’s not at all the same content that I used to watch. I have fallen down some rabbit holes honestly. Feels good to listen to someone else who is feeling this too, because I feel less crazy.

I’m a designer and I feel like the light switch of creativity was turned off after 2020, gradually. I want to do nothing these days and zero intention to find what can motivate me. The apathy is huge. What I loved to do even a year ago doesn’t interest me and my energy levels have dropped. The body doesn’t feel the same like I felt before. I am feeling drained all the time.

I have been trying to figure out why I’m feeling this exact way. This apathy. This overstimulation, this burnout. I was just talking to my therapist about it last week . . . I almost feel like I’ve outgrown the internet in a way yet I’m clinging to the past, to what always fulfilled me and it’s not cutting it any more.

Some of the commenters on RBK’s video identified their generation. Some Gen Xers talked about returning to a more simple lifestyle before the internet changed everything. It’s interesting to see how they are resourcing this perspective from past experiences, showing their resilience in this process. Gen Z doesn’t have that inner resource to turn to since they grew up after the digital shift. While all generations of commenters related to these themes, the younger one especially described feeling stuck in life without passion, interests, hobbies, or desire to see family and friends.

These are the conversations that we need to be having. I just turned 23 and have absolutely no passion, no interests, hobbies, no desire to see friends or family. I feel like I’m floating through time . . . The past 3 years for me, life feels absolutely meaningless. Nothing is worthwhile and things that should or used to bring me joy before don’t anymore. I’m stuck in a loop day after day. I guess I have the power to change it, but I have no will or desire to either? I don’t know. I hope this isn’t my new norm.

Thank you for this video, it helped me to see that I am not the only one at all! I’m in my early teens, I feel similar. Nothing feels real anymore, time goes by in an instant, I’m getting older, my parents are getting older. Reality doesn’t feel real anymore. Things don’t really excite me, I don’t cry anymore. I’m not driven. But I’m not sad, like you said! I also completely agree, I feel like the internet has something to do with it, it’s all I’ve grown up on. I really feel like that I shouldn’t be like this at this age!!

It brings me so much comfort knowing I’m not alone in all this. I spend way too much time in the house and have no social life, especially for someone in my early 20s. When I finally get stir crazy enough and step out I’m so anxious and anxiety-ridden and want nothing more than to be home again . . . I seriously think I have PTSD from hearing about and seeing all these tragedies time after time. Life just doesn’t feel real. I feel like I’m in a constant fight or flight. It’s such a weird, scary and dark times we’re in and the worst part is it feels like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, completely hopeless.

One of the commenters mentioned liminal spaces and that hit another nail on the head. I hadn’t come across this phrase before but once I looked into it, it makes so much sense.

We are currently walking through a collective and individual liminal space.

The word liminal implies a sense of being in between two states—at the threshold.

Dictionary.com

So a liminal space is a transitional state (psycho-spiritual or metaphorical) or place (physical). It’s unsettling (causing fear or anxiety) or dreamlike (causing a surreal feeling). That’s an uncanny description of where we currently find ourselves.

Dictionary.com

I think we can all sense this at some level and all of us are struggling to some degree with the prolonged uncertainty.

Forbes Health did an article on this topic last year in which a social worker described liminal spaces as the space between what is and what will happen next.

“Liminal space can best be described as going through a change or going from place to place—from one thing to the next,” says transitions expert Melissa Cohen, a licensed clinical social worker in New York and founder of the mental wellness website A Redefined You. “It’s the space between what is and what will happen next,” she says. In other words, liminal space refers to the actual space or time in which you shift from one phase to another.

Liminal space refers to the place a person is in during a transitional period. It’s a gap, and can be physical (like a doorway), emotional (like a divorce) or metaphorical (like a decision).

It definitely feels like we are on that threshold now.

In 2020 I took a mushroom journey to move through the fear where I was stuck and paralyzed. After a few hours of struggle and resistance, I was finally able to pierce the bubble when I felt a psychic connection with a soul sister. Once I broke free from the constriction of the fear, my body and being expanded again into new possibility.

After the breakthrough, I went outside where I found my dog sitting like the sphinx across the lawn, observing in stillness and contemplation, and seemingly taking a vicarious journey herself. Everything outside was still, as if time had paused. Then I looked up to the sky. I saw around the sun a bunch of vultures flying in a circle. I understood this is a funeral . . . life before 2020 is gone . . . mourn it and let it go.

Life before 2020 is gone. We’ve been entering this transitional phase since then and it has indeed felt a lot like limbo. Now it feels like we are on the threshold of something else.

Do you feel dead inside?

Personally, I don’t. Actually, I feel more alive than ever—maybe because I’ve been doing this inner work for over 20 years. When 2020 hit, I got knocked down for a while and I had to re-evaluate my whole life.

Eventually I turned to face the new layers of unresolved childhood trauma as they were emerging. I re-evaluated my social connections, particularly my Inner Circle, to be sure I was surrounding myself with people who share common values and reality. I quit using mainstream social media. I took courses and learned a lot of new things about trauma and self-healing.

I’m constantly doing this daily inner work of clearing the cache of the new stresses as well as resolving any old stuff that it’s triggering up to the surface so I can onboard the learning and insights hidden within. Moment to moment, I keep bringing myself back to center.

Does that mean everything is exactly as I want it? Definitely not.

There are tough moments and better ones. Pretty much nothing looks as I imagined it would four years ago in December 2019, though right now something feels vaguely familiar to what it felt like then, unknowingly standing at the precipice of the global changes that would soon occur. I remind myself of the inner resources I’ve cultivated since then that will serve me in the future.

I also trust in Divine providence more than ever. As things continue to unfold, I practice leaning into acceptance and knowing that it’s not about my will but Divine will. I aim to align my will with God’s will and keep strengthening my self-discipline, for disordered desires are how the dark forces ensnare us into doing their bidding in the spiritual warfare.

In the last week, I’ve witnessed several people drifting toward the invitations from the dark forces, their fears provoked and their desires stoked. The last time I saw that escalation in spiritual warfare was early September, just a few weeks before the war in Israel-Gaza broke out. I questioned in my October stack, “Did you notice how the spiritual warfare fear campaign intensified in your personal life just a few weeks before the war?”

I would bet in the next month we will see another massive escalation in global chaos. The dark forces are currently escalating the harvest of fear and distorted desires (pride, lust, gluttony, sloth, wrath, greed and envy) to fuel their agenda in the world.

We are going through a transitional time in which many things in our world are changing. I think most of us feel like that is starting to escalate rapidly now.

In order to adapt and flow, we are being forced to release how things were and how we wanted them to be before the trauma happened, instead leaning into the unknown and uncertainty of what is so we can keep moving through it. This is not comfortable to say the least.

It’s not easy to lean into the discomfort. But that’s the only way through.

There are some essential elements that can help us keep coming back to center, contributing to a sense of aliveness and meaning that we can use to move through these liminal spaces and challenging times.

Connection

This is about connection with self, others and the Divine.

When you’re connected to self, you are present in your body, mind, spirit. You allow yourself to feel what’s coming up without numbing it out through distractions and avoidance. You re-integrate aspects of yourself that were separated and fragmented during past traumas.

You’ll feel connected to self when you’re able to regulate your nervous system, sense your needs and trust yourself to meet them, which also opens your access to aspects of higher consciousness like creativity, insight, intuition, imagination and critical-thinking.

When you’re connected to others, your nervous system can relax and you can drop your defense mechanisms, which means your attachment system is online. But—and this part is very important—the benefits of connection only happen when we connect with others who are “safe”. These are people with shared values and reality who are also able to self-regulate and take responsibility for their own stuff. It’s natural to get triggered and defensive sometimes. You can offer a safe connection to another when you’re taking responsibility for yourself and your reactions. This works when you are willing and able to self-regulate when your nervous system gets triggered so you can offer a healthy co-regulation opportunity to others and vice versa.

You’ll feel connected to others when there’s a mutual witnessing of reality and shared presence.

When you’re connected to the Divine, you set aside intentional time to put your devices and distractions aside and just sit in solitude with God. Sometimes talking and sharing, sometimes listening and receiving. You invest in this relationship in a similar way as you’d do in an interpersonal relationship with a loved one. It’s about the time and intimacy that is formed through this investment, not just trying to get the goods.

You’ll feel connected when you feel the Divine presence in your heart and all around you, knowing that you’re never truly alone.

Nature

Spending some time in nature, even if it’s your backyard, will offer you powerful benefits of wellbeing. You can play and explore externally or sit still and explore internally through the breath and meditation. Nature is rejuvenating. It reminds us that we are connected to All That Is. Standing barefoot on the earth helps us ground our energy. Reconnecting with the plants and animals reminds us that we aren’t the only ones here. Nature often offers us helpful messages and perspective shifts.

Identify what matters to you

When you know what matters to you, you know what to protect. But you won’t be able to protect it if you aren’t clear about what matters. That means, before you can set boundaries you’ll need to take an inventory of your values and what’s important to you. The sooner you get clear about this the better.

Boundaries

These are our personal limits that we set with ourselves and others. Boundaries are helpful for filtering out what we don’t want and protecting what matters.

You could create new filters for what you let in and not. You could re-evaluate what’s the best investment of your time and energy. When new invitations show up, you can use your values as a helpful filter for whether to say yes or no. This can apply to people, work, other life opportunities or information that you find including links that others send you.

If you’ve noticed that you’re overwhelmed or paralyzed, trying to sort or process too much information, then you probably need new boundaries around how much time you’re spending in those spaces.

How do you know where to invest your time and energy? Ask yourself what you want to grow in your life. Is this (information, opportunity, connection) leading you in that direction?

Your power is in your choices

Sometimes we feel like we don’t have any control over what’s happening. Viktor Frankl said that when we can’t change our circumstances, we must change ourselves. The one thing that we can always choose is how we show up in any given moment.

This has to do with perspective and presence, choosing to respond instead of reacting to life. When we react impulsively, we give away our power to someone or something else. When we slow down by focusing on the breath, we can choose our response consciously. In doing so, we reclaim our power of choice.

The field of choices doesn’t appear to be as open as it once was. There are significantly more limitations or restrictions now, so there’s no point lamenting over how things used to be or how we wish they were before the trauma. If we want to survive and thrive, we will need to adapt to a dying world—not by allowing the anti-life agenda to unalive us, but rather to use it as motivation to create new purpose.

How can you apply the power of choice to move through these challenging liminal spaces and the uncertainty of it all, so you can feel more alive?