Do You Have SDD?

Spiritual Deficit Disorder, SDD, has a nagging relentless thought: I am utterly alone. Logically, you know you're not, there are people everywhere. But you're swept away by only what your eyes can see. Even though stuff is happening all around you, affecting you, that cannot be seen. Like gravity, magnetism, bad breath, wireless internet, and UVB rays. Yet we are burden by concrete reality and the limits it provides.

When my SDD hits, it looks like BurnOut. Followed by attitudes that make me want to stuff hot sauce up my nose rather than work while fantasizing about shopping for an armored minivan, 18 gallons of rice, fireworks, a potato launcher with a 500-foot range and buying a ticket to burning man so I can just get outta dodge.

When I was in the worst of my BurnOut, I was desperate for an intervention. “God, Zeus, Jesus, Titus, somebody with a name ending in OD or US. . . do it NOW with lots of thunder and lightning . . . change my life!” But I couldn’t get connected, I was too wrapped up in the tactile world. BurnOut created a scary blackness in me that said, “there is no real purpose to life. We are born, we die. End of story. Now shut up and get back to work.”

Yet the paradox is, what better way to work on your relationship to faith than by going through hard times. If you want to feel like the world is your oyster, you can’t be walking around with SDD. It comes down to this ridiculous question: Do you to be miserable or do you want to believe in extraordinary possibilities to come?

I am not sure who coined the term, but author Dr. Paul Pearsall, in his book titled "Toxic Success" discusses SDD as suffering from a constant nagging feeling of self-doubt and feelings of "not enough". And that, when you are driven by something external to validate you, you lose connection with your Spirit. To me SDD is a loss of faith and focus which leads us to search for our relevancy in places it isn’t.

I can’t tell you the number of people I talk to who don’t feel like they are enough, and the catch is, material success does not sway that feeling. A Course in Miracles says, “A person who is only believing in what they see is the blindest person.” To conquer SDD you have to declare there is more at play than you can see.

To inoculate yourself from contracting it, start an everyday spiritual practice. And, no, you don’t have to be in a cave contemplating your belly button. However, if this helps you collect trust in unseen support, don’t be shy, find that cave. But, most importantly if you’re caught up in a busy blur never taking time to step away, don’t let that be an excuse. Connection to the unseen does not have to “look spiritual or religious.”

We can find mysterious holy moments in nightclubs, traffic jams, restaurants, subways, bathrooms, or other unsuspecting places. We can also find them in our emotions. Yes, you can have the antidote anywhere at any time. Cultivate a daily re-connection to the unseen and you will charge forward unstoppable in the face of life’s obstacles.

And while we are all got the memo that physical health is key, spending a little time every day on your spiritual fitness gives you an amazingly shaped buttress!

Only believing in what your eyes can see is a form of blindness. Being too busy and constantly overwhelmed, will make you quickly forget the unseen exists. Spiritual fitness means regular communication with an unseen force. And, it is an intensely personal endeavor.

Over the coming months, I challenge you to use small moments of time to re-connect. You will be pleasantly surprised. As Albert Einstein said, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."


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This post is the sixth of a six-part article series written for Oblique Magazine in Charleston SC. 

Part 1: Is Stress The New Norm?

Part2: Why Is Negativity Like SuperGlue? 

Part 3: Feeling Out of Order?

Part 4: Why I wrote BurnOut to Badass

Part 5: Cone of Shame

Part 5: Doing Hangover