Max Littman, LCSW
July 17, 2025
In IFS therapy, we think of burdens as the painful beliefs, emotions, and energies parts carry from past experiences—usually rooted in trauma, adversity, and misattunement. These burdens can range from “I’m not good enough” to “I’m unsafe in the world.” But one burden that quietly saturates many internal systems, yet often escapes naming is meaninglessness.
Unlike more obvious burdens of terror, shame, and powerlessness, meaninglessness doesn’t always scream out in pain. It may begin as a small, steady drip, but over time it becomes a whole concealed ocean of suffering. Meaninglessness erodes vitality, dulls joy, and flattens the impulse to connect, create, and care. Often mistaken for depression or apathy, the burden of meaninglessness is, at its core, a profound existential wound—one that leaves parts believing there is no point, no purpose, and no larger context in which their suffering or striving belongs.
While the IFS model usually does not explicitly name meaninglessness as a burden, its presence is quietly interwoven through the emotional and spiritual terrain it attends to: despair, numbness, and disconnection from joy or purpose. Dick Schwartz has written about exiles that carry existential terror or hopelessness, and Somatic IFS founder Susan McConnell describes systems marked by energetic collapse or a loss of aliveness. Beyond IFS, Gabor Maté speaks about meaninglessness as a form of spiritual pain—an absence of connection to authenticity and selfhood that often drives addictive or dissociative patterns. Viktor Frankl, writing about the depths of human suffering, named meaninglessness as a core source of existential despair, one that must be met not with correction but with presence.
Despite its insidious and widespread effects, meaninglessness remains largely unnamed in IFS discourse. This article offers a more direct lens: treating meaninglessness not as pathology or personal failure, but as a burden carried by parts doing their best to survive in a world—or an inner world—that no longer feels like it matters.
Meaninglessness as a Burden
When a part carries the burden of meaninglessness, it may sound like:
- “What’s the point?”
- “None of this matters.”
- “It’s all just chaos.”
- “I’m just going through the motions.”
These beliefs may emerge from direct trauma (like neglect or abuse), or more subtly from a lack of attuned presence in key developmental moments. We are meaning-makers, especially when we are children. When no one helps us as children make sense of our experience—when suffering is left unmirrored, unmourned, or unexplained—a belief can form: “there is no meaning to find.” This burden lives in the mind and the body. Over time, this can calcify into an overarching burden: “life itself is hollow.”
Below are a few examples of how this burden can form:
- Isaac described growing up in a house where no one ever asked how he was feeling. His parents fed him, clothed him, and expected high grades—but when his dog died, they told him to stop being dramatic. A part of him decided early: if no one else seems to care, maybe nothing really matters.
- Regina was raised in a politically activist family where every conversation was about injustice or systemic collapse. Her personal heartbreaks were treated as trivial in the face of “bigger issues,” and her grief never had a place to land. Now, a part of her struggles to believe anything intimate or individual can be meaningful.
- Harold would stare at the ceiling late at night trying to pray the gay away, believing his existence was a mistake. Years later, even after coming out and building a loving community, a younger part inside still believed life was just something to endure, not something to be moved by.
- Stephanie had an alcoholic mother who promised change again and again—only to relapse, forget, or disappear. Over time, she stopped investing hope in anything. A protective part took on the belief: Everything breaks. Nothing lasts. Don’t bother caring.
- Josh was a high-achieving, gifted child in a family that treated his accomplishments like his only value. The moment he burned out, everything went quiet—no more praise, no more attention. He said it felt like he had disappeared, and a part of him began to wonder if he’d ever really existed in the first place.
Protectors who carry the burden of meaninglessness work hard to suppress or manage it, sometimes with perfectionism, achievement, over-intellectualizing, or spiritual bypassing. Others may succumb to it entirely, leading to paralysis, numbing, or an existential flatness that mimics depression but doesn’t quite match its contours. It can present as chronic, “treatment-resistant” depression. It can show up in people who feel deeply stuck, with extreme polarizations that bring the entire system to a standstill. Beneath it all, there may be a black hole at the center—silently pulling the system’s energy into a wordless, unbearable, bottomless pit of meaninglessness.
Intertwined is often a much older ache: loneliness. Not the circumstantial kind, but a bone-deep, soul-level loneliness that often forms in childhood—when we desperately needed connection and either no one came, or the people who did weren’t safe.
How the Burden of Meaninglessness Manifests
When a part carries the burden of meaninglessness, it doesn’t always present in ways that are immediately recognizable. Some systems look collapsed or depressed; others look highly functional, even high-achieving. The outward appearance of someone burdened by meaninglessness may be wildly different from what’s happening inside. What unites these presentations is an underlying disconnect—a felt absence of aliveness, purpose, or belonging.
Outward Symptoms
Outwardly, people burdened with meaninglessness might:
- Appear emotionally flat or disengaged, often described by others as “checked out” or “numb”
- Routinely express cynicism or sarcasm about topics others find meaningful
- Cycle through jobs, hobbies, or relationships without feeling deeply invested in any of them
- Exhibit procrastination or passivity—not because of laziness, but because nothing feels worth the effort
- Express hopelessness or existential fatigue without clear cause
- Struggle to maintain routines or pursue long-term goals, not due to inability, but a quiet belief that it doesn’t matter
For others, especially those with more externally focused protector systems, the symptoms might be masked behind competence and success.
Inward Symptoms
Internally, meaninglessness may show up as:
- A foggy, detached inner atmosphere: muted sensations, flat emotions, and difficulty connecting with any real desire
- A sense of isolation or alienation even when surrounded by others
- Harsh inner judgments like “you’re wasting your life” or “you’ll never care enough to change”
- Cycles of craving stimulation (social media, substances, entertainment, sex, relationships) followed by emptiness
- A quiet, persistent voice asking what’s the point?, often accompanied by subtle shame or dread
Inner and outer symptoms are expressions of our protector parts’ strategies. Recognizing these symptoms for what they are—protective attempts to manage something overwhelming—can open space for curiosity and compassion. One such expression that often gets overlooked or pathologized is boredom.
Boredom as a Messenger of Meaninglessness
Boredom is often dismissed as trivial, but in IFS work, it can be a profound signal. A part who feels bored might actually be sensing the absence of depth, connection, or purpose. Many people are taught to treat boredom as a failure of discipline or attention—but what if boredom is the part’s way to indicate, “Stimulation is needed?”
Sometimes boredom arises when systems are overly managed, flattened by routines, or kept too locked down by protectors who avoid emotional or creative risk. Other times, it emerges after numbing behaviors wear off, leaving the system raw and uncertain. Underneath boredom, there is often a longing for something that connects, matters, or moves the soul.
But if a system carries the burden of meaninglessness, exiles may interpret boredom as proof that nothing satisfies and nothing matters. The cycle can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In a culture that offers endless distraction but little genuine engagement, parts may lose trust that meaning is possible at all.
The Cultural Roots of Meaninglessness
Though often experienced as deeply personal, the burden of meaninglessness is frequently reinforced by cultural messages. In Western societies, meaning is attached to productivity, visibility, and external achievement. It becomes fixed rather than flexible and adaptive. If you’re not climbing, performing, or standing out, your life may be perceived—by others or your parts—as pointless.
Individualism
Modern Western culture idealizes the self-contained individual—someone who should be able to define their own path, create their own meaning, and be self-sufficient at all times. While autonomy has value and is a developmental need we all have, the overemphasis on individualism creates an internal pressure: If I don’t feel fulfilled, it must be my fault. There’s little room for relational, communal, or spiritual sources of meaning. Parts take on shame for being lost, stuck, or yearning for connection—when in reality, the culture has denied them the very scaffolding they need.
Capitalism
Capitalist systems reduce meaning to productivity and value to output. Many of us have internalized the belief that our worth is tied to what we produce, how efficiently we function, or how much we consume. When parts buy into this, they may drive us to overwork or burn out, or collapse into a sense of failure when the promised satisfaction never arrives. Other parts may rebel, disengaging completely—but often with a dull ache of disconnection underneath.
Industrialism
The industrial paradigm prioritizes speed, standardization, and mechanization. It leaves little space for nuance, slowness, or organic unfolding. Many people feel internally “optimized” by manager parts that mimic this logic: Be faster. Be better. Don’t waste time. But true, soul level meaning can’t be manufactured. It takes root in spaciousness. When systems are forced to operate like machines, the inner world becomes alienated from itself.
Materialism
Materialist culture teaches us that meaning lies in possessions, appearances, or achievements. This cultural burden leaves our parts chasing the next purchase, the next body goal, the next upgrade—while feeling more and more hollow. It also devalues inner life, intuition, emotion, and mystery. For systems that host exiles longing for wonder, reverence, and connection to something beyond, materialism can feel like a slow starvation of the soul.
Together, these cultural burdens disconnect us not just from inner meaning, but from collective meaning—our embeddedness in something larger than ourselves. Whether that something is nature, ancestry, community, or a sense of the sacred, these forces remind our parts that they are not alone, not isolated, not without context. Without those connections, meaning often withers.
When the Search for Meaning Becomes a Strategy
For many systems burdened with meaninglessness, the ache for meaning doesn’t go away—protectors just find new places to hide it. Parts may go searching for something bigger to believe in, something to relieve the burden or explain the chaos. And when that longing goes unmet for too long, it can be hijacked by our protectors who turn to the search for meaning.
Sometimes that strategy looks spiritual. Sometimes it looks political. Sometimes it looks like absolute certainty in an ideology, teacher, or community that promises belonging and purpose, along with an eradication of the discomforts of complexity and doubt. In all these cases, it is parts that cling to something that feels like meaning.
Spiritual Bypassing
Some parts look for meaning in spiritual frameworks—not because they’re called by something sacred, but because they’re trying to get away from pain. They adopt beliefs that invalidate emotion or minimize suffering: “Everything happens for a reason,” “You create your reality,” “There is no self, so your pain is an illusion.” These parts often carry deep burdens and are desperate for relief, especially from the overwhelming fog of meaninglessness.
But when spirituality is used to escape, suppress, or override the parts that are hurting, it becomes a bypass. The system may look calm or enlightened, but it’s often running on avoidance. And the parts holding the deepest pain—the ones still longing for connection, coherence, and care—remain exiled.
Cults and Ideological Extremism
Other parts may gravitate toward cults or rigid ideologies. These can offer what no one else has: clarity, order, shared identity, and an absolute sense of meaning. For someone who has been swimming in ambiguity, invisibility, or chaos, that certainty can feel like salvation. But it’s often a protector in control—a part that says, “If I believe this completely, I won’t have to feel lost anymore.”
This can happen in spiritual, religious, political, or wellness spaces. It’s not always obvious. But when belonging is conditional on conformity, when doubt is shamed, and when critical thinking is discouraged, the system may be sacrificing internal freedom for the illusion of meaning.
And underneath that illusion? Often, the same old ache: I want something to matter. I want to feel held by something larger than myself. I want to not feel alone in the dark.
Unburdening Without Forcing Meaning
A common trap—especially for well-intentioned therapists—is to rush in with ideas about meaning before the system is ready. Some parts may desperately want relief from the void, pushing for positive reframes or spiritual explanations. Others, still loyal to the protective strategy of numbness, may recoil from anything that smells like forced hope.
In IFS, we don’t plant meaning from the outside. We create the conditions for parts to discover (and rediscover) meaning on their own. That may be slow. It may come through the body before it arrives in words. It may emerge from grief, from creativity, from witnessing others, or from simply being with what once felt too unbearable to name.
Why This Burden Feels Heavier Now
While the burden of meaninglessness is often rooted in personal experience, many people find it intensifying in recent years. The times we are living in—socially, politically, environmentally—have created conditions that amplify this burden and make it harder for systems to access clarity, hope, or direction.
There’s an ambient grief in the air. Climate collapse, rising authoritarianism, systemic violence, mass disinformation, and the erosion of communal structures have left many parts feeling helpless, overwhelmed, and disoriented. Even people with strong support systems and meaningful personal lives report a background sense of futility. The world feels increasingly chaotic, uncertain, and untrustworthy.
For younger generations in particular, the burden of meaninglessness often carries a sharper edge. Many came of age during economic instability, cultural fragmentation, and constant digital exposure and saturation. They inherited a world in which long-standing institutions have lost credibility, the planet is in crisis, and social connection is often mediated through performance and comparison. The message is subtle but relentless: nothing is stable, nothing is sacred, and nothing is safe.
In this environment, parts that already carry a burden of meaninglessness are easily reactivated. Other parts may adopt it for the first time as a way of staying numb and protected in a world that feels increasingly uninhabitable. For systems that are already burdened, the present moment can feel like confirmation: See? We were right not to care too much.
And yet, this is also a time when meaning is needed most. When things are breaking down, the temptation to retreat into numbness, detachment, and despair is strong—but so is the longing for aliveness, integrity, and connection. That longing can’t be accessed through forced optimism or bypass. It can only emerge when systems feel accompanied in their grief, honored in their exhaustion, and trusted to rediscover meaning slowly, on their own terms.
Attempts to convince parts that the world is better than it is are foolhardy. Instead, we can stay with them in their disillusionment. We can let them show us what they’ve seen and what they’ve carried. And when they feel seen—when they no longer have to carry that burden alone—conditions are changed. These conditions do not always bring clarity, but they do bring connection. And connection, even in a painful world, can help our parts access our birthright of meaning.
For feedback and comments, I can be reached at max@maxlittman.com.
I provide private practice mentorship, consultation, and therapist/practitioner part intensives.
