Why You Feel Disconnected From Everyone — And Why Nothing Is Helping

Have you ever felt completely disconnected—even when you’re surrounded by people who should matter most? In this powerful episode, Joe Mittiga unpacks the deeper reason behind that empty, out-of-place feeling and reveals why nothing you’ve tried seems to fix it. This isn’t about loneliness—it’s about transformation. As you grow, your old ways of connecting no longer work, and your external world begins to reflect that shift. If you’ve been questioning your relationships, your path, or even yourself, this episode will help you understand what’s really happening and why it might be the beginning of something bigger. You’re not alone—and more importantly, you’re not broken.  

Transcript

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If you felt lonely, isolated, disconnected, with an empty feeling inside and just yearning for more, knowing something is missing, then this podcast is for you. So here's your host, Joe Mittigga.

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Hello and welcome to We. My name is Joe Mittigha, and I'm the host of the Wii Podcast. I want to welcome everybody here today. It's a beautiful sunny day here in Atlanta, Georgia, the 31st day of March, and it's just a great day to be alive. I'm super excited and just loving everything that's happening, I have to tell you. My world is going extremely well. The podcast is exploding across the globe. And I am just extremely grateful that all of you are here, and all of you have been supporting me and the podcast and the we movement. And I'm full of gratitude today. I'm just really, really excited. And today's topic, I've got an interesting topic for today. And the title of this particular episode is Why Do We Feel So Disconnected from Everybody sometimes? And I remember the first times I started to feel that experience. It was really kind of a challenging time in my life. I really did not know what was going on. And I'm going to talk about that in more detail now. I'm going to share with you why it's happening to people more and more every day because of the awakening process that's happening around the globe. We're going to get into that conversation a little bit deeper. But I have to ask you the question: have you ever been around like a lot of people, like literally in the middle of a party, but can't really connect anybody? Have you ever literally been in the middle of a conversation with somebody and you hear them talking, but you can't necessarily feel what they're saying? Have you ever been around an environment, a family group, a church group, a social event that's very familiar to you, but you kind of feel like you've never been there before? Well, welcome to today's world. Welcome to we, quite honestly, because if you've had any of those experiences or similar experiences to that, it makes a lot of sense. The society, the world, is identifying itself more as a spiritual essence than a religious essence. I heard that stat, oh gosh, I don't know, a year ago or so. And it's stuck with me ever since. And that that's a perfect metaphor. It's the perfect way to kind of caveat into what's really going on with each individual out there that's on a spiritual path, and things are just different. And you know, the world is different, the world is waking up, humanity is waking up, and you're either waking up with it or you're not. And either way, it's not a judgment of good or bad, it's not a right or wrong. Nothing I say here is about absolutes. My message here at the We Podcast is about sharing my experience, strength, and hope, and hoping to bring some clarity for people that are on a path of that can be really confusing sometimes. Hoping to create a unity, an organization of like-minded, like-hearted, like-spirited people that can come together in communion. That's why I hope you're visiting my website wepodcast.global and signing up for our list and things, because I want, you know, we're going to be having live events, and anybody that's listening to me here, I want to meet you. I want to get to know you. I want you to get to know me. And we're going to have some online events where people can ask questions directly. And I want to ask questions of you. You know, one of the biggest reasons I started the Wii podcast was to create a community, a we, a group, an organization of like-minded people that literally have the same type of vision that I do, and that is to heal humanity. And that heal humanity concept, as I'm thinking about it more and more, as I'm experiencing it more and more, I've had some fabulous recognitions of me being right, quite honestly. And that means basically I understand and I get it in a very deep level, that the more I can help people wake up to their divinity, the we part of their divinity. And what is we, by the way? We, each individual sense of self, each individual person is made up of a multidimensional being. You're not an isolated me. You're not. You're a multidimensional being. There's an aspect of you called human, your humanity. There's an aspect of you called divinity or your higher self. And there's multiple aspects of you called your inner self. I call that part my inner child. I don't really care what you call it, quite honestly. I'm not here to put labels on people. I'm not here to tell you anything. I'm not here to tell you what to call or how to call or what adjectives to call these different aspects of yourself, because everybody does it differently. And that's why everybody is welcome here. There's no right and wrongs. It's my question to people are you following that higher sense of yourself? Or and or and are you discovering and listening to the deeper parts of yourself? Well, I can tell you, as those positions in your world start getting more and more of a primary action in your life, the communion with a higher power, or this thing called spiritual growth, or the connection with your inner self, or this thing called personal growth, as those things start to happen more and more, as they start become more and more of a primary position in your life, you think about it more, you talk about it more, you pursue those types of ideas more, the external world just becomes that much more confusing. And I can tell you for myself, for many, many, many years, I had no idea that the true answers in life were inside me. Quite honestly, I just thought, like everybody else, that my life was that in which I saw, that my life is that in which I experienced outside of me. And over time I learned that's just not the case. My external world isn't the source of me. My external world is the reflection of me. Let me say that again. My external world is not the source of me. My external world doesn't define me. My external world is a reflection of me. And when I learned that, it started to make a little bit more sense why there were certain times of circumstances and certain types of situations that I used to love being in. I used to love being around, that I started changing. I started changing and not being there. I started shifting and not wanting to do things that I did for years and years and years. And that whole position in life, sometimes it's really simple to shift out of the old playgrounds and playmates, but other times it's hard because the person you're outgrowing is your partner or your spouse or your best friend or your parents or whatever the it is. And I'm here to kind of bring some awareness of what's going on so that we can help basically guide through what's happening to you. And for me, when I was really in the beginning phases and I wasn't in a personal conscious awareness yet, but I would literally live life, and I kind of felt like I was living life through a fishbowl, like I was on the outside looking in at life, and I could see people, I saw people interacting, but it's like I couldn't connect. And back in the day, connect was more of an external behavior, but I went through that era of time to where nothing I did seemed right, nothing I did felt right, nothing, no part of my path seemed like I was at the right spot. And if you're in any of those places, please understand I get it. I really do. And it's not easy, it's not. Now, the great news about today versus where life used to be in the past is that there's so much more support out there. I literally am being asked to be a keynote speaker at an event coming up here in Atlanta in May called the Alive Collective. And the Alive Collective is being promoted by my life coach, which I haven't asked her yet if I can give her name to a million people, but I will. She's an amazing woman. And because I have a life coach, I and I've had a counselor or a sponsor or somebody my entire adult life, I have one now too. I hope you have somebody. I hope you have your person you can trust, you can share things with that you can get feedback from. And if you're in deep dark pain, it needs to be a therapist. If you're in, if you're in a world that's moving, you know, pretty well, maybe a life coach. But everybody needs those, that that somebody. And what does that higher vibrational you mean? I always call it glass full, glass empty. Well, the glass full part of you is your divinity side of self. It's the part of you that sees your tomorrow greater than your today. It's the part of you that is a favorable adjectives in your head instead of the critical voices in your head. It's the part of you that's able to give back instead of always take. And that part, that higher you, the divinity you, as more and more people are waking up to the possibility of that, there's more and more people coming together and literally creating communities like that. So, right now, if you're in some confused spot and you know there's something more, but you don't really know how to do it, where to do it, how to connect, how to be supported, the great news now is you go online and you just start looking for groups that support conscious growth, spiritual awakening, anything like that. And 12-step groups are perfect for it. There's massive numbers of groups, spiritual groups in in churches and religious synagogues and places. So there's support for you to go and create a new mirror for yourself. And that's really, really important. Because for me, back in the day, back years ago, basically, I always believed that connection with another human was based on the behavior patterns of what I did with that other human, how I interacted with them. You know, if we like to play football, they were my friends. If they like to drink, they were my friends. If they like to smoke marijuana, they were my friends. The connection happened based on the behaviors, the interactions, the action steps we took outside of ourselves. And now, is there anything wrong with that? No, not at all. But over time, it didn't work anymore. I was in the same groups doing the same things with the same people. And even though they were physically there, their bodies were in front of me. I felt no communion with these people. I really didn't. And from that position, and there's a real sense of disconnect. That's why I started off by saying, Do you ever feel like you're disconnected from everybody? And if the answer is yes, our brain says there's something wrong with us. We're doing something wrong. We must be wrong, we must have done something. And that's just not the truth. The truth is you're spiritually growing, you're personally growing, you're shifting, you're going into a grander you. And from the grander sense of yourself, you're going to connect with people and places and things and ideas and jobs and careers differently. You connect differently. In the interim, it can be very confusing. In the interim, it can be really lonely. In the interim, it can be scary as crap. And I'm telling you, there were days in my past where weeks and weeks and weeks, I would feel this deep sense of aloneness and lonely. And the behaviors of my yesterday I couldn't do because I was working to get sober. I was working not to drink, I was working not to drug. And in those initial months and years, because my entire adult life, the way I connected to people was by drinking and drugging with them. When I removed the drinking and the drugging, I also removed the people, which that was a good thing from a place of sobriety. It was horrific from a place of my life, Joe's world, my Tuesday morning, my Thursday afternoon, my Sunday afternoon. They were just vacant. There wasn't anything there. And in my world, it was pretty extreme. But in most people's world, as you start growing, as you start shifting, as you start expanding that which you used to call normal, you won't be able to call normal anymore. Now, does that mean every time you have a spiritual awareness or a spiritual awakening and all that, you got to get rid of all your friends and divorce your partner? And no, of course not. No, that isn't what it is. It's more about as you become a grander you, then quite honestly, you'll have more to offer the people that you deeply care about. In the interim, though, it can be confusing. I literally was just on the phone with a woman not long ago, and she and her husband had been had dated each other for many years, and he was a drinker, and she was a kind of drinker, and they partied, and they're both in their mid-30s. And then he reached a place to where he was the one that one beer is not enough, one beer is too many, and 10's not enough. Where she was more kind of drank because that's just what the group did. She wouldn't consider herself an alcoholic, but alcohol got him by the throat. So by the grace of God, he got himself into a program and started to change and started to create a relationship with God. These two are both Christians, so they have Jesus in their world. And he got into a program and started creating connection with people in sobriety, which was fantastic. The problem was he would then have new connections in his sobriety and his AA groups. And then when he came home to his wife, he and she would sit there and they were kind of lost with each other. They were kind of confused, they didn't know how to connect anymore. And I asked her, I said, So what did you guys do to connect before? We drank together. Oh, what else did you do? We did some drugs together. Oh, well, what else did you do? Well, you know, we were both pretty critical people. We'd kind of commiserate and making people wrong. Oh, well, you can't do any of those things anymore, right? Right. So her lost, what was lost? He moved from living an alcoholically active life to pursuing a relationship with a higher power and getting sober, removing alcohol, and she was in the process of catching it up. And it was very, very interesting because in the beginning they really questioned their marriage. Like, is it gonna last? Because it wasn't built on faith and trust and community and higher connection and relationship with a power greater than themselves. It wasn't what their relationship they got married, they got drunk together at their wedding. Well, happy story here. She got into a program, she got into a woman's group. He's now well over a couple years sober. And now they sit together and in their world, they read the Bible together, they go to on mission trips together, they give back into the community together. When he has a hard day, she sits and listens. When she has a hard day, he tries to listen. I was telling her, you got to teach him what you need, what you want. A man's initial instinct is to come in and rescue. Where in reality, when a woman's hurting, all she needs is to hear you're sorry. When a man's frustrated, all he needs to hear is that you're here for him. And they started to learn how to connect with each other through the emotional sense of self. They started to commune together because they had the same position, the same belief of a higher power. So they would share their perspectives of a higher power. And today, I'm happy to say they're a couple years married now and they're making it. But they had to go through a pretty, a pretty strong shift. And for myself, as I went through the spiritual growth position, right? And I had my awakening back 30 some odd years ago, I had to literally change all of my playgrounds and playmates because I knew if I was going to get sober and I was going to stay sober, I couldn't have the people in my life that literally, the way I connected, what we did every day was drink and drug. We would go shoot pool in bars and hang out with people, um, drinking and drugging. And of course, drugs of back then for Joe was always marijuana. We were always pursuing a relationship. When I was single, I was always seeking the satiation of female partnership as my okay mechanism. If I'm with the right woman, then I'm gonna be okay. And back in the day, I was always working, and it was always like well, every time I made a thousand dollars that and I never felt okay. The pursuit was always the next thousand, the next thousand, the next thousand, and I was never okay. Never, never matter how much money I made, I wasn't okay. Never mattered if I had the right woman, I was never okay. Didn't matter if my friends and I were getting along or not, I was never okay. And why is that? Because Joe was outgrowing the ability to connect in my outside world as a satiating event. So hear what I'm saying. In Joe's world, in in my mid-third or my early 30s, I outgrew, I couldn't do it anymore. It didn't work anymore. Now it did through my teens, it did through my 20s. I if I had people around and the right girlfriend and all that, I felt pretty good. I did, I had a great, I had a great life, but then I outgrew it. So if you're sitting here today on this podcast feeling a little lost and a little confused, and you know, your world's doing pretty well, but you don't like feel like you fit into it anymore? The answer is because you don't. Does that mean you have to leave it like I did? No, it doesn't. But you'll when you understand what's happening, it just makes it easier. The personal growth position, basically, what is personal growth? Personal growth is when you're in a self-discovery position, a self-discovery attitude of you getting to know you on a grander level, on a deeper level, from the position of the we, humanity, higher self, inner self. Personal growth is really more about you gaining and identifying parts of yourself inside of you that you didn't know before. The source of the voice that says, I hate myself, the source of the voice that says he's an idiot, the source of the voice that says, I'm not pretty. Any glass empty voice in your head, all of the shame based, guilt based voices in your head, none of those voices are sourced from your head. None of them. Your head, the voices you hear in your head are the consequence of an emotional part of you hurting in your heart and in your belly. And that's why the positive affirmation thing doesn't really work. It doesn't change anything. Now, I always have to caveat because if it's working for you, great, keep doing it. But if it's not, understand why. Because there are programs out there, there's people out there that have millions of followers. And I'm like, I wonder if it was working. Well, they keep telling people to do it. And for me, it never worked. It just didn't. Why? And I learned because for Joe, I was never really trying to change the voice. I was always asking the question: why do I have the voice in the first place? What is the source of that voice? The source of the voice is inside you, in the deeper parts of you. So personal growth, how you personally grow is you learn techniques to identify deeper parts of yourself. You bring your awareness from the outside world, looking at everything outside of yourself. You bring your awareness inside yourself. And you have your awareness listen, look for, seek, find parts of you that you didn't know were there. And every time you find a new part, that's how you grow. And the growing part isn't, or the awareness part isn't the challenge. It's the growing part. Because as you become aware of a part of you that's hurting, then you have to give that part a voice. I used to do it through dominant, non-dominant handwriting. Perfectly fine, the writing part, it's when the emotion part came that got really challenging. And that's all why we need to have people need to have support. That's why there's therapy. That's why there's 12-step programs. That's why there's support groups. When you're truly hurting, there's environments that people can be there with you, for you, next to you, while you're bringing your awareness deeper inside of yourself. And from that position of growth, eventually those parts heal. And as those parts heal, where there used to be pain, fills with glory. Where there used to be vacancy, fills with overflow. Where there used to be angst fills with excitement and joy. And that's what the reward of personal growth is. And when you look back from the position of your external world, it isn't the source of you, and your internal world, you're new at doing it. That's why people are waking up every day and they feel lost. They feel disconnected. They can't really figure out what the hell they're doing. If that's you, I have empathy for you, especially if you're new, because it's challenging. But I can promise you the reward on the other side is quite amazing. Now, the with personal growth, then you also typically, the more you connect to deeper parts of yourself for Joe, the grander my awareness of a higher Joe came into play. That's where divinity, our higher self. All 12-step programs are about helping people create a conscious relationship with a power greater than themselves. Why? Because it's in that conscious communion, that conscious contact with a power greater than yourself. There's the 12 steps that help you take 12 different action steps to create that relationship, a higher you, a connection, a relationship with the higher you. Well, as that happens, you connect with a higher you instead of going to the bar and drinking. You connect with a higher you instead of cussing out your wife. You connect to a higher you or you ask for support, you get you heal yourself in those communities instead of the old. What does that mean? The image isn't your physical, the image is the spiritual called you, the higher divinity you. And the more you can create a relationship with that higher you by conversation, by connection, by prayer, which is asking for help, by meditation, which is listening for the answers, that's how you create a relationship with that part. And that's where spiritual awareness happens. And I'm going to go through that a little bit further, but let me back up. How do we truly change? Where does all of this make our life better? Well, it's not in the awareness part, it's not in the growth part, it's in the awakening part. And let me explain that. We're all here on the planet, right? We're all doing the best we can freaking do. We're all trying to have a good life, we're all trying to be productive and be successful and love our kids and love the world. We're all trying to do that. Some people are doing it pretty well. If you're anything like the way I was failing at every component of it. Now, most of you, if you're on this podcast, you're not failing at everything, but you're failing at some stuff. Why? Because the stuff you're failing at, quote unquote, externally, the answer isn't external. This was my hardest awareness. I'll never forget it. I'm down in Savannah and I'm newly married at this point. I've got a two 18-month-old, my son Joseph's 18 months. And my wife's style of parenting and my style of parenting were very, very different. When I met my past wife, we had a great, you know, love at first sight, literally. We dated for a while, we got married, we had a baby. Now, this is over a three or four year period of time. So nothing was fast. But then when we had a baby, everything started to change. Not because either one of us was right or wrong, but it wasn't until we had a third entity in our world that we really identified our differences. Prior to that, there wasn't a difference. Everything she liked, I liked. Everything I liked, she liked. At least within 10 or 15%, right? There has to be a little bit of variety, or there's no true communion or no true relationship. Well, that was the way it was, but the way we parented was different, very different. Well, we have an experience with my oldest son. We're down visiting family, and her style of parenting was he's in a brand new room in a playpen. He's 18 months old. And her style of parenting is let him cry until he passes out. Well, Dad Joe just couldn't do that. Couldn't do it, wouldn't do it. And I didn't care what the environment was saying. I walked in there, I sat with my son, I held my son, I put him in my arms, I put him over my shoulder, I cuddled him, I loved on him. Would she have done it that same kind of way? Yes, but in a very different way. Why? Because she was raised that you let him cry and then they figure it out. I was, I was, after years of inner child work, saying, the last thing I want to do is abandon my 18-month-old and let him, an 18-month-old figure it out all by himself. So, anyways, long story short, huge blow up. Me against her and her entire family of people we're staying with. And did I care? No. Why? Because I was strong with my little kid, I was strong with my inner child and strong with my son. And the bottom line, the argument and the fighting, and you name it. So I'm driving home, and my pastor, which happened to be my past wife's father, I call him and I just knew it was going to be on my side. I just knew I was right. I just knew loving and nurturing and being gentle and being connected and collected with my son Joseph was the right thing. Like anyone on the phone, and I'm telling him my story, and I'm just waiting for him to say, Joe, congratulations. You stood up for your son. You know what he said to me? He says, Joe, sounds to me like you're kind of in a blind spot. I was like, What? Yeah, Joe, kind of sounds to me. And he he's got the preacher voice, right? This man is fucking fabulous. He was been a friend for years. He says, Joe, sounds like you're in a blind spot. And I really at the moment didn't know what the hell he was talking about. Like, what are you talking about? Blind spot. I'm right, they're all wrong. Don't you see it? He said to me, Joe, what we need to help you do is see what you're missing. I didn't like that answer, but I was a man of awareness. I was a man searching for answers. We got off the phone. There was no restitution in that moment. I just knew I was right and they were wrong. I was right, they were wrong. But you know what I found out later is that there is no such thing as right and wrong. For Joe, I needed them, especially my wife, to be different for Joe to be okay. And I call that my Savannah experience because from that moment forward, I really realized that the partner you have in your world, and in this case was my wife at the time, the partnership you have in your world is truly there more as a mirror of where you need to grow, not they need to change. And that was a gut punch for me. It really, really was. Because the true essence of how my oldest son was parented wasn't the issue. It was the blow-up, it was the anger, it was the angst, it was the powerlessness, it was the all the chaos around my 18-month-old. That was the issue, was the wound, was me acting out. Now, were they acting out? I'm sure they were, but anything they did, that has nothing to do with Joe. They need to find that in their own therapy sessions. But for Joe, what I realized in that moment, later, it didn't happen at the time, but I realized after that experience is that my partnership with my wife, quite honestly, if there was something in my wife that I needed her to change for me to be okay, that meant there was something in me not okay. Every time I would get in an argument or a fight or a I'm right and she's wrong, and I just knew I was right and she was wrong. What I learned over time is there is no such thing as right or wrong. I was trying to change her because I wasn't okay. Now you're in relationship now. You're listening here. You've got people in your world right now that push your buttons right now as we're speaking. There's something in somebody close to you, a partner, a friend, a parent, a sibling, a sister, a brother, that you just know if they would change, everything would be better. Well, folks, it ain't about them changing, it's about you changing. Me in this case, this the my Savannah experience was about Joe changing. And I'll never forget because I was in therapy. My my therapist Perla, I took this whole thing to Perla, and Perla helped me see. It goes back to that same one finger out, three fingers back. Well, what was my one finger out? I just needed my past wife to change because she was wrong. Well, no, she isn't wrong. She might do it different than me, but that's not to make her wrong. My need to make her wrong is the red flag. Hear me. Joe's need to make her wrong was my red flag. So if you're sitting here now and there's some experience you're in the center of, and you keep telling yourself that they're wrong, you need to look at you. You need to go inside yourself. You need to ask yourself, what are you experiencing? What are you feeling? What was Joe feeling in that? I was feeling powerless, I was feeling angry, I was feeling lost, I was feeling alone, I was feeling isolated, I was feeling all of the uncomfortable feelings in me. But I was so busy making her wrong, I was abandoning myself. Literally. Well, over the following months, I reclaimed those parts. I eventually made amends. I eventually saw my side. And that's all we can do in a relationship. We have to see our side of the street. Hopefully, you're in a relationship with somebody where they can see their side, but if they can't, your okayness comes from you seeing your side of the street, and that's personal growth. The growth is when the personal awareness is when you see you have an issue. I needed to make her wrong. I could see that me, my need to make her wrong was an issue for me. I didn't know what the issue was, but through therapy, through support, I gave those deeper parts of Joe a voice, literally, my inner child. And we talked and he'd grieve and just the whole process that I can't get into right now, but I gave that part a voice. I did. Well, as that part grieved and that part felt better, my need to make my past wife wrong went away. I the freedom I gained from my own personal growth is that she could do an action step A, B, C, and I could do the exact same thing X, Y, Z. And even though we were doing it completely opposite, I didn't have to make her wrong because we were different. That was my freedom, truly. The awakening to growth is the freedom we experience. And that's the same thing from spiritual awareness. You can be spiritually aware that you have a power greater than yourself. You can learn to grow and a connection with that higher power. But how do you truly change your life? How do things actually literally become different in your external world? Well, the difference is when you start following a different internal guidance system, the part of you that makes your decisions. If you're being guided by a part of you that's making everybody wrong, and it's a fear-based voice and not good enough and not smart enough, that the glass empty voices, your external world is going to mirror your internal glass empty voices. With spiritual awareness and spiritual awakening, how you awaken to and change things is that you have to learn the difference between the part of you that's the wounded you, the glass empty voices, and the divinity you, the glass full voices. Well, how do you change your world? Literally, you learn how to follow your glass full voices. Hear me. You learn how to follow. You let your glassful voices be your guidance system. The way you change your tomorrow, you have to change it today. How do you change it today? You have to make different choices than you made in your yesterday. The only way you change your yesterday in your tomorrow is you have to make different choices today. How do you make the different choices? You have to identify the difference between glass empty voices and glass full voices. Glass empty voices, the I'm not good enough, I'm too fat, I'm too skinny, she's too ugly, he's too stupid, all those voices, those are your glass empty voices. I'm never enough, I'll never make enough money. All of those are glass empty voices. When those voices are helping you, guiding you, making your decisions, they end up making decisions that create your external world to mirror them. Glass empty. Well, over time we've got techniques to write down all those glass empty voices. And then what are the voices that are left? The glass full voices, the divinity voices. It's one thing to be aware of the divinity voices, it's another thing to grow and really hear the divinity voices. It's a completely different thing to take action on your glassful voices. As you take action on your glassful voices, that's spiritual awakening. You're waking up the spirit in you, you're following it, you're changing it. As you do that, your external world is going to mirror the glass full you. Well, a glassful you is going to create more of a glassful external world. And that's how it changes. Awareness is the beginning, growth as you learn about it. Living it is the awakened part, both from the spiritual perspective and the personal perspective. Spiritual awareness, the spiritual growth idea, creating a relationship with a power greater than yourself. You can have the greatest relationship in the world with whatever you're calling the entity. But if you don't implement that part guiding you, nothing changes. Your external world still sucks. Why? Because you're not changing. And that's so there's a whole process to that. That's the seventh step in the program. We have to ask for strength and courage to actually have the courage to change. But the awakening process is when you literally are taking actions based on glass full. And from that position, the glass full position, then the world starts changing. Your external world starts changing. And where's the freedom come from? I can tell you one of the most confusing parts of relationships and why people spin and they never feel like they're growing is because you can feel disconnected from the world, but the pursuit of connection is a different external world. And that's why the second part of the title of this episode is why your heart isn't healing. Well, your heart isn't healing unless you're giving a voice to the parts that are hurting. Your heart will not heal unless you actually listen to the voices in you that are hurting. That's why I'm not a fan of the positive affirmation concept. Because those affirmation voices, the voices you're trying to change, changing the voice and trying to act like the voice is something other than the hurt it really is, is like putting a band-aid over a wound and wondering why the wound is still festering. If we identify the voice as a red flag, you go into why the voice is there, it's going to be an inner part of you. The healing of your heart doesn't happen from the outside in. The healing of your heart happens from the inside out. It typically happens in sacred silence. It typically happens one-on-one in therapy. It typically happens in this in the safe environments of 12-step meetings or support groups or women's groups. It happens for most in some type of community. Now, that's the one thing I have to say where I'm kind of calling the kettle black because I didn't have that 35 years ago, because there wasn't the type of community that there is now. So much of what I did with just me, but that isn't how it is today. Life isn't like that today. You don't have to do it with just yourself anymore. And the freedom that ends up happening, and where it's the biggest glaring difference today for Joe, is the difference between glassful loving and glass empty loving. I was without question the single most addictive person I knew and the most codependent person I knew. I literally believed with all of my heart, if I was helping somebody by fixing them or doing it for them or getting them out of their pain, I was loving them. And I was told over and over, Joe, that's not love. I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? It's not love. Look at me. My actions are being nice to that person. And then one day I realized action steps are not love or lack thereof. It's the intent of the action step that defines love or not love. Hear me. Your action steps can be loving. But if the reason you're taking the action step is out of pain, Then it's not love. Here's a perfect example. If let's say your wife has problems with alcohol and you see her hurting, you see her killing herself, you see her all that. And every time you look at her, you want to just help her, you want to just hold her neck, you want to get her to a meeting, you want to get her sober, you want to get her whatever. Well, here's the truth. Every time you see her and feel pain, the pain you're feeling is in you, not her. Your codependence is going to say, the only reason I'm feeling pain is because she's in pain. No, the only reason you're feeling pain is because her pain is mirroring your pain. And every time you take an action step out of your pain to help her, you're abandoning yourself and you're abusing her. Hear me? When you take an action step out of pain, you're abandoning yourself because if you're in pain, you need to close down your external world and go inward. Give a voice to your pain. Most people don't do it. They're in pain, and their answer to their own pain is fix somebody else and call it love. That's not love, folks. That's called codependence. Why? Because the only reason you need to fix them is because you're in pain. If you're in pain and they're in pain, when you see them, your pain motivates you to take action to fix them. It's not love. It's the action step of giving them vitamins and helping them go to a meeting and giving them water. Are the action steps loving? Yes. Is the motivation behind it love? No, it's codependence. Why? Because the only reason you're drawn to do it is because you're in pain and their pain's mirroring yours. And if you're not embracing your own pain when you're in pain, you're abandoning yourself. You got a little kid in you screaming, please take care of me, take care of me, take care of me, the me. And two people are too busy taking care of the them, the he or the she. And that's what codependence is. The freedom that happens on the other side, and I live there now, I can tell you for the most part. I can see somebody in pain, and how do I know I'm free? Does that mean I don't have any emotional reaction? No, of course not. I do. But the emotional reaction is compassion or empathy, not pain. I can see somebody else in pain. But since I don't have the same pain mirroring in myself, it doesn't hurt. I have compassion for them, yes. I have empathy for them, yes. But since I've done so much internal work, I can literally watch somebody in pain feel their pain and not be in pain myself. How do I know the difference? Because when I was in pain myself, I was powerless to not trying to fix them. But the motivation was because I had my own pain. Now I'm on the other side of so much of my own personal pain, right? I can see people, and the response to somebody else being in pain is compassion or empathy. And that's the difference. That's the freedom I've given myself. Years ago, the way I would connect with people, the way the relationships for me were developed was based on the behaviors of what we did outside. And then that interim period where this episode is really about, I want you to understand if you're feeling disconnected from everybody, if you're feeling lost, if you're sitting there and you're just kind of confused, understand that's all part of the spiritual growth process. And that's a red flag telling you that you're waking up. The you of your yesterday isn't working as easily as it is, that it used to be. You're changing, hence why that which you used to effortlessly connect to outside, you're not, why you're feeling so disconnected from everyone and everything, isn't because the outside is changing, you're changing inside. Well, the interim between that, the way you heal it and you change and you feel better, is instead of keep trying to connect outside, you go in and heal your inside. Instead of the idea of not healing your heart, use the disconnect from your outside world as a red flag that says, I've got internal work to do. If it's personal, internal emotional work, it's personal growth. If you're disconnected and want to create a relationship with a power greater than yourself, that's spiritual growth or spiritual awareness work. Together, as both of that comes together, that's where the we becomes so powerful. And I can tell you the shift, the change is so dramatic. Because years ago, the way I would connect with my girlfriend when I was still drinking is I love the way she drank and drugged like me. The woman that I was with when I got spiritually awoken with my drugs and alcohol being removed. We drank the same way, we partied the same way, we did it all the same. And I called it love. I did. And I love being around her. It was not easy walking away from her 30 some odd years ago, it wasn't. Well, fast forward to my marriage. And in my marriage, my past wife, Elizabeth, who is a fabulous woman, she's a great mother to my boys. We're still solid friends today, 10 years later. But what we connected on, she and I, was our external world. She wanted the two kids, the wife, the house, and the picket fence, and so did I. She wanted to live in upper middle class America, and so did I. We connected with the behavior patterns of our external, and it worked for a while, until such time as we had to then commune together to raise kids. She did it one way, I did it the other. And one day we outgrew each other. We just did. Now, fast forward. So again, still kind of external. It was. There was a deep love, a deep connect. I knew I was supposed to be there and I was. Now, this is 20 years later, the same woman, right? 12 years together, now 10 years on our own path. But the connect is still kind of the same, but it's more from an external. Well, fast forward to September 20th, 2022, where I'm listening to a woman that I've never met to this day, literally. And she's sharing, and she's sharing from her heart. How do I know? Because she was asked a question and it sparked emotion, and she's sharing from her heart. And my heart opened wide. I had no idea what this woman looked like. I knew nothing about her. I still almost know nothing about the same person. So why do I always bring this person up? Because the metaphor was so profound. Literally, I was I laughed because I learned the concept of the real. Everybody on the planet knew what a real was besides Joe. Well, this female comes up on my frickin' reel just not long ago. And she'd done an interview. Now I hadn't seen a video or anything for this woman for over two years. Now we're dating 2022. It's been three and a half years. And my connect with this person, she's more the metaphor for me, not the human. I don't know the woman, but I use it as the metaphor. I read something she was writing, and she talked about a grander tomorrow in what she wrote. Her divinity was speaking in her writing. I connected with the divinity in her writing. I heard her on a podcast, and she was sharing from her heart. In this particular case, she was grieving over the loss of her marriage. But my heart connected to this woman living from her heart internal. Lo and behold. Two years later, now, two and a half years later, I just come across another video. It was on my freaking reels. It just like shows up. And I listen, it's like a two and a half minute video. And sure enough, right in the middle of this reel, the same woman. Now, this time I see her, I'm listening, and the same woman is talking and sharing about this magical experience that she had with one of her employees, one of her employees and their son. And again, she starts emoting. This time, though, she's grieving out of joy. And I said, That's it. That's why I was so drawn to this woman. The concept of this type of person, somebody who's living from their heart inside. So think about the difference that Joe's gone from. Years ago, we drank and drugged the same. My marriage, we wanted the same type of external life. Today, I'm drawn to a woman, if I ever have a woman in my life again, who lives her life from the inside out, from her heart first. That's the growth that I've come through. Why? Because I went through periods of time where I felt very disconnected. I used the disconnect to seek support. In support, I gave a voice to the deeper parts of myself through inner child work. As I connected deeper, I started remembering a higher power presence in me. That's why I say all the time, I'm not a I'm not a teacher. I don't teach anybody anything here. I help you remember what's already in you. That's why I say I'm not a doctor, I'm not a researcher, I'm none of those things. I'm a guy just like you. And you're just like me. And that's why the We podcast is growing, because there's no individual more or less special than anybody else. We're all the same. We all have the same divinity inside of us. Some of us have been doing it a little longer than others. For myself, I've been doing this almost 40 years. I got a great podcast coming up later because I finally, after 40 years, came across something that I can't do. And I'm gonna leave you with that. You're gonna want to tune into that podcast. I found something I can't do. First time in 40 years. I am really glad you're here. If you're feeling disconnected from the world, I understand. I really do. Seek communion. Get in groups, find a community that can you can connect with. The disconnect from your external world isn't because your external world is wrong, it's because you're shifting and growing, bottom line. And if you grow into a different you, please understand there's gonna be an emotional side that comes up. You know, we're male-female. And the spiritual side of yourself and the emotional side of yourself, it's all kind of connected together. So as you become more aware of a higher you, there's gonna be deeper parts of you that need a voice. And typically in that deeper part of you, there's gonna be emotion. So let the emotion come. Get yourself help, get therapy, get support. So you're not doing it all with just you. And understand that the disconnect you're feeling from the outside world is your red flag that says it's time to connect to a grander you. The buttons that are being pushed in you from your outside world, understand that those are red flags, that there's something in you that needs to heal. And as more and more of us do it, and more and more of us get on the other side, more and more of us live from that overflow position, that's how we heal the world, literally. Connection to a grander you through a higher sense of self, the healing of a deeper you through giving the voice to your darkest parts. Collectively, we become a we individually. As we come together on a podcast like the We podcast, we create a movement of people living and giving back from their divine sense of self. And the more of us that live from a divine sense of self, the more people are giving back from their overflow. The more overflow we share into the world, the more we heal humanity. And collectively, we're doing it. The show is exploding because more and more people are being drawn here through their divinity. And how do we know we do it? You just look around the room. You want to know if you're living in your divinity? Just look around the room. If you're bringing a smile to the face of the people around you, then that's you living in your overflow. And together, we're coming together. Together, we're connecting in a higher place. And together, we're healing humanity. One smile at a time. Thanks for being here, everybody. I really appreciate your support. And I look forward to my next podcast, and I look forward to everybody being here and helping me on this mission to heal humanity. Thank you so much for your support.

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So that's it for today's episode of the We Podcast. Head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will win a chance the grand prize drawing to win a$25,000 private VIP day with Joe himself. Be sure to head on over to WePodcast.