102 ~ Hungry Ghosts: When Desire Becomes Insatiable

Have you ever caught yourself mindlessly eating chocolate or clicking “next episode” on Netflix into the early hours, even when you’re no longer enjoying it? Brenda and Catherine talk about the “hungry ghost” state: a craving that seems bottomless, never fully satisfied.

In this episode, they explore the Buddhist concept of the hungry ghost (Preta in Sanskrit), beings with enormous bellies and tiny mouths, eternally yearning but never fulfilled, and how this ancient metaphor shows up in modern life. Whether it's through binge-watching, emotional eating, impulse shopping, or draining relationship patterns, they reveal how these behaviors often point to deeper unmet needs.

Drawing from their own stories (yes, including Hershey’s Kisses and online shopping sprees), they offer a compassionate lens on what it means to be caught in cycles of compulsive behavior. Rather than shaming these patterns, they see them as messengers—nudging us to ask: What am I truly hungry for?

This conversation invites listeners into a deeper relationship with desire—not as something to control, but as something to understand. The journey isn’t about discipline or perfection; it’s about awareness, honesty, and the courage to meet our true needs.

Episode Highlights

• Hungry ghost behaviors can show up as binge-eating, excessive shopping, or endless scrolling, etc
• The Buddhist image: big belly, pinhole mouth ~ always hungry, never satisfied
• Awareness is the first step to interrupting compulsive cycles
• Self-compassion is essential; shame only deepens the hunger
• Our culture promotes both deprivation and overconsumption, especially for women
• The question “What do I truly need?” brings clarity
• These patterns often point to meaningful desires we’ve been taught to suppress
• Sometimes, we must move through the compulsive phase before we reach true nourishment

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Chapters

• 2:09 The Hungry Ghost Concept Explained
• 6:02 Recognizing Compulsive Behaviors
• 8:28 Understanding Our Inner Toddler
• 14:38 Moving Beyond Shame
• 19:18 Finding What You Really Need
• 24:20 Compassion for the Journey
• 28:43 Closing Thoughts and Gratitude

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire, inviting you into our world.

Speaker 2: 0:16

I'm Brenda. I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully expressed true self in my daily life. Motherhood relationships and my business Desire has taken me on quite a ride and every day I practice listening to and following the voice within. I'm a middle school teacher turned coach and guide of the feminine.

Speaker 1: 0:36

And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the truest and hopefully the highest version of me. I don't have children, I've never been married. I've spent equal parts of my life in corporate as in some down and low shady spaces. I was the epitome of tired and wired and my path led me to explore desire. I'm a coach, guide, energy worker and a forever student.

Speaker 2: 0:58

Even after decades of inner work, we are humble beginners on the mat, still exploring, always curious. We believe that listening to and following the nudge of desire is a deep spiritual practice that helps us grow.

Speaker 1: 1:12

On the Desires Medicine podcast. We talk to each other, we interview people we know and love about the practice of desire, bringing in a very important piece that is often overlooked being responsible for our desire, piece that is often overlooked being responsible for our desire. Welcome back, family, friends, listeners. So excited to be here with Brenda, we are diving in doing a few episodes on desire, all different levels, and at least that's what we're hoping to do. We haven't recorded them yet, so maybe I don't have to talk about it just yet, but that's in the plans and as we're recording thus far, something has popped up to the surface that we may have talked about in passing in other episodes but we haven't talked about, gone really into it, and it's this phrase that many teachers say in our lineage, called the hungry ghost. And of course, I'm joined here with Brenda and we're both super excited to talk about it. And it's this idea that we're starving and this ghost the hunger is a ghost because you can't ever really satiate it or catch it. It's a spirit with this insatiable craving, and there's actually a book on it, in the realm of looking at it from the perspective of addiction, from gorgeous author Gabor Mate, and his book is called In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. I don't really know when it was published, so I can't say if well, actually I can't say if the teachers that I've had that say hungry ghosts, if it came from there or if this has just been a term that's sort of like in the space, in the air, because I've actually heard people talk about it very often and when I did this quick like AI search, because you know that's all the rave nowadays. It talks about how the book is sort of urging readers to recognize that addiction, like, let's look at addiction as a universal human vulnerability rather than a moral failing, like, oh, this person failed because they're addicted to this thing. We're not necessarily going to be talking about it from the perspective hungry ghost, talking about it from the perspective of addiction, but really even behavioral patterns can be considered addictions.

Speaker 1: 3:41

The way Gabor talks about it. He'll say that addiction is. It's not necessarily a choice, it's rather it's a response to emotional pain. It's a response that's stemming from a specific trauma. Again, we're not going to go so deep into that, but we're going to talk about it from the perspective of desire. You're finally listening to it, whether it's a whisper or just really loud for you at this time in your growth. You start to feel it and it's super scary because you're just so dang hungry. Scary because you're just so dang hungry, brenda, I love when I said so dang hungry.

Speaker 2: 4:40

Brenda's eyes got really big, so hungry. It's such a familiar place for me at the beginning of my spiritual awakening, my personal development journey, to you know, in looking back now I could be like, oh wow, I was experiencing a hungry ghost. It's actually a Buddhist teaching. It's called Prata in Sanskrit and it's one of the six realms of existence, which I thought was pretty cool. And this is really cool.

Speaker 2: 5:01

The hungry ghost is depicted with these huge empty bellies and these like tiny pinhole mouths. And for me, like sometimes I'll still experience hungry ghost. You know like I experienced that recently when I had a bag of Hershey Kisses and after a party, and I was like, oh, I'm going to have some of these Hershey Kisses after a party. And I was like, oh, I'm going to have some of these Hershey Kisses. I was eating those in hungry ghost fashion. I was never satisfied. It was like I would see them in the wrapper, that shiny silver wrapper. I put it in my mouth, eat it, even try to eat it slowly, and it wasn't even down my throat yet and I was like I need another one, I need another one. And I just was. I watched myself be in that pattern.

Speaker 2: 5:49

It's like a perfect example of the hungry ghost, like it's just not satisfying and your brain tells you, oh, I need another one and then I'll be satisfied, but you can never quite touch it. You know, like I'll experience that with binging shows, sometimes Like I'm all for watching Netflix, but there is a point where it shifts from being fulfilling and enjoying it to being hungry ghost, like it's trying to fill something. Fill something. There's some need that we have, that we try to fill it in this way. That's not really true and it's never actually satisfied. It's like having an itch that you can never scratch and it's kind of maddening and you think you have to actually keep scratching it. Yeah, or have another Hershey kiss, but that's not the the thing you know when you're in that. It's like slowing down and just saying the awareness right, what's actually going on here? Oh, I'm in this behavior, and then how can I shift it?

Speaker 1: 6:57

It's so tough and I think hungry ghost shows up, like you said. You gave a great example of food. Hungry ghost shows up, like you said. You gave a great example of food. I've seen it come up around a lot with money, like when people, myself included. So I have had this experience where I love this bag, so I need to have the bag in every single color. I love these jeans. I need to have these jeans in every single color. I love this t-shirt, so I need to have this t-shirt in every single color. It's from a place.

Speaker 1: 7:24

Probably the wound if I were to think about the wound behind that hungry ghost is that I had not had that form of income, I had not been able to give that to myself, and so now I'm just excessive, right, like a gluttonous, and the hungry ghost sensation is more, if I had to. It's sort of you're buying something, eating something, experiencing something, but it doesn't really connect. It doesn't have a shut off valve. There's no moment where you say to yourself oh, I'm satisfied, like I don't need anymore, like I feel full, I feel't need any more, I feel full, I feel complete, I'm satiated, I don't need more of this potato chip, I don't need more of this GMO food, or I don't need any more. What's that stuff that they put in Chinese food? Msg, that's it. I'm thinking of Chinese food, where you're just like. You're so full but you're like let me just take another bite, one more bite, one more bite.

Speaker 1: 8:30

And this happens often, sometimes in the beginning of romance, where you want to see each other every single day or you want to know every single detail of that person's day, like what did they do? Who did they? Where did they go? Who did they talk to? Where have they been? It's sort of I want to know everything about you, because it's almost like there's this underlying scarcity underneath, in addition to I can't be satiated, but I also crave to be satiated and I'm so afraid crave to be satiated and I'm so afraid that this feeling won't go away. How do I binge, whether it's the Netflix or the cookies, or for some people, then we can go into addictions or a hungry ghost of when people say this also happens when people have gone their whole lives and they haven't said their truth. And now they're having a conversation with someone and they're like but hang on, I'm not finished, but hang on, let me. And they're talking for like 45 minutes and they have no clue that they've been talking that whole time and they've taken you on this whole story ride. They just so desire to be witnessed and seen. They haven't potentially experienced that enough and they just want it so bad. There are tons of ways to look at this. I'm sure we're not going to exhaust the ways on this podcast. We're going to talk about a few of them. The ways on this podcast. We're going to talk about a few of them.

Speaker 1: 10:09

And I would say the first step is noticing I'm hungry and no matter what I eat or listen to or drink or whatever the compulsion is, I don't feel satisfied. It's a great time to pause if you have the awareness. The awareness is needed. Without the awareness, there's nothing. And don't get me wrong, because sometimes you have the awareness and yet you still can't stop the compulsion. Like you have the awareness and you're not ready to let it go. Yet you have the awareness that you're binging all day on Netflix and you're not ready to let it go. Yet you have the awareness that you're binging all day on Netflix and you're not ready to let it go. You have the awareness that you love to binge and you're not willing to let go of the television, and then we do it in steps. So one thing that I want to bring forward is we need awareness. We sort of one way of dealing with it.

Speaker 1: 11:05

After the awareness is really looking at ourselves like toddlers. Here I am two, three years old, in an adult body around this particular piece and it's going to be really hard for me to take responsibility. I think about toddlers and all toddlers say is like no, stop that. No, don't eat that. No. About toddlers and all toddlers say is like no, stop that. No, don't eat that. No, don't do that. No, no one can tell us different. We're sort of in our addiction, in our experiencing of whatever that we've been starved of. We don't want to pause because we just want what we want. Pause because we just want what we want. And it's really hard to be responsible there and let's say you have it, you let yourself have it, you've binged. You saw yourself as a toddler, you saw their awareness and you were like I don't care, I'm just going to give it to myself, no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 12:02

And then, when you're almost on the other side, the thing I tend to see is that we get full of shame and then we're embarrassed, we're like uh-oh, I can't believe I said that. I can't believe I did that. I can't believe I bought that. I can't believe I behaved that way. I can't believe I treated that person that way. Bought that, I can't believe I behaved that way. I can't believe I treated that person that way.

Speaker 1: 12:32

It's sort of this disbelief because once the fog lifts and we don't have the compulsion anymore, of course we have all this agency and we're like why couldn't I?

Speaker 1: 12:42

And I'll go back to my purse example I am in a stage or a season of my life where I'm really putting my attention on my money and my finances and really wanting to adult there and whenever I pause and think about the things I've spent on or done, I'm like I could have been retired by now. But I have to know then what I know now and it's really not fair to myself. Then, after I beat myself up for a little bit because there will be that for some of us I have to remember that it's very possible and extremely likely that the reason why I can be financially sober now, the reason why I don't have to buy five t-shirts in different colors because I like it, is because I had the experience I was able to touch my hungry ghost, able to see it and really be with, oh, I actually don't need more than what I need. I see you shaking your head, brenda. What comes up?

Speaker 2: 13:56

It's such a beautiful example and you brought it right to what I was thinking was approval for the process and approval for the journey and approval for where we are. It's so easy to go into shame afterwards and say, oh my God, look at, look at this. I bought this shirt in every color and I did this so many times in my life. Look how much money I spent. Or I didn't really need that, or I didn't really wear that, whatever it is. Beating ourselves up never helps. Ask me how I know. But approval for the process this is how we learn. We don't come here in our bodies, incarnated on this earth, with all of these lessons. I don't know where we got this idea that we're just supposed to know everything, but we are here in a body as a spiritual being, to learn things, to have experiences, to grow, and you know, we fall and we mess up and we spend too much money or we have sex with the wrong person. Whatever the thing is that we do or did, we can use it as the practice for our life, for the future. This is how why, when we're in our 50s, we've just get so wise, because we've had so many of these examples and being starving as a woman is a place on the map. In our culture. It just is. We're not oriented to nourishment, we're oriented to problems, we're oriented to deprivation. It's celebrated for women to deprive ourselves and be a martyr. So celebrated, right, I mean. So we really have to look at that. So, after we go through this phase and we filled ourselves up with whatever it is that we needed, it's very easy to go into shame or regret and say, oh my God, look how much food I ate, look how much sex I had, look all the things that I bought. It's so easy to do that and I'm going to argue that even that's okay. That's also a place on the map. You know, we're not saying you should never go there, but we are saying that having awareness and all of these locations is really key for the life that you want.

Speaker 2: 16:26

Because do I ever go into shame or regret? Sure, I do, and I've spent a lot of time there in the past. But now, when it happens, I'm like oh, this is not a good ride, I don't want to go down this ride anymore. And how do I know that? Because I've had the experience. I just want to review and just say being starved is a place on the map, or if you're listening and you're like, oh my God, I'm so hungry, I don't have X, y, z that I want. Start to give it to yourself. And there is a point that you get nourished, there is a point that you get full and that you feel satiated when you start to feed yourself whatever it is that you want, and then that's almost like when the game really starts Up. Until then, you've just been putting gas in the car, but now you have a full tank. Where do you want to go?

Speaker 1: 17:25

Where do you want to go? Yes, you hit the nail on the head. We can never shame ourselves to wealth. We can't shame ourselves to fullness. We can't shame ourselves to connection. We can't shame ourselves to stop the hungry ghost ride we can. I think it's really hard to put the genie back in the bottle Once you start to feed on whatever you're hungry for. It's sort of like you got the taste and I mean that has to be like pulling a toddler from an iPad. It's just not when you're in public and the kid just loses its mind. I'm thinking it's just not something that can be done. Really. It's sort of little by little, checking in oh, I just binged, or I just I'm thinking of what other example I can give here where I can't. I feel like I don't have the words right now to express what it feels like once you're there, like in the feeding frenzy of whatever you're feeding on, it's almost like you cannot hit the brakes.

Speaker 2: 18:50

Well, you're mid-process.

Speaker 1: 18:52

Yes, you're not on the other side.

Speaker 2: 18:54

Yeah, you're not on the other side, so it's not natural to stop right. It's like trying to stop a video game in the middle. Well, it didn't end, you didn't get anywhere yet. So it makes sense that it's hard to stop because you don't have, you didn't get the lessons yet.

Speaker 1: 19:10

I feel like, even if you stop, even if you use some form of other force, whether it's religion or, I don't know, fasting or anything that's going to have you stop the behavior without you really understanding what the behavior is. Feeding is sort of moot because the emptiness is still there. It's sort of like the action lets you know that there's an emptiness. Feeling the hungry ghost lets you know I'm starved and I need something. I need to fill this. But not feeding yourself isn't the answer. I understand that sometimes we choose things or we're hungry for things and we might be using things that are harmful to ourselves, when they're addictions and things like that, or gambling, or you're spending money, you're living outside of your means and you have debt, or you blow up your life. They're not comfortable things. The hungry ghost is not a comfortable place. As you see yourself behave in all of these ways that potentially the higher version of you is like no stop.

Speaker 1: 20:22

But I would be it's very sad if we had not recorded on this, because I think it's something that's so important and we're in a society that constantly applauds discipline, and I think discipline is great, I think commitment is great, I think desire is great and asking yourself. You know what do I want? What's one small step for me to get to where I want? But if you have a hungry ghost in the room and you know it's there, it really has to be addressed. It is basically an elephant, like. You have to address it, because life will just not be life with a hungry ghost and I think it has that level of clunk, that level of hey, take a look at me like this is important, hmm, I love the gravity in which you said that it really landed.

Speaker 2: 21:25

You know, we do it to ourselves too, in a way, meaning there's something we want and we don't give it to ourselves, and then we're constantly trying to fill that need. For example, you really, really want a steak at that fabulous restaurant. You could taste it right, but you have all these reasons why you can't go there it's too expensive, it's too far. Whatever, your reasons are that you're not giving yourself that steak, and so you're constantly going for the hot dogs and the hamburgers and it's not satisfying, like maybe it's good and there's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't hit the mark. You want that steak, you want that steak dinner. Maybe you want the whole experience, maybe you want to get dressed up, maybe you want, like, a whole experience around the steak dinner, but if you're just going to the food truck for the hot dog, it doesn't hit right.

Speaker 2: 22:32

And so sometimes we do need to ask ourselves what is it that I truly want and how can I give this to myself? And that can happen anywhere on the journey. I think I have a lot more awareness around that now, and even if I'm binging Netflix after a while, there comes a point where it's not satisfying anymore. And what is it that I really need? I have to ask myself what do I need right now, because it's certainly not another show, certainly not another episode, right, and so can I really give myself what I need is the question, and that's where the responsibility comes in for giving ourselves what we need and asking for it, which is quite vulnerable.

Speaker 1: 23:29

I just spoke about feeling the hungry ghost and having to address it, because it's like the elephant in the room. And I love what you're talking about. You're talking about awareness, like can we really be with? What am I really needing? Where am I under resourced? What is the resource? Can I give it to myself? And the hungry ghost is real. It's very possible. What's underlying that compulsion is not something you're ready to face, and so the hungry ghost is going for whatever chip or whatever fast food or whatever fast food version of what you're hungry for, and that's also, as Brenda says, a place on the map.

Speaker 1: 24:13

At the end of the day, what I would love for you guys to take away from this, if you're listening, is that Hungry Ghost is real. It's not an excuse like oh, I'm just doing this because I'm Hungry Ghost. Because the goal, even if you're binging on whatever you want not necessarily food, but whatever you're hungry for, if you're going through a binge phase, the goal is to be on the other side, and sometimes the only way on the other side is to go through it. Whatever that, it is for you to bring in as much personal responsibility as possible, understanding that there's not that much responsibility there because our brains aren't really working. We're sort of in a compulsion because it's touching on a wound and so there's not that much thinking happening. The binge is part of the experience. Taking responsibility is part of the experience. The binge is part of the experience. Taking responsibility is part of the experience. And what we would love for you to do is to not make shame part of the experience. Like, is there a way that, even though you know you're avoiding this thing by being in your compulsion with hungry ghosts, even though you're starved and you just feed, feed, feed and nothing satisfying, can you remember that this part was really hard to put down? Can you have so much love and compassion for yourself on the other side?

Speaker 1: 25:44

I see this with affairs right. I see this with eating disorders, shopping disorders. It doesn't have to get to that degree for everyone, but it does exist and we're just as Gabor Mate says, we're just experiencing like a human moment. It's not necessarily failure in that you're a failed human or you don't have morals and values. It's just oh wow, I was really taken over by this because I had this void and I just did not know how to fill it. And then when you ultimately, when you know better, you do better. And yeah, when you know better, you do better. I see Brenda snapping. Is there something you wanted to add?

Speaker 2: 26:32

I don't think a lot of people are talking about this. I don't think this is something that's well known in our culture about the hungry ghost, I think we just look at it as consumptive or rude or, you know, selfish and it is a place on the map. You know, selfish and it is a place on the map. And when we have starved ourselves for so long and we suddenly and we start feeding ourselves, we need to eat. We need to eat and we can enjoy it. We could just enjoy it. And I don't think the hungry ghost has responsibility inside of it, has responsibility inside of it innately. So just enjoy it. Just enjoy it. Enjoy it and then, when it's time to shift, do something different.

Speaker 1: 27:23

Thank you so much for that. That brings something to mind for me.

Speaker 1: 27:24

I love what Rhonda just brought in the room, which is like when we think about the hungry ghost and we don't necessarily call it that, we don't call it like an inner compulsion, and it's really easy to be witnessing someone else in their compulsion and then we have tons of opinions and judgments about that.

Speaker 1: 27:39

Oh, my goodness, this person is being rude, this person is being selfish, this person is being consumptive. And I want to gently tap you on the shoulder and say, if this is you, if you have these opinions about somebody else that's going through their thing, whatever that is, this is about them, it's not about us. If someone's being selfish, it might have impact on you, but it's not because of you, it is not about you. It doesn't mean, because you this, they, that this is just about them. Or if you are the person that's consuming and someone is looking at you and they're calling you selfish and you rude and you consumptive, yes, you may be those things, but it's not about them, it's about you and where you are on the map, so I'm happy that we got to bring this subject forward.

Speaker 1: 28:32

We're definitely not saving the world with this one in the fact that we have not gone into the really deep nooks and crannies around it, predominantly because it's so individual. It's like a thumbprint, a fingerprint, a cornea. We're all going to experience the hungry ghost in our own way. We all have our own wounds and our own ouchies that come to the surface and bubble up for us. It's not blanket across the board, and so some of this may have resonated, not all of it. Please take what resonates. Leave the rest. If something resonated for you, please, please, please, leave us an Apple podcast review. Leave us some stars. Send us a screenshot Until next time. Thanks so much.

Speaker 2: 29:31

Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast.

Speaker 1: 29:34

Desire invites us to be honest, loving and deeply intimate with ourselves and others. You can find our handles in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.