What Makes “There’s a Hole In My Love Cup” So Badass Effective?
Did you know that the book “There's A Hole In My Love Cup: The Badass Counseling® Method For Healing The Soul And Unleashing Greatness” truly captures the Badass Counseling methodology, and is unrivaled in its effectiveness?
To better understand what makes “Love Cup” so effective, we caught up with author Sven Erlandson to ask him questions about why he wrote the book, how it has helped people, and what’s next.
The audio version of LOVE Cup is EXCLUSIVELY available from this website.
Sven, what inspired you to write “There’s a Hole In My Love Cup”?
Back in my 20s and early 30s, I went through a hellacious, 12-year suicidal depression, which culminated in a suicide attempt and a psych ward 36-hour incarceration. My marriage had gone to hell. My relationship with my young children was not good. My career as a pastor was being blocked by the people in power in my denomination. I was lost, confused, aching extraordinarily inside, and felt like there was no way out.
But prior to, during, and after that time, I was always actively engaged in intense self-help research, reading, and work, to the tune of hours and hours every day, before and after work. I read a thousand or more books to find answers to my life and to the underlying questions of 'Who am I' and 'What's my purpose?' Self-help books, love books, theology, psychology, philosophy, New Age, spirituality, and on and on.
I tried every exercise, technique, meditation, and method I could get my hands on. I experimented and tested everything on the guinea pig of my life. Some worked. Most didn't. But many offered new insights that moved me along the journey a little further.
What kept you going during this terrible time?
Journaling
Through it all was the one constant – the journaling my wise, old mother had first taught me to do when I was 13. I had for decades been putting my thoughts and feelings into words. It was never a thought in my head that I'd become a writer, never a thought that I'd need journaling even to get through something like the hurricane of suicidal depression. But both ended up happening.
A handful of years after that suicide attempt, I had turned my life around, on my own with only the help of some authors and my own pen and paper. I didn't have therapists or psychologists helping me, because none really moved the ball down the field, for me. No clergy had medicine strong enough to help. No group meetings resonated with me. It was all DIY – building the plane of my self-help as I flew it.
Counseling
But, ironically, I was also counseling others during this time, because I had learned from life and had skills in counseling the soul. This was my business – Badass Counseling. I was able to help people unpack their problems and see them clearly.
And, because of my own deep inner work over a decade, I had learned a great deal that could help others, even though I still was not fully healed myself.
I was, and still am, just one beggar trying to show another beggar where to find food.
Writing and Counseling
Long story short, my method began to coalesce, because everything I taught clients, I had used on myself. I had created mostly my own tools and concepts. And I knew they worked. They were their own mosaics created from tiny bits and pieces from every author and interaction I had, as well as a hearty dose of my own creativity – the gods whispering in my ear, so to speak.
By the time I came out of the mad depression, I was on top of life like I had never been before. I had already written several books in the fields of the intersection of spirituality and religion, spirituality and politics, spirituality, and sports, etc.
In fact, I was the very first author, back in the 90s to name and fully delineate the then nascent 'Spiritual but not religious’ movement that has since become the single largest spiritual-religious movement in American history.
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But by the time the 2010s came around, I realized that I couldn't counsel everyone. Furthermore, I realized that there was a dearth of aggressive, deep-diving, yet loving counseling and counseling books in the world. No one was doing the shit that I was doing. And, I knew how important the rare, great self-help book had been in my movement through and out of suicidal life and depression/anxiety.
I knew I had to put out there all I had developed and learned. I had to show people the full framework for getting themselves out of the dark forest.
Hence, the genesis of There's a Hole in My Love Cup. I was inspired to pass on what I knew people needed – an aggressive, loving friend they could talk about their shit with as if doing so over a couple of beers; a friend who knew what to ask to take them deeper; a friend who knew exactly what they were avoiding and running from; a friend who knew how to bring healing.
Sven, what kind of problems does “There’s a Hole In My Love Cup” address?
The real fulcrum of the book is its explanation and treatment of core beliefs that drive our individual lives that most people aren't even aware of.
It's the messages that get pressed into the wet cement of a child's soul that then become the viruses infecting the operating system of their entire lives, well into old age....unless....unless they have the courage to go inside, spelunk the caves of truths and traumatic events they've been avoiding, and mine their past for the wisdom and healing it holds.
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The real problem of the tortured soul, the real problem below depression, cheating, suicide, loss, divorce, anxiety, abuse, and other forms of searing soul pain are the core beliefs that people have been taught to believe about themselves.
The messages they've received about themselves – be they explicit or implicit, intentional or unintentional – are at the root of 99% of life's hardest problems. It's not just the pain and fears from the past, present, and future. It's about those damn core beliefs that you can't even see.
They have to be brought into the light. Naming the beast is half the problem.
How does Love Cup help people?
So, what There's a Hole in My Love Cup delivers as a self-care/self-help book is a hand-holding, challenging, deep dive into the truths and lies that have been poured and written in cement covering the bedrock of your soul, covering your actual authentic self.
It forces you to look at, name, and begin to root out the stuff you can't see and have likely not wanted to see, because you can feel that stuff and it does not feel good. And, you know that whatever is down there is scary as hell. So, folks spend their lives running from it by distractions, chaos, and work; or by numbing and self-medicating.
For the person courageous enough to finally address that inner shit, or for the person finally so tired of running from it and tired of the price that running exacts on the spirit, Love Cup heals you in ways no book or therapist can, because it addresses the core problem – your beliefs about you that you didn't even know exist.
The concepts are deeply challenging, but the impact is doubled and tripled by the exercises and song recommendations at the end of chapters, as well as the 13 Bonus Tracks for the reader.
The book has sold tens of thousands of copies in paperback, ebook, and audiobook to people from South Africa to New Zealand, from the Azores of Portugal to Nanuet in far northern Canada, and all across the U.S. People continue to be shocked at the effectiveness of Love Cup in bringing healing they've never known and in removing the fog to reveal clarity of purpose and direction.
It has brought many, many people to a place of feeling so much lighter and energized. In more ways than can be enumerated, it packs a punch in delivering for readers its stated goal: a greater ALIVENESS!
Sven, what would you have done differently if you had had Love Cup to read?
I wrote the book I wished I would've had, back in my hardest years. I wrote the book with the parenting insights I wish I would've known in raising my kids. I wrote the book that helps solve the relationship problems I had and others have had. I wrote the book that has 30 years of soul counseling expertise woven in with massive personal experience.
Every exercise and chapter is tried and true from personal experience and as used in the lives of those 30 years of clients.
If I had had this book, the suicidal depression would've never happened or would've concluded in months, rather than years.
What has been the biggest surprise you’ve had as a result of “There’s a Hole In My Love Cup”?
The biggest surprise for me, the author, has been that it has delivered and people are shouting back to me how much it has changed their lives.
It's a really cool feeling to know that in some weird, spiritual way I'm holding people's hand through their darkest times, and I'm walking 'em through it and out of it, just like I wished I could've had.
The cool-ass surprise is realizing that I had to go through all the pain and disorientation alone to teach myself the layout of the dark forest and to learn all it was trying to teach me so that tons of people later wouldn't have to.
And, that's pretty frickin' cool!
What feedback have you received from the book?
Here’s an example that Ellie shares.
“The Journaling exercises are no joke, they hit me hard and go deep within my soul, but wow is it mind-blowing how much I'm learning about myself. For instance, I thought my biggest regret was one thing but once I really thought on it I discovered something deep within me I wasn't even aware of what's been driving me into dark places for so long. Without knowing that alone, how was I ever going to truly change for the better?
Words cannot express how thankful I am to find your book, videos, and podcasts. Over 20 years of counseling, close to 100 self-help books, and combined they haven't touched the depth of only a couple weeks following your book and shared content.
Sorry to go on and on but wow. I've been searching for this my entire life! An answer to countless prayers I make lying on the floor screaming and crying that I just wanted to be okay. You rock!”
And, here’s more feedback on the book!
So, What’s Next After Love Cup?
Now, Love Cup has birthed its next application!
I’m in the final stages of editing, and Badass Wisdom is the next iteration in the franchise.
It takes healing down to the quick-hit, deep dive of a powerful 365-day daily meditational that is replete with powerful quotes, quick stories, and deep questions. It is engineered to kick your ass every day and so take you to happiness, peace, and greater ALIVENESS!
Badass Wisdom will be available for purchase in Fall 2023!! Sign up for the Badass Counseling newsletter and be the first to know about Badass Wisdom!
Thanks, Sven!
If you experience soul-searing issues such as feeling depressed and not knowing why, inexplicable gut-gripping anxiety, or feeling that your relationships with parents, children, or significant others are problems you don’t know how to address, consider reading “There’s a Hole In My Love Cup.”
Thanks for reading.
-- Sven Erlandson, MDiv, Is The Author Of Seven Books, Including 'Badass Jesus: The Serious Athlete And A Life Of Noble Purpose' And 'I Steal Wives: A Serial Adulterer Reveals The REAL Reasons More And More Happily Married Women Are Cheating.' He Has Been Called The Father Of The Spiritual But Not Religious Movement, After His Seminal Book 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Came Out 15 Years Ago, Long Before The Phrase Became Part Of Common Parlance And Even Longer Before The Movement Hit Critical Mass. He Is Former Military, Clergy, And NCAA Head Coach For Strength And Conditioning; And Has A Global Counseling/Consulting Practice with offices In NYC, NJ, And Stamford, CT: BadassCounseling.Com
