by Imagine a hollow deep in your chest, an empty space where your emotions should be. Imagine being numb and without any emotions, happy or sad – with any emotions going straight through you. You’re watching the world go by from behind the screen – so disconnected that you feel a million miles away from the people you care about most.
This is how hundreds of people have described the existential feeling of emotional “void”. Some features may feel familiar to you. After all, research has shown time and time again that emptiness is a common experience, felt by many of us around the world.
For some people, the emptiness can be an overwhelming experience during a very difficult time in our lives, which passes. After a period of feeling empty, we may find ourselves returning, gradually feeling more connected to our inner selves, others, and the world around us.
But for some people, emptiness is a chronic debilitating experience that has been found to be strongly associated with many life-limiting mental health difficulties, such as depression, anxiety and auditory experiences, including people who receive a personality disorder diagnosis.
However, recent developments, including new measurement tools, are beginning to shed light on this elusive experience, enabling researchers and mental health professionals to better support people who feel this way.
What is a void?
In 2022, together with a colleague, I proposed a formal definition of emptiness as:
Feeling that one is going through life mechanically, without emotions and purpose, and therefore is empty inside, and body emptiness is often felt in the form of discomfort in the chest. This is combined with feelings of being disconnected from others, somehow invisible to others, and able to contribute to a life that is still the same, but distant and isolated.
Our research found that, while people with mental health difficulties are experiencing emptiness, those who have never suffered with their mental health before, and perhaps never felt the need to seek help from professionals, feel.
Despite this, among all the people who took part in the research, it was found that greater feelings of emptiness were associated with worse mental health and less satisfaction with life.
Empty and mental health
People who feel empty often or all the time are more likely to have self-harmed, considered suicide, or tried to end their life.
These findings add to previous research that has shown that depression is associated with harmful use of drugs, alcohol, and unsafe sex. Other studies show that feelings of emptiness seem to affect all aspects of a person’s individual and social life.
Read more: Many of us feel ’empty’ – it’s important to understand what it means to improve our mental health
Self-harm, suicide and the use of substances or sex can therefore be understood as ways of dealing with or distracting yourself from the emotional pain of feeling empty.
Measuring vacuum
Fortunately, much-needed research in this area is ongoing. Our definition for 2022 increased the understanding of emptiness among researchers and health professionals, and researchers developed a new way to measure and track it over time.
The Psychological Emptiness Scale is a questionnaire, created in 2022 by clinical and social psychologists together with statisticians, which contains 19 items. He asks people questions such as if they feel emotionally numb, going through the motions, and have no direction in life.
This tool is now available for researchers and mental health professionals to use to formally assess a person’s level of emptiness. It allows this complex, existential feeling to be accurately captured and quantified.
This will enable researchers to properly study emptiness, explore questions about how it develops, and how different therapeutic interventions might help people manage and reduce this feeling.
Emptiness is a common and potentially life-threatening feeling. Accurate measurement is a significant step forward in our ability to identify, understand and support people who feel this way, hopefully reducing distress and saving lives.
This article from The Conversation is republished under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Shona Joyce Herron does not work for, consult with, share in, or be funded by any company or organization that would benefit from this article, nor has she disclosed any relevant connections after her academic appointment.
