You may feel like you’re alone in your fight against this feeling of emptiness but you’re not alone. This feeling can overpower rational judgment and make it feel like the negativity will engulf you. The negativity is not a pessimistic outlook on life but a collective absence of emotions. This can result from a long process of suppressing wishes and ignoring urges.
The feeling of emptiness can be likened to the feeling of abandonment. The abandonment of yourself can translate as bereavement from your beloved. The lack of care, empathy and love for the self can result in chronic illnesses like anxiety and depression.
Lack Of Meaning
Your life will seem to have lost all meaning and your existence will feel purposeless. This mental state may disrupt your life but it’s not new to the human race. Viktor Frankl spent years in a Nazi concentration camp. It was during times of torment that he realized the need for meaning to keep us going. Then he came up with a self-made version of therapy called logotherapy. Derived from Greek language in which ‘logos’ stands for meaning, this therapy helped Frankl recover from his struggle with emotional emptiness.
Impulsive Responses
People in this state describe their condition like living in a void. There’s a gaping hole in their lives that wants love, care, emotions and company. Constantly feeling isolated from the world and anxious due to the emptiness, their bodies become numb and listless. This urges them to desperately look for something to fill the void. This is why they indulge in activities like impulse buying, substance abuse, stress-eating and other unhealthy habits.
Illnesses
Since this is not a fleeting feeling of sadness, it develops chronically into serious mental health problems. Here are a few mental illnesses that list emptiness in their diagnostic criterion:
Depression
If there’s any illness that is primarily characterized by feeling of emptiness and lack of emotions, it’s depression. Many people who are or have suffered from depression describe the experience as ‘falling in an endless pit’. Consequentially, it leads to loss of motivation or the drive to strive. It also eliminates the ability to sense pleasure or recognize self-worth.
Borderline Personality (BPD)
An unstable sense of self coupled with isolation, suicidal ideation and impulsive urges result in bpd. Contrary to popular opinion, the feeling of emptiness in bpd is not a perpetual sense of boredom, but rather something much deeper.
Alcohol/Drug Addiction
Once you realize that drug use can offer a momentary escape from this torment you begin self-medicating. This soon turns into substance abuse because each consequent dosage gives a lesser impact than before due to drug resistance. To counter the withdrawals, your body demands more alcohol or the drug and it turns into an addiction. This traps you in a spiral where the thing which led to this condition becomes the antidote to withdrawals.
Treatment
In order to cure your emotional state, it’s important to identify the root of the problem and treat that. As listed above, any of the illnesses mentioned could be the reason why you’re feeling empty consistently. But the key to full recovery is persistence and will power. Many people who have suffered from depression have been going for therapy for years without giving up. You need this level of commitment to your health to pull yourself out of this.
Looking for reliable therapeutic treatments for depression or anxiety?
Our rehabilitation counselor, Rekha Shrivastava, works at Blossom Hypnosis to offer hypnosis to patients suffering from depression, emptiness or chronic anxiety. We conduct sessions physically in Pittsford, NY as well as online through Skype. Get in touch if you need help!
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