Post by Mea on Dec 23, 2015 7:38:20 GMT
Anonymous asked: Can you give more information on feeling empty? That seems like a silly question, but I want to ask about others' experiences with it?
Answer: Not a silly question at all! People often talk about this symptom in vague or metaphorical ways, it can be difficult to understand exactly what they mean.
Here are some possible experiences of feeling empty:
Even when you’re feeling empty, your other symptoms can still be present and affecting your experience. For me, emptiness is closely tied to identity issues - in particular I become less able to differentiate self and non-self. It sometimes feels like everything flows into me because I’m empty inside, or like I can’t identify who or where ‘I’ really am anymore because ‘I’ have so little substance to me.
Many of the above feelings are common during dissociation as well. If you experience them in response to stress, it’s possibly dissociation rather than chronic feelings of emptiness.
- Exo
Answer: Not a silly question at all! People often talk about this symptom in vague or metaphorical ways, it can be difficult to understand exactly what they mean.
Here are some possible experiences of feeling empty:
- You feel like you have no emotions at all or that your emotions are far away, weaker, or don’t really make sense
- You feel very bored and like nothing can relieve your boredom
- You want something very badly but you don’t know what you want
- You can’t get interested in anything, even things you normally like
- You give up easily when challenged because you can’t see the point in trying
- You feel like you’re not a real or important part of your world, like it would go on unchanged if you weren’t there
- You feel numb and can’t react even when you think you should
- You can’t concentrate because you can’t motivate yourself
- You feel like you can’t or don’t know how to act until you have something to react to
- You can’t think how to start a conversation even when you want to talk to someone
- You feel more tired or sleepy than usual, all the time, even if you get enough sleep
- Sensory experiences are dulled - colours aren’t as bright, sounds are muffled
- Identity confusion (if I see a raven flying while I’m feeling empty, I relate to it so much that I sometimes forget which body is mine and dissociate - not sure other people experience similar things but I suspect they do)
- You feel like you’re going through the motions but not actually experiencing life
- You can’t make decisions because you can’t bring yourself to care about the outcomes
- Your attitude towards yourself is more apathetic or destructive than usual
- The future seems unimportant, overwhelming or simply impossible to imagine
- You have “hypothetical reactions” - you react based on your idea of how you should react or would normally react, because you have no actual reaction
- You find yourself either watching the time or losing track of time without dissociating
- Sometimes you do things for a while before realising it’s not an activity you actually want to do (I’ll get 200 words into a post about someone I don’t know or 30 minutes into a show I don’t watch before I realise I’m not interested and wouldn’t be even if I wasn’t empty)
- You don’t do things that are expected or required of you and you can’t even care about the consequences
- You miss your emotions and want them back
- You don’t mind being numb and think it’s better than having emotions
- You have more trouble understanding what other people are thinking or feeling
- You have more trouble sympathising with other people
- You are apathetic or overwhelmed when people are upset around you
- You feel like other people’s emotions rush into you to fill up the empty space where your feelings should be
- You feel like you’ve shut down or that you’re partially or wholly asleep, dead, undead, fictional, malfunctioning or glitching
- You feel you have to try very hard to do simple tasks
- You just don’t feel like anything is worth the effort
Even when you’re feeling empty, your other symptoms can still be present and affecting your experience. For me, emptiness is closely tied to identity issues - in particular I become less able to differentiate self and non-self. It sometimes feels like everything flows into me because I’m empty inside, or like I can’t identify who or where ‘I’ really am anymore because ‘I’ have so little substance to me.
Many of the above feelings are common during dissociation as well. If you experience them in response to stress, it’s possibly dissociation rather than chronic feelings of emptiness.
- Exo
