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Imagine a hollowness deep in your chest, a vacant space where feelings should be. Imagine being numb and devoid of all emotion, happy or sad 鈥� with any sensations simply passing right through you. You are watching the world go by from behind a screen 鈥� so disconnected that you feel a million miles away from people you care about the most.

This is how听听have described the existential feeling of emotional 鈥渆mptiness鈥�. Perhaps some aspects may feel familiar to you. After all, research has repeatedly shown that emptiness is听, felt by many of us around the world.

For some, emptiness may be a fleeting experience during a time of immense difficulty in our lives, which passes. Following a period of feeling empty, we may be able to sense ourselves returning, feeling gradually more connected to our inner-self, other people, and the world around us.

But for some, emptiness is a chronic, debilitating experience which has been found to be strongly connected to numerous听听mental health difficulties such as depression, anxiety and experiences of hearing voices, including for people who receive a diagnosis of a personality disorder.

Recent developments including听, however, are starting to shine a light on this elusive experience, enabling researchers and mental health professionals to better support people who feel this way.

What is emptiness?

In 2022, along with a colleague, I proposed a听听of emptiness as:

A feeling that one is going through life mechanically, devoid of emotions and purpose, and therefore is empty inside, with emptiness often being bodily felt in the form of a discomfort in the chest. This is coupled with feelings that one is disconnected from others, in some way invisible to others, and unable to contribute to a world that remains the same, but from which one is distant and detached.

Our research found that while emptiness is experienced by people who have mental health difficulties, it is also felt by those who have never suffered with their mental health before, and who may have never felt the need to seek help from professionals.

Despite this, across all of those who took part in the research, it was found that greater feelings of emptiness were related to poorer mental health and lower satisfaction with life.

Emptiness and mental health

People who feel empty often or all the time are more听,听, or gone on to make an attempt to end their life.

These findings add to听听showing that emptiness is related to harmful use of drugs, alcohol, and unsafe sex. Other听听迟丑补迟听听seem to affect every aspect of a person鈥檚 individual and social world.

Self-harm,听听and use of substances or sex can be understood, then, as ways of coping with or distracting from the emotional听.

Measuring emptiness

Thankfully, research in this much-needed area is progressing. Our 2022 definition has increased the understanding of emptiness among researchers and health professionals, and has led researchers to develop a new way of measuring and tracking it over time.

罢丑别听, created in 2022 by clinical and social psychologists alongside statisticians, is a questionnaire consisting of 19 items. It asks people questions such as whether they feel emotionally numb, that they are going through the motions, and that they have no direction in life.

This tool is now available for researchers and mental health professionals to use to formally assess a person鈥檚 level of emptiness. It allows this complex, existential feeling to be accurately captured and quantified.

This will enable researchers to properly study emptiness, explor questions about how it develops, and how different therapeutic interventions may help people to manage and reduce this feeling.

Emptiness is a commonly experienced and potentially life-threatening feeling. Accurate measurement marks a significant step forward in our ability to identify, understand and provide support to people who feel this way, in the hope of ultimately reducing distress and saving lives.

This article was originally published inon 26听March 2024.

Links

• Original article in听
• 香港六合彩中特网 Psychology & Language Sciences
• 香港六合彩中特网 Faculty of Brain Sciences