EMOTIONAL EMPTY: Definition, Symptoms and How to fill it

  • Jul 26, 2021
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Emotional void: definition, symptoms and how to fill it

That feeling that comes from the depths of you and that dyes your life an insipid gray, that turns you off, exhausts you, anguishes you, knots your stomach and compresses your chest, turns you into an automaton. That feeling that you only manage to call “empty”. Why is that. An emotional void that takes over your day to day. And by chance you find this article from Psychology-Online "Emotional void: definition, symptoms and how to fill it" that seems to promise to teach you how to get out of the emotional void. Well, read on to find out what you're dealing with, understand it, and find some tips to heal the emotional void.

Emotional emptiness is a widely discussed concept. There are several approaches to define it, different ways of arriving at its meaning: with metaphors, comparisons, descriptions, examples of situations, etc. And it is such a personal feeling that it cannot be fully explained in words.

Generally, emotional emptiness is understood as that feeling of psychological discomfort with oneself

, the self-perception of being separated, disconnected from others and from the universe, the feeling of loneliness, dissatisfaction, unhappiness, the thoughts of that everything is meaningless, the lack of identity, a hole in the chest or in the pit of the stomach that swallows all your energy, the feeling that something is missing, etc.

An emotional void can be expressed through many symptoms, the vast majority psychological and / or behavioral. These tend to vary depending on the cause of the vacuum and can be grouped into three large groups.

  • Apathy, boredom, disinterest, lack of motivation, reluctance, alienation
  • Sadness, isolation, melancholia
  • Frustration, anxiety, boredom, fatigue

The causes that can lead us to feel an emotional void can be of a very different nature since its etiology, like its definition, is broad. Even so, the most common causes are usually the following:

  • Incoherence between our values, beliefs or principles and what we do or say. We live in a time when it is impossible to be consistent with absolutely all of our principles or values. We are in an unjust, disproportionate world, full of poverty, hunger, precariousness and social injustices, framed within capitalism from which it is practically impossible to escape. Therefore, being fully coherent becomes a very difficult task to perform, and awareness of this reality can lead to an existential void.
  • Fears: to be abandoned, to loneliness, to disappoint others and ourselves, to live without meaning, etc. Fears so deep that they can seize us and that, to combat them, the only defense mechanism is found in apathy and disinterest in everything, making that emptiness the default emotional state.
  • Emotional dependence. The emotional dependence, caused by multiple factors, including low self-esteem and family models, can lead to feeling that emptiness emotional when, due to the loss of a partner or other situations, we find that affective lack with which it costs us so much to live.

Knowing how to get out of the emotional void is never easy, but here are a series of steps that can help when it comes to healing that void:

  1. Face the void. To overcome the emotional emptiness, it is necessary to embrace it, feel it in all its intensity to fill it with self acceptance. This is the first step. A step that many are so afraid of that before facing the void by looking inside, they seek to fill it with external things. There is the danger of falling into a possible addiction, since some turn to alcohol, food, shopping, drugs, sex, etc. And what it's about is take full consciousness, from allow yourself to feel all the negative emotions that emptiness brings to learn to deal with them. Filling the void is a slow process, full of successes and failures, despair and hope. A path with stops, falls and new beginnings where there are no shortcuts.
  2. Work on self-esteem. Another important aspect of overcoming emotional emptiness is learning to forgive yourself. Listen carefully to your needs, desires, concerns, and go from caring for others to caregiver of oneselfwithout trying to please everyone to win the approval and love of others.
  3. Face your fears. Don't let yourself get into the loop of being distressed about doing nothing or doing nothing about being distressed. Once you face them and start living, fears lose their reason for being. In the following article you will find how to overcome fears.
  4. To explore. Everything and everyone. Find things that you like, do things that make sense to you. Meeting new people and appreciating the ones you already have. Establish meaningful relationships for you (but be careful, without falling into dependency!).
  5. Go to the psychologist. As always, a specialized therapy tailored to your needs led by a professional psychologist is the best option to accompany you on this path, because as Victor Hugo said: "The heaviest burden is to exist without living."

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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