Imagine a void deep within your chest, an empty space where emotions should be. Imagine that you are numb and devoid of all emotions, whether happy or sad, any sensations passing directly through you. You watch the world from behind a screen; You’re so disconnected that you feel like you’re a million miles away from the people you care about most.
Hundreds of people have described their existential emotional feeling of “emptiness” this way. Maybe some aspects will sound familiar to you. After all, research has repeatedly shown that emptiness is a common experience felt by many of us around the world.
For some, emptiness may be a fleeting experience during a time of great challenge in our lives. When we feel empty for a while, we can feel ourselves coming back, feeling increasingly connected to our inner self, other people, and the world around us.
But for some, emptiness is a chronic, debilitating experience that has been found to be strongly linked to a multitude of life-limiting mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, and experiences of hearing voices, including people diagnosed with personality disorders.
But recent advances, including new measurement tools, are beginning to shed light on this elusive experience, allowing researchers and mental health professionals to better support people who feel this way.
What is the gap?
In 2022, together with a colleague, I proposed a formal definition of the gap as follows:
The feeling that the person lives life mechanically, devoid of emotion and purpose and therefore is empty inside, the emptiness is often felt physically as a discomfort in the chest. This is compounded by feelings that one is disconnected from others, somehow invisible to others, and unable to contribute to a world that remains the same, but is distant and disconnected.
Our research revealed that while the gap is experienced by people with mental health problems, it is also felt by people who have never had a mental health problem and have not needed help from professionals.
However, across all study participants, greater feelings of emptiness were associated with poorer mental health and lower life satisfaction.
Emptiness and mental health
People who often or always feel empty are more likely to harm themselves, consider suicide, or attempt to end their lives.
These findings add to previous research showing that emptiness is associated with harmful drug use, alcohol and unsafe sex. Other research shows that feelings of emptiness affect every aspect of a person’s individual and social world.
Read more: Many of us feel ’empty’; Understanding what this means is important to improving our mental health
Self-harm, suicide, and substance or sex use can then be understood as ways to cope with or distract from the emotional pain of feeling empty.
Measuring the gap
Fortunately, research in this much-needed area is advancing. Our 2022 definition increased understanding of the gap among researchers and healthcare professionals and led researchers to develop a new method to measure and track the gap over time.
The Psychological Gap Scale, created in 2022 by clinical and social psychologists as well as statisticians, is a survey consisting of 19 items. It asks people questions such as whether they feel emotionally numb, whether they are active, whether they have a 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. This allows complex, existential emotion to be accurately captured and measured.
This will allow researchers to accurately study emptiness, exploring questions about how emptiness develops and how different therapeutic interventions can help people 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, with the hope of ultimately reducing distress and saving lives.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Shona Joyce Herron does not work for, consult, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond her academic duties.