What does Feeling "Empty" Mean?

[integral]

I hear this a lot online and with people IRL around me.

I cant relate to this in anyway and don't understand what it means.

What are they missing that I don't?

I'm always in a state of optimism even when I'm not. Even when things are hard and I'm having health issue or crashing ill always have some kind of stable "okness" about everything.

Any negative emotion I randomly feel normally goes away in minutes or after a nights sleep.

What does "Empty" mean to people? Why is it happening?

They are lost with no direction and feel like its hopeless and things are not going the way there self-expectations they are conditioned into believing life should go?

A false alignment with life expectations?

What exactly is empty? There's nothing to be filled or emptied so I'm not getting it?

Maybe they are disconnecting from something? What are they disconnecting from? What are they trying to connect to?

Edited Tuesday at 05:56 PM by integral

[LastThursday]

Some of my random analytical thoughts.

You could say that "feeling empty" is just a figure of speech or stock phrase, and so it just stands for something not connected to its literal meaning: there isn't some sort of emptiness. Maybe then it's just a general malaise whatever that might be, some negativity, so nothing special there.

On the other hand, if you take it in a more metaphorical way, then just look to its opposite: "feeling full". Full of what and what is being filled? I guess that's fairly nebulous, but you could substitute in any number of things like joy, excitement, stimulation, emotion, fulfilment of goals and so on. You are the container being filled with these nominalisations, like a bottle being filled with liquid. Feeling empty then is not being filled with those positive things, a metaphorical lack.

I think the common everyday usage of it though is just as a way to describe a generally overwhelming emotion, say "feeling empty" after someone's death; or, when the fun stuff in life has been taken away, or when there's nothing meaningful going in life in general. In short a lack or removal of something positive.

It is fascinating how much metaphorical language is taken in a literal way. People go around acting as if there are actual hurdles to jump over, and mountains to climb, and bottled up rage ready to explode. It goes to show how much abstract ideas and emotions need to be grounded in more concrete things even if it's just in our heads.

Consequently, one way to do therapy is to play with that metaphorical language: "if you were to feel full, how would that be?" and so on.

Edited Tuesday at 09:15 PM by LastThursday

[Yimpa]

Whenever I truly feel empty, I realize that there is nothing but God. 

What people mean when they feel empty is they feel disconnected with God, regardless of if they see that or not.

[hyruga]

It means that they found out that there's little or nothing to accomplish in life.

Two scenarios can happen: 

One is they are very successful and they do not know what's the next steps to do.

Example:

Second scenario are those people who are unable to accomplish what they set out to do and they could not find a way to achieve them. Maybe they are injured/sick and they can no longer be a world champion in swimming etc.

In both cases, people may feel empty as nothing else satisfies them.

Edited Tuesday at 11:11 PM by hyruga

[Letho]

 

@integral Emptiness is to valueless. 

Consciousness is value constructing through meaning.

Automatic translation into: Emptiness <-> Meaninglessness going hand in hand combined with Filling the Void <--> Validation seeking; if not people; food, drugs, more.

Poor parenting is the foundation for creating humans with low self-esteem. Self-esteem is the self-value meter. Often, people learn validation and approval seeking behaviours from a young age usually from the way they're raised as the means of bringing balance to their sense of self. 

This is why low self esteem is synonymous to dysregulated self esteem and therefore why any level of approval and validation seeking is just a measure of the dysregulation of self-esteem. 

Valuing oneself, ironically, is the cure to the resulting disorders in the order between esteem, self and one's personal experience of consciousness stability and the freedom this in turn gives them. Anxiety disorder, NPD, BPD, literally all of these disorders are on the spectrum of resulting feelings comparable to "emptiness" with corresponding escapism and defensive related behaviours. 

Self-value is the foundation to all personal growth as it establishes the alignment between personal decision making and making decisions that serve the integrity of one's self. Without this autonomy and to the level as well as kind of this absence, their locus of control will be outsourced and their internal sense of control, compromised. 

All of these disorders are easily curable now via specialised meditation techniques, science will catch up in about a decade or just with every increase in diminishing returns for substituting already known cures for medications and ritualized therapy that employs millions. 

[Letho]

In predicting potential interpretations: Why didn't I mention the relationship between depression and "emptiness"?

If one assumes emptiness and depression to be synonymous, it is only because they have failed to discern the categorical divergence between existential absence and affective dysfunction. Depression is a systemic cognitive desynchronization, a misalignment of neural coherence across mood, motivation, and energy regulation, whereas emptiness is an epistemic void, a failure to construct internally generated meaning. My decision to dissociate emptiness from depression stems from its stronger alignment with BPD, NPD, and anxiety-related identity destabilization, all of which reflect compensatory mechanisms attempting to fill the structural gap where intrinsic self-value was never properly instantiated. Depression is an internal collapse; emptiness is an external seeking for structure. The error of conflation lies in mistaking an absence of meaning for an absence of neurological function, whereas they operate in distinct yet occasionally intersecting spectrums of cognition and identity. The rare overlap, where depression appears 'empty', is more accurately a validation-dependent depression, symptomatic of the stated disorders, particularly BPD and narcissism, though others such as histrionic personality disorder (HPD) may be implicated in varying degrees.

[Twentyfirst]

It means feeling numb and numb means there are no feelings

[meta_male]

@integral Dull, dead inside, worn out, unfulfilled, like something is missing.

[Princess Arabia]

They are feeling what is there. The opposite of that is all the stories we're telling. It's what the true nature of existence is. Empty. Emptiness Void. Nothing, zilch, nada....but an emptiness that's filled with stories. Don't be fooled, it means they are more connected to life than us but only on the mental level because there's really no disconnection. Impossible. Everything you've said about yourself as to why do don't feel empty are stories you've constructed.

[Aaron p]

Have you ever had extreme physical anxiety?

The feeling of like weirdness in whatever body part...like it's empty of...itself. it's kiiiiiiinnda similar to that, at least for me that's how it feels. 

Also from my spiritual journeys into other realms I would say that it kinda feels like it just feels hollow

[Hojo]

Im going to guess no emotion no thought, no fear no love. They say your consciousness is actually outside the planet in the empty space. You need to mimic the qualia of empty space to reach high states. Imagine your stomach dropping and not signalling it to any emotion, no fear means you can use your stomach and drop it to a very deep level.

Empty is happening it is the drone of God and is in between every word and thought.

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 09:56 PM by Hojo

[integral]

8 hours ago, Letho said:

 

@integral Emptiness is to valueless. 

Consciousness is value constructing through meaning.

Automatic translation into: Emptiness <-> Meaninglessness going hand in hand combined with Filling the Void <--> Validation seeking; if not people; food, drugs, more.

Poor parenting is the foundation for creating humans with low self-esteem. Self-esteem is the self-value meter. Often, people learn validation and approval seeking behaviours from a young age usually from the way they're raised as the means of bringing balance to their sense of self. 

This is why low self esteem is synonymous to dysregulated self esteem and therefore why any level of approval and validation seeking is just a measure of the dysregulation of self-esteem. 

Valuing oneself, ironically, is the cure to the resulting disorders in the order between esteem, self and one's personal experience of consciousness stability and the freedom this in turn gives them. Anxiety disorder, NPD, BPD, literally all of these disorders are on the spectrum of resulting feelings comparable to "emptiness" with corresponding escapism and defensive related behaviours. 

Self-value is the foundation to all personal growth as it establishes the alignment between personal decision making and making decisions that serve the integrity of one's self. Without this autonomy and to the level as well as kind of this absence, their locus of control will be outsourced and their internal sense of control, compromised. 

All of these disorders are easily curable now via specialised meditation techniques, science will catch up in about a decade or just with every increase in diminishing returns for substituting already known cures for medications and ritualized therapy that employs millions. 

Nice response. Linking it to self-esteem makes a lot of sense.

I think this aligns well with why I have never experienced emptiness in my life because my self-esteem is maxed out. Not because I think I’m better than anyone or anything like that. Even if I experienced a stroke and lost brain function, I would still see nothing wrong with myself and accept myself the way I am 100%. There’s no comparisons to be made with myself and with anything else.

Self acceptance is at 100% all the time by default. How could it not be?

I am whatever that I am and I can’t be anything else than this.

Edited Thursday at 01:32 AM by integral

[integral]

8 hours ago, Letho said:

All of these disorders are easily curable now via specialised meditation techniques, science will catch up in about a decade or just with every increase in diminishing returns for substituting already known cures for medications and ritualized therapy that employs millions. 

Do you have any recommendations? 

[Letho]

@integral PM'd.

[UnbornTao]

It's much more profound than a mere manifestation or a psychological explanation.