Emptiness

I don't mind if there aren't many comments to this. I suspect it will be kind of long. I just want to get some thoughts and feelings out.

I think of emptiness as a feeling as very broad. I could divide it up into three parts: apathy, detachment, and a third kind that I have difficulty giving name to.

Apathy can be defined as the lack of feeling. Another thing that I find defines apathy is that it is an uncomfortable feeling. It's like there's something blocking your emotions - it might be a fear of feeling, or a disinterest in what you're doing, a lack of stimuli, or tiredness which brings it about. At any rate it tends to be quite uncomfortable.
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Detachment, I find quite different from apathy. Detachment has in many cultures been revered as a virtue, and, in my experience, not without good reason. Detachment doesn't preclude that you have to be without feeling, but rather it is a distance from your feelings. Detachment can come in many forms, however. One form of detachment is when you're absorbed in a passive experience, such as when you're watching a captivating film - this might also be called distraction. Distractions can be good in moderate measures - one finds oneself emerged in the conditions of a (fictional) universe other than your own for a brief space in time, and forgets about the woes of this one.
Another form of detachment is a natural control of your feelings in a real-world environment. You might be full of emotions - libido, anxiety, joy, excitement, anger, grief, ambition, etc., but you are not their slave. Instead you are an objectively subjective observer - you feel your emotions proper, but as if at a distance from them, and you can smile at them serenely and act on the ones you see fit. This state of mind is quite pleasant, I find.
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A third kind is what a lot of people would think about when hearing the word 'emptiness' in terms of emotionality. It is highly connected, I have found, with a fear of the future. You are so swamped in fear that you will not be able to rectify the sins of your past, to overcome the failures of your immediate life situation, or reach that goal that you have put up as an imaginary trophy before you, that you can't find anything of substance to latch onto for support. You can begin to feel lost or unreal.


I thought a three-part explanation of emptiness sufficed to cover most of it.

I'm having some trouble in this area myself at the moment (in fact I've had problem in this area for as long as I can remember). I often find myself very afraid - and so I subconsciously choose not to feel, because to feel is to hope, and to hope is to be at risk of even more pain. I have literally been asked online when chatting to people if I am a robot (automated response service). I fear not only opening up to others, but opening up to myself. I feel as if there is so much anguish buried so deeply within me, that I don't stand a chance of ever surpassing it, of working through it and getting behind it. I'm reminded of the words of the Soothsayer from Kung Fu Panda 2 when she spoke to the ambition-crazed Lord Shen who were compensating for his rejection by his parents: "the cup you choose to fill has no bottom" - although it would be more accurate to say that the cup I choose not to even glance in is too deep for me to ever be able to siphon out all that liquid pain.
But perhaps I needn't get the liquid out of the cup. Perhaps it is my perspective on that very liquid - my attitude of not wanting to touch the cup - that is sustaining its murky, dirtied state. Perhaps if I were to stir it gently enough with a spoon, the movement of it could clear it up and allow me to better contend with it.
Hmm... I might at least muse.

 

No problem, it was mostly a venting exercise anyway, but yeah, if it helped then that's just great. xo

Apathy is very common in modern day Western culture, in the sense of just not caring and just being a drone bee who can't think for themselves at all, and/or not feeling properly connected to your inner self. The system we live in treats us like machines. It is very dehumanizing. Trauma and biologically based mental conditions can also cause this kind of thinking/feeling pattern to be triggered.

I also like meditation, although I don't always use it as detachment in that sense, sometimes I use it in the opposite way. I kind of... how to say... synthesize emotions inside of myself; or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I force my emotions to the surface by focusing on them. It can be a little draining but it can also feel good to, like... feel stuff.

Medication can also have the side-effect of causing numbness, btw, which is something I'm planning to discuss with my psych - because although I've felt like this for most of my life, I think it's gotten slightly worse lately when I've been on my anti-epileptics (for bipolar).

 

Indeed... the worst part of depression isn't feeling down - feeling melancholic is hardly unpleasant at all compared to this late-stage numbness that I call home.
I do the same thing with being by myself. I can only connect to my feelings at least somewhat when I am alone and without distractions. It may be 99% bad, but it's still something I need to do every once in a while.