Filling An Emotional Void

Disconnected By Emptiness

An emotional void is the empty space that lacks meaningful emotion. It can be characterized as numbness, lack of excitement and purpose, hopelessness, isolation, a sense of nothingness, confusion and feelings of being disconnected. An emotional void is when purpose has left your life and you haven’t been able to pull it back in.

An emotional void does not necessarily mean that you are depressed. As long as you have a good sleep, appetite, concentration, interest and energy level, normal psychomotor movements and no guilt or suicidal thoughts, then you are not depressed.

You can still be functional when experiencing an emotional void, but life becomes much harder to do so. As soon as you start becoming nonfunctional, an emotional void can progress to major depressive disorder. And once depression finds a home, it becomes a pain to evict it; sometimes, even with multiple antidepressants.

An emotional void can occur for many reasons:

• You have experienced a traumatic event: rape, incest, natural disaster, return from war, etc.
• You have lost a significant other or family member
• You have lost a job or something important in your life
• You simply don’t find pleasure in life anymore

The worst thing that you can do is to ruminate over your emotional void; this is almost a guaranteed ticket to major depressive disorder. It may even develop into depersonalization/derealization disorder. An emotional void is not a mental illness, but it can act as a gateway if you do not quickly find a way to extinguish it.

The key to filling an emotional void is to find something which you enjoyed doing in the past and bringing that back into the present. There is always something which you can pick back up from your past; you just have the find the will to do it. It may be difficult at first to kickstart an old reading habit, an exercise routine or even socializing, but once you get them going, it becomes easier.

Sometimes just talking to someone close in your life can help fill an emotional void. Isolation never resolves emotional or mental health issues. The act of talking is therapeutic, even on an unconscious level! Therefore, when experiencing an emotional void, try the following:

• Bring back an enjoyable activity from the past into the present
• Find someone who you are close to and talk about what you are experiencing
• Start seeing a psychologist who is trained in psychodynamic psychotherapy
• Start incorporating new activities into your life (anything that sparks your interest)
• Avoid isolation

Make an emotional void temporary. Make yourself everlasting!

Are you Ready? (This is Defeating Stigma Mindfully)