That ‘Emptiness’ You Feel— What is That Exactly?
When someone asks you: “How are you feeling?”, the answer we typically give is: “Fine”. If you are like me, your answer to that question is: “Good”.
News Alert: “Fine” and “Good” are not feelings.
“Busy” is also not a feeling. Nor is:
— “Ok”,
— “Pretty good”,
— “Not bad”,
or the strangest one someone told me recently:
— “Yeah bro, just chillin”.
None of them are feelings — none of them are answering the question.
If we look at the broad strokes of possible human emotions outlined in psychology, you can either feel: (1) happy, (2) sad, (3) afraid, (4) angry, (5) surprised, (6) contempt, (7) disgusted — or some combination of any of them.
Although still debated in the psychology literature, boredom is now widely considered to be a feeling.
But boredom is an interesting one, because boredom is more like the absence of feelings — a disengagement from emotions — rather than an emotion in and of itself.
When people (or myself) say “Fine” or “Good”, I think two things may be happening:
(1) We are reflectively adhering to societal verbal norms (saying what other people would typically say) in order to be polite and collegial, and/or
(2) We are expressing our general disengagement towards our feelings — i.e. expressing our boredom.
Personally, when I say that I am “Good”, I am usually doing both: I am being collegial + I am currently unaware (not in touch) with the texture of my emotions.
So the best that I can do is to express myself through this dull indifference — this boredom.
This lack of emotion that we sometimes feel is what psychologist Adam Grant has beautifully termed: Languishing.
When you are languishing, you are not thriving — but you are not miserable either. You do not care deeply — but you are not careless either. You are not happy — but nor are you depressed. You are just… well… “Fine”.
I’ve heard some people term it as shutting down. I’ve also heard someone say that they feel empty. Another beautiful word that I’ve heard is disillusioned or disenchanted.
It is as if we are looking at the totality of our life story on a screen (like a director would) and wondering to ourselves — “Where is this is all going?”
Safely Numb — A Protection Mechanism
I want to connect Adam Grant’s work on languishing with the work of Canadian physician Gabor Mate, who has done tremendous research and writing in the fields of trauma and addiction.
This feeling of ‘shutting down’, according to Mate, is a survival mechanism that we have adopted from infancy as a response towards harmful emotional stressors. We often hear the term Fight or Flight as the two possible alternatives an organism has when it is threatened with danger. But there is a third alternative that is often overlooked: Freeze.
When we are very young (I’m talking about 5 years or younger), fight or flight was simply not an option when we are faced with a lot of emotional stressors. At that helpless age, we do not yet possess the capacity to talk back (fight) or remove ourselves from the situation (flight). So as a defensive mechanism, our emotional and mental faculties more or less tune out, shut down, and disengage. Have a listen to Gabor Mate’s explanation here in his interview with Tim Ferris.
Imagine getting hit by a truck (trust me, I’m going somewhere with this). What immediately happens after experiencing such an intense physical stressor is that the body redirects more blood to the vital organs — namely your heart and your brain. And it distributes less blood to the non-vital areas of your body — the extremities, like your feet and your fingers. Remember that all of this physiological response is in the purpose of protecting and maintaining the livelihood of the organism — You.
In the same way that our autonomic nervous system protects us from physical stressors by redirecting our blood, our emotional system seems to protect us from emotional pain by redirecting our attention.
Danger? → Disengage.
Scary? → Shut Down.
Too Much? → Tune Out.
When things become too emotionally painful for us as a helpless child— the short-term protective solution is to simply tune out, disengage, and to not feel anything at all. Unfortunately, this protective mechanism that was so useful for us as a helpless child is no longer useful for us as an adult.
This emotional disengagement may be beneficial for the emotional safety of the helpless child, but becomes a problem once we turn into full-grown adults. A behavior that was once adaptive (helpful, protective) during infancy becomes maladaptive (hindering, damaging) in adulthood. We eventually become unsure of ourselves in our adulthood — unsure of what we want, unsure of what we even feel.
“How are you?” — “Fine.”
“What do you want?” — “Not sure.”
“What do you really want?” — “Really not sure.”
In the most extreme cases of individuals who have been directly exposed to combat, this behavior of shutting down and tuning out has sometimes been depicted as the thousand-yard-stare — pictorially immortalized by Thomas Lea’s painting below.
Most of us do not go as far as having such a stare — but the mechanism is the same: this blank feeling that we experience within us is caused by some form of overwhelming stressor in the past that ultimately forced us to shut down.
The Only Way is Through
If you look at the seven human emotions outlined above (happy, sad, afraid, angry, surprise, contempt, disgust) — only one of them is pleasurable, happy.
For some mysterious reason, the creator of the universe has bestowed human beings with only seven basic emotions: six of which feels bad, and only one that feels good. If you happen to enjoy loud jump scares in horror movies — you may count surprise as a positive emotion. But not me.
The only way to emotionally engage more deeply is to… well… emotionally engage more deeply. By this, I do not mean yell more or cry more in front of strangers in public. I mean talk more frequently about your emotions to individuals that you trust. Have more open conversations about your fears, your sadness, your angers and your joys with the people around you. Make it a habit to talk about your day using the seven emotion palettes above. If you are so keen, perhaps you can even write an article about emotions online.
It’s funny where you can get inspiration from. I was randomly walking past an Under Armour store a few months ago, and there was a large promotional poster on the wall that read: “The Only Way is Through”.
That seems to be true for our emotional well-being. We are either moving towards — and ultimately through — our emotions, or moving away — and ultimately stagnating— our emotions. There is no going around it. It is either through it, or away from it.
I do not think past emotions ever disappear. They get suppressed, hidden, pushed down, blocked, unheard, unrealized, unfelt, and unseen. But they will only leave us stuck; unless they have been unsuppressed, found, pulled out, unblocked, heard once more, realized, felt again, and seen again. In the words of Carl Jung: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
For someone who has been ‘running on empty’ for a great chunk of my life, it is a long journey back towards regaining that juvenile enthusiasm for existence. Many experiences have hurt along the way, which have sculpted this hollow disengagement on the surface of my personality.
The journey is in realizing that this hollow disengagement from life is no way to live, no way to spend the rest 50 years or so on this planet. To those of us who feel ‘empty’, it is definitely within our power to once again get back to feeling full, connected, and more alive. It merely requires bravery.