The feeling of emptiness is a common symptom or phenomenological experience found in clinical practice with several kinds of disorders.What is, however, more difficult is finding two patients who describe this experience in the same way. Patients report different experiences: “I feel an emptiness inside,” “everything seems empty,” “I feel like I’m falling into a great emptiness,” “nothing makes sense because of the emptiness,” and many others. Though at first sight they may appear to be very similar, some specific and distinctive characteristics surface on closer observation. The diagnoses that comprise these manifestations can be multiple and are recurrent in relation to a series of disorders: from common depressive episodes to personality disorders, even in comorbidity with other pathologies.
“Nothing is as unbearable for man as to be completely at rest, without passion, without business, without distraction, without application to something.”
In such a state of rest man becomes aware of “his nothingness, his foresakenness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his impotence, his emptiness.”
Incontinently there springs from the depth of his soul “the ennui, the blackness, the tristesse, the chagrin, the spite, the despair.”
Blaise Pascal
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Didonna, F., Gonzalez, Y.R. (2009). Mindfulness and Feelings of Emptiness. In: Didonna, F. (eds) Clinical Handbook of Mindfulness. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09593-6_9
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