Why do I feel empty

This is why most advice misses. Sadness has an object. You are sad about something, it has a shape, and comfort makes contact with it. Emptiness has no object. There is nothing to be comforted about, which is precisely what makes it hard to describe and hard for anyone to help with.

People describe it as watching their life through glass. Going through the day correctly and feeling almost nothing about any of it.

It is worth knowing that this is a common state with fairly ordinary causes, not a personality defect.

• Sustained suppression. If you have spent a long time not feeling things because feeling them was not practical, the numbness eventually stops being selective.
• Coming down off a long stretch of coping. Emptiness very often arrives after the crisis, not during it. You held it together and now there is nothing to hold.
• Exhaustion. Genuine depletion presents as flatness far more often than as sadness.
• Living by obligation. Weeks made entirely of things you have to do, with nothing in them you actually chose.
• Depression. Flatness and loss of interest are core features, and it is worth saying plainly rather than tiptoeing around.

Trying to feel better does not work, because the problem is not that you feel bad. Trying to feel anything is a more useful target. Small specific input rather than grand gestures: something with texture, something you chose, something with another person in it even briefly.

The other thing that helps is naming it accurately. Emptiness gets worse when you cannot describe it, because then you cannot tell anyone and you start to think it is just you. Getting one honest sentence out about it, even to nobody, tends to move it slightly.

If the flatness has lasted more than a couple of weeks, or you have stopped caring about things you used to care about, that is worth taking to a GP. It is a common and treatable thing and it is not a dramatic step to raise it. If it has gone as far as not wanting to be here, please ring Samaritans on 116 123.

Common questions

It usually means feeling has been switched down rather than that something is missing. Common causes are long periods of suppressing emotion, exhaustion, the aftermath of a sustained stressful stretch, or depression. It is a recognised state, not a character flaw.

Numbness is often protective. If feeling things fully was not survivable or not practical for a while, the response is to turn the volume down, and it does not turn down selectively. The flatness is frequently what suppression feels like from inside.

A few days after something difficult is unremarkable. Beyond about two weeks, particularly with loss of interest in things you used to enjoy, it is worth mentioning to a GP. That is a routine conversation for them.

Even one flat sentence about it counts as saying it.