Hi Stephanie,

These resources will interest you:

• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23152028_What_is_Emptiness_Clarifying_the_7th_Criterion_for_Borderline_Personality_Disorder

http://www.positivedisintegration.com/Hazell84.pdf

https://books.google.com/books?id=d35FQkLP-U0C&pg=PA256&lpg=PA256&dq=psychological+scales+for+emptiness&source=bl&ots=WQxQfXvMry&sig=qWt5OFhbk0AV9PuBHqpJzSNbyXM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjim-nO3Y_OAhUW0GMKHanOCggQ6AEIOTAF#v=onepage&q=psychological%20scales%20for%20emptiness&f=false

http://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/issues/emptiness

Article What is Emptiness? Clarifying the 7th Criterion for Borderli...

Hi Stephanie,

These resources will interest you:

• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23152028_What_is_Emptiness_Clarifying_the_7th_Criterion_for_Borderline_Personality_Disorder

http://www.positivedisintegration.com/Hazell84.pdf

https://books.google.com/books?id=d35FQkLP-U0C&pg=PA256&lpg=PA256&dq=psychological+scales+for+emptiness&source=bl&ots=WQxQfXvMry&sig=qWt5OFhbk0AV9PuBHqpJzSNbyXM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjim-nO3Y_OAhUW0GMKHanOCggQ6AEIOTAF#v=onepage&q=psychological%20scales%20for%20emptiness&f=false

http://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/issues/emptiness

Article What is Emptiness? Clarifying the 7th Criterion for Borderli...

Stephen Cheung, thank you for these links.

Are you referring to depersonalisation syndrome, where emptiness is one symptom?  I think depersonalisation is a disorder of the vestibular system in the inner ear, as suggested by concomitant symptoms like dizziness, blocked ear, audiosensititvity, etc.  Depersonalisation can be induced by a standard caloric test, running water into the ear canal of a susceptible person.   No mysterious or mystical higher cortical processes need to be invoked.

Anthony G Gordon, I am primarily referring to empty states analogous with chronic emptiness experienced by individuals with borderline and narcissistic personality disorders. In this case, it is likely related to identity disturbance rather than a physiological cause. 

Could someone, preferably the person who downvoted my previous response, please explain the difference between the emptiness of those with personality disorders and the emptiness of depersonalisation syndrome?   If they are similar, then it is likely they have a similar physiological cause, and the analogy with depersonalisation is valuable.  If dissimilar, then it is very confusing to give both the same name. 

"it is likely related to identity disturbance rather than a physiological cause."

Identity disturbances can occur with brain injury to the frontal lobes, parietal lobe strokes, dementia, with drugs, during sleep, amputation, etc.   While the exact mechanisms are not always known, these surely have physiological causes, so unless we have a dualistic view of mind-brain separation, emptiness and self-image disorders should also have physiological explanations, albeit subtle and non-obvious ones. 

Anthony G Gordon, are you referring to "mind emptiness" associated with depersonalization? This is interesting, are there any papers on this that you recommend?

This is a bit oblique to your question, but I thought I'd offer as a kind of footnote comment a quick note of the phenomenon of positive forms of experienced "emptiness." 

A positive sense for emptiness is most explicitly connected with contemplative practices and, particularly, meditative experience and the reflections associated with it in Mahayana Buddhist traditions. There the experience of "emptiness" entails a lived appreciation for the way that conscious phenomenal experience is an inherently constructed event. Within that experiential practice the idea of the "self," for example, comes to be appreciated as a generated phenomenon. The sense of self, in other words, comes to be seen as something that's more a conscious process and transient "event" than it is an enduring "substance." And, hence, such traditions will call for "letting go" of the idea of "me" and "I" in order to allow, instead, a lived experience of "emptiness."

Other terms associated with such experience include the realization of "non-self" and "non-attachment," and, positively, an awakening to "suchness" or "thusness."

That sort of letting go, however, is largely predicated on having a psychologically healthy constitution as a base. Put a bit glibly by folks like Ken Wilber, we have to have a self in order to let go of the self. (Which, again, speaks of a rather different thing than the kind of emptiness associated with either borderline symptomatology or depersonalization.)

Such healthy "non-self" experiences are also found among Western contemplatives and spiritual traditions, particularly with the so-called via negativa or apophatic contemplatives. It is perhaps most explicitly illustrated in the "nada, nada, nada," of the Spanish mystical theologian, John of the Cross. It is also directly implicit in a work like the anonymous Cloud of Unknowing (and most directly in its "sequel," The Book of Privy Counseling), where its author calls for a meditative practice of coming to rest in "a naked blind feeling of your own being," and then letting go of the "conceit" that it is yours. 

An experience is then enjoined which draws to it descriptors of a kind of lucidity, sobriety and wonder which those who uncover it say they wouldn't trade for anything.

"Anthony G Gordon, are you referring to "mind emptiness" associated with depersonalization?"

I have just checked 3 standard Psychiatry textbooks for depersonalisation, older ones as they are likely to have better clinical descriptions.   This is also an opportunity to check for Meniere Spectrum Disorder, a common, widespread but misunderstood auditory-vestibular disorder that I think lies at the root of depersonalisation.  MSD includes audiosensitivity; tinnitus;  deafness;  dizziness;  imbalance;  headache;  brain fog;  feeling of blockage or pressure in ear(s) or head;  psychiatric disorders.   Florid versions of MSD will end up in ENT departments, but incomplete manifestations can end up in any (or all!) other departments, especially in psychiatry.

Anthony G Gordon, thank you for providing this information. 

"Gordon is confusing possible biological factors, that are recruited by complex psychological dynamics, for causation."

   If Jon knows of any evidence that the syndrome of  Meniere Spectrum Disorder, or indeed any of the first 8 symptoms of it as listed 4 days ago, is secondary to any disorder of the mind, then now is the time to report this here before I spend any more time on trying to find simple explanations for complex problems, a strategy that has served science well.

   The causal link from peripheral physiological malfunction to psychiatric disorder is clear for depersonalisation since it can be experimentally induced, by running water into the ear for example, or from hyperventilation.

"Re: BPD feelings of just...emptiness *TW*

by lexa1978 » Tue Jul 12, 2016 6:54 pm

Hi triplemoon18,

triplemoon18 wrote: for me it is like being in a pit of despair - feel really awful like I am only going through the motions of life, not really enjoying anything. I can be sitting in my beautiful backyard surrounded by trees and nature, but I feel this feeling like I am engulfed with nothingness. And there is nothing to beat it, no exercise, no journaling, no reading, no thinking, just a sinking dreadful feeling and you hope it passes eventually and you know it will, but God you can't stand it. You go to bed with it and you wake with it and then one day, it is just gone again. Until the next time. Sometimes I can get it to go away for a while if I get lost in a movie or I go shopping or take a long walk with my daughter. But then it seems to come find me again. I try to spend time alone when I get like that because everything is so painful, like i have no skin and can't protect myself and every little noise or smell or demand seems like an assault on my senses....

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"OMG...Im literally speechless. YES YES YES...you described it perfectly. I mean word for word!!! And yes...until somehow mysteriously it goes away. Just like that. But you know it will return. Feels like no explanation for it. People said maybe you're bored but I know that's not it. This feeling invades every part of my body. To feel numb is to feel pain for me...funny huh!!"

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These two persons posting on Psychforums provide valuable clues about emptiness:

Very interesting post, Anthony G Gordon.