Feeling undefined

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Many times I have the oddest feeling. My therapist asks me what the emotion is... like that is easy when I do have a reason... but this feeling does not even have a reason. It is kinda like being sad, but I am not sad.
It is odd. Kinda blue and black. It is kinda like just waiting for life to be over, but I do not want it to end.
It is kinda like being bored, but I stay busy and have plenty to do.
It is such a strange undefined emotion.
Anyone else have this?

I spend a lot of time in a similar place. I am in that place today.

Yeah, been there. I call it melancholy.

Yes, thank you for defining it so well.
EzraS is right it's melancholy.

Melancholy is an old word. Today we call it clinical depression. See a psychiatrist, please.

I think I have the same feelings sometimes. I have absolutely no idea how to describe it. I feel like It was more definable when I was younger, but it's as if I forgot how to describe it.

For me, it's like a picture in my head. I'm focusing on a single part of an object and...... not sure how to describe it.... It's like the part is physically small and simple but at the same time enormous and incredibly detailed. I have no idea how to describe the emotions that mental image evokes. Not sure if this is making any sense.

What you are feeling has a name: Apathetic Boredom.

It's the most-recently discovered type of boredom (of which, I believe, there are five now), and shares much in common with depression. You feel an emotional deadening, an inability to feel any other emotion but a vague, barely-defined boredom and a gradual unwillingness to continue being alive.

I've felt it plenty of times myself, and it truly is the worst. What makes it so bad isn't just the feeling itself, but that the feeling is (or at least, it feels like it is) impossible to get out of. You're trapped in a sad, boring, depressing place, literally waiting to die. It's about as bad of an emotional spot as a human being can be in, but there's a way to get out of it.

Do something. Do anything, especially something physical. Sign up with a gym like the YMCA, get exercise, maintain your physicality. This will be the single hardest thing in the world for you to want to do in the midst of your apathetic boredom, because every inch of your emotional state will be pushing against it, but it is also the single most important thing to do if you want to pull yourself out of this funk.

Physical activity is the only way out of this aside from medication, which there are plenty of reasons to not get in to. People will call it all sorts of things, as you've seen in this thread: melancholy, clinical depression, or even a funk or apathetic boredom as I have - the important thing is that, when you feel it, you go out and do something. Go for a walk, a jog, hang out with some friends, anything.

Don't let it beat you.

Melancholy is not necessarily the same as clinical depression.
The undefined feeling described at the top is not necessarily either of these things.
If the OP is familiar with melancholy, but chooses to name the feeling as 'undefined', that suggests that for them, it is not necessarily melancholy.



When I feel both bored and busy, like a kind of limbo, there's also an emptiness. Not in a negative way, as if something is missing - more as though it is unnecessary for there to be anything there, just like a cup can be beautiful in itself, without being filled with liquid.

There's this cognitive distance, no longer feeling the need for an investment of identity. I know that some people experience this as a painful, difficult thing. But for others, it's positive, a relief from a delusion of selfhood. Or maybe it's neither of those, for others.

I don't know if that's quite what you mean. Does any of it resonate?

I get that too. I never know what to call it or if it actually has a name. I just feel "blah".

Momentary melancholy is fine. Continuous melancholy = clinical depression. That's all.

True, but that's the very mildest form of pathological depression. It is known as dysthymia or persistent depressive disorder, whereas more severe cases (utter despair, suicidal ideation etc.) are diagnosed as major depressive disorder. The latter is commonly referred to as clinical depression.

Wow. Very awesome replies! Thanks much!
I do take meds for depression and have both a psychiatrist and therapist.
But the feeling is not the same as when I am depressed.
Also, the feeling does not stay around all the time. It is an odd thing that comes on me and may stay for a few hours or a few days. It is something I have always had happen since I was a child.
In some ways I think it might be related to my being an Aspie because it feels like I am just exhausted with trying to fit into this odd world that makes no sense.

It is kinda like I just get exhausted with trying so hard to make it in society.
Then I get this odd feeling and I just don't want to even try.
I do get physically active and that does help get my mind off the sensation, but the feeling will still be there.
The odd part is that when I am depressed, I can lift it by doing "my aspie thing" with sorting or playing with my rocks.
But this odd state causes me to not even be interested in my rocks.

Thanks again for the feedback and insights!