You either FEEL, or you ARE, hollow inside. Yes/No.

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Just curious what the ratio of respondents to subject line will be. Agree vs Disagree.

I'm putting my money on the first.

Not at all hollow, much more the opposite for me: too much going on a lot of the time, too many thoughts, ideas, emotional responses, patterns and connections, sensations and sensory reactions.

Before being diagnosed, my life felt like I was living in a dream. In fact I had a lot of nights, and I still do occasionally where I have vivid dreams and I would get the two confused. I'd wake up and be like. "Oh, that was just a dream.... or was it?"

The part of me that has always FELT hollow is personality. For so much of who I am to other people is an act, a scripted routine, or an anxiety response--or a complete avoidance, for that matter. Not that NTs aren't completely fake when they feel the need to be. They probably don't have piles of medical records always making note of "flat affect" and "anhedonia" as if there's no spark of something more. Then again, I do feel that flatness much of the time and don't feel the energy or charisma that seems to bubble forth from others. There's got to be something in between. But a lot of the time I do have to work to make myself believe I'm not actually hollow. Oops. You were looking for yes/no...

No, I can't relate to feeling or being hollow inside at all.

For me I agree. I think there's not much to me but I don't mind

Yep, alexithymic. It seems like others are just so complicated emotionally, and are so integrated with their emotional lives, it's so easy for them. They have very complicated social structures and connections, and emotions about social connectios. Then there's me, outside all of it.

no, I am very full within.

I don't even know.

Feel what?

My life feels very empty, because I feel like the way someone is supposed to be at my age is very sharply at odds with how I actually am. I'm supposed to socialize like a 20-30 year-old, which involves going to house parties and bars, thinking a lot about success and making it in the "real world", and ready to make commitments. Whereas all I want are people to share imagination with.

On the other hand, I feel that quite a few others are "empty inside" in a totally different way--they are so defined by their outward presentation and niche in the outside world that they don't have a strong sense of who they are as people inside anymore. It seems that the most unbearable thing for many of them would be to be in their rooms just pondering.

I agree with C2V, it takes me more time to digest my own emotions and to deal with them than others, so at first sight I might just seem okay but I might just be processing all my feelings and what is going on to the core.. So I'm not hollow at all..

Not hollow at all. I know what I feel. I know what I think and usually my thoughts criss-cross all over the place. I don't have a fixed sense of self though, I have a lot of things I might identify with and they might not agree with each other which sometimes is tricky. Between things I identify with I can feel empty though, sort of one-dimensional.

It seems like more male Aspies have no feelings. This is very interesting.

I exist beneath a thick layer of ice most of the time, but that is not what is present beneath, it's 'accessing' it and 'owning' it that can get me frustrated these days. Underneath I am always in bloom and unfurling my various tendrils of emotional foliage dark and light buds attached to the same stalks, I have to unthaw to explore my internal tide and see how I am feeling about a particular tangent in a certain period, I go through weeks and weeks of churning thought until I understand how I feel about something to an insane depth and degree, I have to dive down every inch of my feelings and experiences to feel peaceful in the clarity.

That's quite ironic but a radical change cause I used to numb absolutely everything up and exist as a hollowed out robot until I was in my late teens and it took some very intense life experiences and emotional demands to crack that hardened barrier open and I feel I am aeons more self aware (also can be a painful thing ) and extremely disciplined today. Doing a lot of psychological work over the last five years at different points of my 'awakening' certainly taught me how to identify feelings, be very straight and transparent, accept strong winds as long as you learn from it and don't get blown into a whirlwind losing the core.