I have had hollow heart disease for several years

I have had hollow heart disease for several years

At 25 years old, I can't get up every morning. Without migraines and cold air, it's hard to roll over and get out of bed. According to Newton's laws, it takes force to change the state of motion of things. Where this force is, I always can't find it. Even though I knew there was something waiting for me to finish when I got up, I just "knew" and nothing more.

Cognition is locked inside my brain, and my head is very far away from my body. Now people use the word "energy" more and more often, high energy, low energy, positive energy, negative energy ... I also often say to others, "I am a person with very low energy values. "It meant I got tired easily, didn't have much to do every day, and didn't have much passion for life. I like to proactively introduce myself to others like the neutral word "low energy" that makes me feel safe because it helps me avoid negative evaluations such as laziness, malaise, and lack of work. But behind my lack of vitality lies a very uncalm brain. There are countless wills churning on every tight nerve, and when nothing can be done, many thoughts will pop up in my head, and one idea will overwhelm the other. Inside my body, there are often invisible struggles. Although I will be knocked down by intense pain, to be honest, I don't feel that there is anything wrong with suffering itself.

It wasn't until I heard the word "hollow heart disease" at a work meeting that I suddenly realized that I seemed to have hollow heart disease, and I had been there for quite some years. For the first time, I wanted to figure out why it happened.

Hollow people

Hollow heart disease is not a psychotic concept, at least no corresponding entry can be found on DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition). Considering that the last time it was discussed on a large scale was six or seven years ago, it even seems a bit outdated. But I was caught by the word all of a sudden, because hollow heart disease accurately describes my current predicament.

I flipped to the chat history on November 13, and on WeChat that day, I said to a friend: "I've been plagued by a problem lately, which is that I have no purpose at all, and this feeling is painful... There is no motivation to work, and there is nothing in particular to pursue. The friend replied: "Is there a place you want to go, such as me, I want to go back to Shanghai right now." "Nope." I thought about it for a moment, it was dinner in the evening, and I continued, "I want a hamburger." "I forget if I had a burger that day, but the burger obviously couldn't save me. The definition of hollow heart disease on the Internet is: "The psychological disorder caused by the lack of values caused by some college students." The symptoms are feeling that life is meaningless, confused about life, and not knowing what you want. ”

I'm ashamed to say that I'm no longer a student, but these self-exploration problems that seem to be only available in adolescence still stubbornly remain in me.

Xu Kaiwen, the originator of the concept of "hollow heart syndrome" and deputy director of the Center for Mental Health Education and Counseling at Peking University, mentioned in a 2015 speech that 30.4% of first-year students at Peking University dislike learning and 40.4% believe that there is no point in living. Depression, loneliness, suicidal tendencies, self-denial and disgust are all manifestations of hollow heart disorder, which are comparable to depression. I suspect that the "hollowness" is presented as a phenomenon alone because the students' idea that life has no meaning is too prominent. If someone were to ask me why I'm not happy right now, I'd probably be the first to push out the culprit in my heart: no purpose, no meaning.

Seven years ago, the hollow heart disease was first proposed, which attracted a lot of attention in society, one of the reasons is that it subverted the public's imagination of the "proud son of heaven": shouldn't students admitted to Peking University be the best and most hopeful in life? How could it be so empty? Soon, the background sound of the times changed. A few years later, as young people were tired of endless competition, "mourning" and "involution" began to be popular in society, and not long after, "lying flat" began to be popular again to promote a non-violent and uncooperative attitude towards "involution". "Hollow" became a prophecy and a normal state. Perhaps because of this, I did not take "low energy" seriously in the past. But I didn't expect that my "hollow heart disease" at the age of 25 would develop to the point that I could not bear it. Looking back, my student life was generally smooth, but it consisted of many difficult bumps, mainly because I had severe procrastination.

Because of procrastination, I used to toss myself, and it was common to use the "speed of life and death" to catch up with homework, and even achieved "academic miracles" such as writing seven small essays on National Day in one night and writing graduation papers in two days. I couldn't understand my procrastination, and when I procrastinated, my self-control evaporated out of thin air, and my body was almost out of my control. I coined a word specifically for this eccentric neurosis: obsessive-compulsive procrastination – not wanting to procrastinate, forcing yourself to procrastinate. Thinking that "sneaking" when procrastinating is happy is the biggest fallacy in the world. Anxiety pervades the cracks of "doing nothing", sometimes calling the body to do something serious, like driving a broken tractor with exhausted diesel fuel, laborious and extremely ineffective. The tractor hummed a few times and stopped

Later, I found a reason for my procrastination, which was that I didn't like doing these things, didn't like studying, and didn't like writing papers. In addition to the explanation, there is another meaning, if I find something I like, I should be "like a divine help" and will definitely achieve better results than "write seven essays in one night".

However, this is not the case at all.

In 2020, after I worked, everything got worse, and intermittent collapse of life order became a common thing, which was manifested as: going to bed late, waking up late, eating irregularly, not tidying up the house for a long time, unable to go out, and, lying in bed and wanting to go to the toilet, the bathroom was half a step away from me, but I just didn't want to move.

Cui Qinglong, a very popular psychological counselor on the Internet, likes to use "psychological efficacy" to explain this heavy, passive state. He described human mental efficacy as a rated engine that can only carry limited activities, and when psychological efficacy is weak, "a person's psychological vitality is not enough to operate at a high level, and can only let the self enter the task hosting mode."

I vaguely thought that in my mental background, there was a certain program that took up a huge amount of CPU and constantly consumed my energy. When the energy is exhausted, the original life experience becomes suspended. My mental anguish often peaked the night before my early flight. With hatred for the modern efficient society, I tossed and turned, thinking that the ancients would never have been like me, because they had to get up at what time and so embarrassed. I felt great discomfort, as if a precise hour hand was cutting my flesh, and like a ghost forced to watch the dawn at the sight of light.

Several times in a row, I willfully canceled my ticket in the middle of the night. Shame ensues. I didn't know how to explain to others that I couldn't follow the rules and why I was tormented by the all-too-too-common thing of waking up early to catch a flight.