The feeling of emptiness, boredom, or depression often stems not from a lack of external stimuli, but from internal mechanisms developed to cope with overstimulation, overwhelming choices, or unresolved issues, leading to a desensitization to happiness and a constant state of internal problem-solving.
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Why do you feel empty? Why do you get that feeling, like you're
depressed and the sun will never rise again? The
answer will surprise you: it's not because you have
free time, but because you're immune to the things that
bring happiness. You're immune to the things that make you
happy. Your brain produces dopamine. Dopamine is the
chemical that tells your brain, "Let's do
this again." If you accomplish something
in your life, your brain will release dopamine to make you want to
do it again. If you laugh with
your friends, and you're sitting with them, your body will produce
dopamine to tell you, "This group is fun,
let's hang out with them again." That's dopamine; it's the
chemical that makes us strive
for things. If you browse TikTok a lot,
food is readily available, and you play a lot of games, what you're
doing is pressing the dopamine production button in
huge numbers. So you're
straining your brain because you're getting an
abnormal surge of dopamine. Your brain is searching for
survival, not for fun, parties, or celebrations.
He seeks survival, so he will focus on balance,
whether in dopamine or any other hormones or
any other chemicals. He will seek
balance, so if he notices that huge amounts of
dopamine are coming to the brain, he will focus on
survival because happiness is not important, survival is important.
If large amounts of dopamine come, he will sound the
alarms, saying, "Okay,
this flow of dopamine will damage my wires, it
will damage your wires." So what he will do is reduce the
reception of dopamine. How will he
reduce the reception of dopamine? It is for the
chemical substance dopamine, like this prize. This
prize, which is dopamine, has
receptors. Imagine it like a baseball glove. This
receptor's job is to catch dopamine.
If it catches it, it will receive an almost
electrochemical signal. This signal is what gives you
the feeling of happiness. But after the receptor catches it,
what does the brain do if there is excess dopamine?
Why would it lock, erase, or delete these receivers? Because he's worried about the wires, he
generally says that there are large amounts of dopamine, so he has to
block the receptors. So what
happens is that your brain removes its receptors for
happiness, enthusiasm, and the drive to pursue life. Now
your dopamine receptors are fewer. So
when you put down your phone or put your hand down to go outside, to
see the sun, to hang out with your friends, trying to have fun, and
someone tells a joke, you won't laugh. Why? Because there's
dopamine in the brain that's released, but the receptors are
gone. You won't feel happiness, euphoria, or enthusiasm, the
desire to do that thing again. There are no
receptors. So your brain destroys these receptors to
survive, because
too much dopamine is a threat to it. It's really not
good to have too much dopamine; it will
damage your brain. So when these receptors are removed, the
signal for happiness is still there,
but the receptor for that signal is no longer there
for you to feel happiness or enthusiasm. You're
ruining your life, aren't you? It's empty and it's not boring; you've
simply built up a strong immunity against dopamine. So, the
simple things in your day, like
talking to people, going out, trying to have fun with
simple things, have become meaningless because most of the
dopamine receptors in your brain are
gone in order for your brain to survive. The second reason for
this feeling is that you have roughly two modes in your brain. The
first mode is task-positive. This is active
when you're working on something at the right time, for example,
completing a task at work or school, doing
homework, or working on your broken PlayStation and consciously
fixing it.
Here, task-positive mode is more active. The
second mode, the default mode (DMN), is when
you're daydreaming. For example, if you're
stopped at a traffic light, you'll drift off. If the teacher
is explaining something, you'll go into airplane mode;
you're not focused on anything, just your mind is wandering. Your brain
constantly switches between these two states. If
you start working, this mode will activate; if you don't... If you have
any work, for example, and it suddenly stops, the default mode network
will start working and make you daydream. But the problem with the default
mode network is that it rarely daydreams about beautiful things. It
might daydream about beautiful things, but rarely. So what does it
daydream about? He gets lost in past problems, like
something bad that happened to you a while ago. He thinks about
future problems, like bills you have to pay, a tiring and boring task,
or he thinks about things that happened
an hour or two ago, like someone acting
strangely towards you, and he's wondering why they acted that way. All
scientific studies say that the
human brain is really bad at actually being relaxed. It's bad at
this because your brain automatically
searches for problems, whether they're from the past, the
future, or even from two hours ago. So it's very difficult to truly relax.
Most people see boredom as
emptiness or a lack of things to do, but it's actually the
opposite. Many things happen if there isn't
cheap dopamine to distract you, like TikTok or
games. If there isn't a default mode
network, the work starts and problems start popping up, gossiping about you,
reminding you of things that cause you worry. It forces you to
think about your life, your
choices, and your future. So this feeling of
unease isn't emptiness; it's simply your brain
playing all the tapes it has because you've finally
given it time to think. The void is a
neural network called the DMN that activates the moment you're
not engaged. It starts working, meaning your
brain, from the beginning, feels like it's
trying to build itself up. So your life isn't
empty, you're not depressed, your life isn't
boring—on the contrary, the abundance of enjoyment you get
daily from social media,
games, movie choices, everything—
these are roughly the causes of this feeling.
Another cause is that your nervous system has
roughly two ways of dealing with danger:
either it fights the danger or
it runs away from the threat. But what if
the threat is difficult to escape and difficult to fight?
What happens is that your brain will shut down, it will
take a break, which is called the vagus
nerve in English. Here you'll
feel numbness, emotional blunting, withdrawal, and difficulty
learning. In very bad cases, you can even collapse completely.
Why does this happen? Why does your
brain take a break and freeze? I'll give you an example that will help
you understand. So, there's this gazelle. Okay,
this gazelle was attacked by a lion. She had two
choices: either fight the lion, which wasn't in
her best interest, or run away, which she
considered a threat. She chose the latter, so she ran. Now, the
lion caught the
gazelle. The gazelle was charging at him,
but he caught her. Now the gazelle had lost her
option; she was caught and
had neither choice. Instinctively, the
gazelle would go for the latter and become numb.
Why numb? So that when the lion
eats her, she won't feel anything happening inside her
body. She'll be completely numb,
emotionally and sensorily numbed, so she can die peacefully, without pain or
defeat. That's why this concept exists
in the brain. Now you know why these things
happen to you. If you don't have the option to fight or
escape, you'll freeze completely. So, what does this have to do with
emotional emptiness? We all have things we can't
escape or avoid. We fight against them, for example,
work pressures, study pressures, problems, whether family-related
or random. Some of them you can fight and overcome,
others you can't; they're very difficult, and you can't escape them. You won't
escape your job, you won't escape
school, you won't escape your family, or the
problems in your life. So, these two options become impossible. You
no longer have the task; it's difficult to
accomplish, and you can't escape it. So what happens? You get
emotional numbness and numbing, like a gazelle, but instead of
releasing painkillers and
anesthetic chemicals, the situation becomes more emotional.
You're not sad, your life isn't empty, you're not bored, and you're not depressed.
You're simply detached due to
chemicals—let's say chemically detached. You act as if you're
dead because of a lion that isn't even there.
These causes are also the dilemma of too many choices. We have so many
choices these days, in this era. If you think
about your ancestors in ancient times, their choices
were limited, even though they had far less than you—less
food, less dopamine. There's a shortage
in all these things, but you feel they were almost
happier. Why are their options fewer? If you
only have two options, your brain will compare A with B and make a
decision. For example, A: Okay, I'll close it tonight. I've made my
decision, so let's continue. Why? Because there are only two things to
choose between, so the comparison is much easier.
But if you have many options, like when you want to
choose a major in university, you have a million majors: major here, major here, major here, major here, major here, major here, major here, major here, major here, major here, major here, major here.
Everywhere there are so many majors. How do you compare all of these? It's very difficult. And if
you decide to choose
something, new future branches open up: What will happen to you in the future? What will you be in the future? What will your salary be, etc.? Or even something simple and trivial like movies. When you're choosing, do you choose this
one or that ... You won't
choose anything because you're afraid
of making the wrong decision. But someone who
only had two options wasn't afraid of making the
wrong decision because they could see the
drawbacks of the first option and the drawbacks of the second,
compare the advantages of the first, and
make the right decision. Similarly, feelings of
emptiness, boredom, depression, or all
these things can only occur because
you have so many options that you end up
not opening any of them. This leads to
the things we talked about earlier;
your DMN starts working because you have nothing to do. You haven't
made a decision, so you're not occupied. You'll
think about all the options you had: why didn't you make this
decision? Why didn't you make that decision? So
what do you do? You need dopamine, so you turn to
cheap dopamine, which is browsing
TikTok, playing games, or doing
many other things like a chain reaction. If you start one chain, you
move on to the next, and the next, and the next.
Also, one of the causes of emotional emptiness,
depression, boredom, or that feeling you
know and I know is the disconnection of your thoughts
from your body, or the disconnection of the mind from the body. Most
People think that feelings originate in the
brain, but that's wrong. Your brain only generates the idea of
feeling, but only after it has done something important, after it has
confirmed what's happening in your body. Something has happened in front of you, and
you're seeing it now. When you see it, your body
naturally sends signals to the brain. Your body then
either reacts to this thing or not,
based on past experiences. For example, if you're
angry, your muscles will tense, your body temperature will rise.
If you're scared, your heart rate will increase, you'll
feel that sensation in your stomach, you'll start to sweat.
If you're sad, you'll feel that sensation in your throat, your
throat will be tight, your energy will be zero. These are all
signals from the body, not the brain. So, the brain
sees something that has happened in front of it. This event has occurred, and
your body either reacts to this event or not.
For example, the situation or event that happened in front of you, you were scared, so it
goes back to the brain, and your brain says, "
Okay, I felt scared." The same thing happens with anger,
sadness, and all other feelings. This is the
stage where the brain generates the feeling after it receives
feedback from the body. So, the feeling of emotions doesn't originate in the
brain; it comes from the body. However, the brain retains the information about how the
body felt at the moment the event occurred in
order to repeat it. Now, what does this have to do with
our topic? Your brain has a dashboard, and
this dashboard is controlled by something called the
insula. The insula receives
signals from the body. For example, a rapid heartbeat (the heart rate)
will be recorded by the insula. It records all the signals coming
from your body, such as a rapid heartbeat,
rapid breathing, a tight stomach, or a lump in your throat. The insula records
all of these things. Now,
the problem is that you ignored these signals for a very long time. A
situation happened in your life that made you
angry, but you couldn't deal with it. The feeling was
sent to the insula, and the insula processed it along with the
brain. Of course, the insula is part of the brain. You decided to
ignore this thing, you ignored this feeling—the
feeling of anger. Similarly, if you were afraid, you
ignored it. If you were sad, you decided to ignore
this feeling and continue your life as if nothing had happened. So, your
brain sees that you You have completed your life and you must complete
your life, so what should he do? This reduces the frequency of these signals in
the future, so why don't they happen to you as often? Because your
brain wants you to keep going with your life,
you'll encounter a situation again. Be angry, and you won't
feel angry. Be scared, and you won't feel scared.
Be sad, and you won't feel sad. The same
applies to happiness, enthusiasm, all
these things. But now, the senses are trained to
ignore. So if you feel happy, it will be very little. You won't get
very excited. The sweet moments in
your life don't mean anything to you because you've become excellent at
ignoring, so excellent that you ignore the
sweet things. You feel empty because you cut the pilot or
severed the wire between the pilot and the aircraft, which is
your body. In short, this video is about
the world not becoming silent; you've just forgotten how to
listen to it. So if you kill the noise and all these senses, you'll
suddenly find peace. Even trivial things
with friends and family will be enjoyable,
and enthusiasm will return. See you in the next video.
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