L’appel du vide, literally “the call of the void”, is a French phrase
used to refer to intrusive thoughts or the urge to engage in
self-destructive behavior during everyday life.[1]
Most commonly reported examples include thinking
about swerving into oncoming traffic while driving,
or feeling the urge to jump off a cliff’s edge while
overlooking one.
I had no idea “the call of the void” originated from French! Neato!
The void calls out to me constantly.
Every day.
All Day.
… I figure it’s just self-test diagnostics:
“hey, we’re still nominally functional and sane, right? Thinking about <AWFUL HIDEOUS HORRIFIC THING> gives us the badfeels like it should, right? Okay. Good.”
That’s a cool way of thinking about it.
It reminds me of a discussion I had with a friend the other day. I was trying to ascertain whether other people experience mild, easily dismissable intrusive thoughts, as I do. It feels weird to call them intrusive thoughts if they’re easily dismissed — I feel like that phrase better describes thoughts that stick around and cause distress due to not going away. What I experience is fairly frequent thoughts that are like “imagine if you did [awful thing]”, and then I mentally reply “yes, that would indeed be awful, which is why I have no interest in doing that”, and then I’m fine.
I like your framing of it as self check diagnostics. I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, but that feels like an accurate description of what goes on internally for me.
You know those video games where you see a flashforward of a character dying and then have to prevent that scenario from happening? It feels like that. Your brain doing risk analysis of potential dangerous situations.