About
Blankedonia Database is a curated archive of publicly posted first-person reports describing a blanked or emptied mind together with emotional numbness, anhedonia, or affective flattening. The site is meant as a quiet documentary record: preserve wording where possible, attribute sources clearly, and make patterns easier to browse without claiming clinical certainty.
This is not medical advice. Nothing here diagnoses a condition, endorses a treatment, or replaces care from a qualified clinician. If you are in distress, seek appropriate professional help.
How cases are collected
Cases come from an ongoing research watch that searches the open web for new first-person accounts of a specific symptom cluster: cognitive blankness (empty head, no thoughts, lost inner monologue, severe fog framed as blankness) paired with numb or flattened emotion (emotional numbness, anhedonia, blunting, "feeling nothing"). Both poles must be present in the report, or clearly implied together, before an entry is logged.
Sources typically include:
- Patient and survivor forums (for example DP/DR, antidepressant, PSSD, and related communities)
- Public Reddit threads and long-form personal essays
- Interview pieces and other published first-person writing
- Community submissions sent to this project with a link to an original public source
The watch uses varied search queries, then fetches full pages rather than relying on snippets alone. Before logging anything new, existing archive IDs are checked so the same report is not duplicated. Each accepted case records, when the source allows:
- A stable case ID and link to the original source
- Attributed cause as described by the writer (medication, withdrawal, trauma, illness, unknown, and so on)
- Duration of symptoms, if stated
- Recovery status (recovered, partial, not recovered, or unknown) and any recovery notes
- A short first-person quotation
- Whether both symptom poles are clearly stated
The research watch runs on weekday mornings (America/Chicago). New cases are appended to a structured case log, then synced onto this site. The live database is rebuilt from that log so counts and detail pages stay aligned with the archive.
What this is not: a clinical study, a random sample of the internet, or a complete census of everyone with these experiences. Selection favors publicly posted, findable first-person writing that matches the cluster definition. Language varies by community; some entries are adjacent (strong on one pole, weaker on the other) and are marked accordingly via both_symptoms_clear.
Each case links out to its original source URL whenever available. Please read reports in their original context.
Each case is one person. When the same person posted more than once, or crossposted, their posts are merged into a single case with a dated timeline of every post and every source listed, and old links to the merged-away cases redirect to it. Cross-site matches are only merged with clear evidence.
Community submissions
If you know a public first-person blank-mind / emotional-numbness account that is missing here, email a short note and include a link to the original source. Submissions are reviewed against the same cluster criteria before they may be added: