Standing in a shopping mall looking down to the floors below and think to myself. “Jump” In no way do I want to kill myself but when I brought this up a lot of my friends had been through the same thing. Ive started to see memes about it online. So what’s up? [jump! ](https://d279m997dpfwgl.cloudfront.net/wp/2018/06/0629_reddit-void-main-1000×1425.jpg)
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I’ve heard it called *The Imp of the Perverse*; an urge to do the absolutely wrong thing in any given situation.
As for why it happens, I have no idea. Might be a result of our brain being able to figure out that doing something is incredibly stupid (which is a good thing to be able to do) and then having to resist acting upon this thing it identified as something that it *can* do. Perhaps the mere holding of an idea in your head gives you the urge to act upon it that must then be resisted.
They are called “intrusive thoughts”. They are thought to be as a way your brain creates fear of something you shouldn’t do: you see a height, you think about jumping, then you think about yourself splatting on the ground, the result is you don’t do it and gradually you developed a mild fear of height, which increases your chances of survival.
Think of it like a simulation your brain runs to see if something is doable.
We made a whole episode of our podcast about this and used this same image! Listen here: https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2018/06/29/the-call-of-the-void
Here’s an explanation from the episode about why we have this particular kind of intrusive thought:
April Smith, an associate professor of psychology at Miami University in Ohio, has studied this. She even co-authored a study about it, “An urge to jump affirms the urge to live, an empirical examination of the high place phenomenon.”
(“High place phenomenon” is what scientists call The Call of The Void).
Her research found a few things. One, that about 50 percent of people have experienced aspects of the call of the void. And two, that it’s the result of some kind of miscommunication in your brain.
“It could be the case that when you’re up somewhere high, your brain is basically sending an alarm signal — you know, be careful. And that could actually lead you to take a step back, or notice your surroundings,” she says. “Then that more deliberative process kind of kicks in and you start to think, why did I just take a step back? I’m totally fine. There’s no reason for me to be afraid. Oh, I must have wanted to jump.”
Like a trick of the mind — a post hoc rationalization of a behavior. And it’s not anything to worry about, she says. Some thoughts are just chatter, or static. They don’t mean you’re going to do something, or not do something.
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 a destructive behavior during everyday life. Most commonly reported examples include thinking about swerving into oncoming traffic while driving, or feeling the urge to jump off the edge of cliff while overlooking from one.
Many think that thrillseeking relates to an abnormality in the adrenaline reception in the brain. It’s theorized that people that love to skydive and base jump aren’t able to process adrenaline and serotonin at the same levels as normal people can, so in order to feel that satisfaction they need to tone up the amount of adrenaline and serotonin that they take in. This can be done by doing really stupid stunts. This is unconfirmed, but I have seen some written interviews with older thrillseekers in which they describe normal things like riding fast on a motorcycle doesn’t make them feel anything, while jumping multiple cars on a bike would produce the same reaction in someone else riding really fast.
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