FEELING BLEH?

What to do about it.

Have you noticed how so many people are talking about how tired they are? It is as if a cloud of tiredness has descended upon society. When a popular local radio station recently asked people to come up with their podcast name based on their mood, “tired” was an exceptionally common response. According to the science folk, there is a reason for that, and it has to do (once again) with what society went through during the Covid-19 pandemic. For almost three years, the one thing we all had in common was our lethargy. Lying around on the couch, reaching only for the bag of potato chips or the TV remote. We waited, stuck in Groundhog Day mode, and while we did so, our mood became increasingly listless. What started as anguish gave way to languish, that indifferent space between thriving and surviving. It is here in this middle ground where we find that depression lurks beneath the surface.

Languishing is also known as “the neglected middle child of mental health”, a term coined in 2002 by sociologist Corey Keys. His research found that it is not the people expressing their symptoms of depression who will experience major depression and anxiety disorders in the next decade, but rather those who are languishing. On the mental health continuum, languishing is found at the midpoint. It is not the same as depression; rather, it is a place of emotional distress. You can function when you languish, but there is a decline in your mental wellbeing. Writing for the New York Times, Adam Grant compares languishing to “looking at your life through a foggy windshield”.

On the mental health continuum, languishing is found at the midpoint. It is not the same as depression; rather, it is a place of emotional distress. You can function when you languish, but there is a decline in your mental wellbeing.

This is not meant to overburden you with yet another thing to worry about. Instead, it is meant to provide you with a way out of feeling “bleh”. So what can you do?

Psychologists say that a winning strategy for managing emotions is to name them. In the height of the pandemic, the most popular Harvard Business Review article was one that looked at grief. Its popularity has been attributed to the fact that this was a look into what people were most commonly feeling at the time. Being able to understand that it was grief we were feeling helped us to move beyond the feeling. We should therefore not discount the value of therapy. If naming an emotion helps, imagine what an hour spent naming all your feelings can do?

Another thing you can do to overcome the feeling of “bleh” is to give yourself some uninterrupted time. The emphasis must be on no interruptions, because we live in a time where we are too easily accessible and this means people think we are always available, which is exhausting. Besides, when we are not being distracted, we gain the freedom to focus and as people we find joy in experiences that capture our full attention. Treat uninterrupted blocks of time as treasures to guard.

Being aware of our state of discontent, perhaps we can learn to answer more honestly when asked how we are. Perhaps we can talk about our languishing as the tonic to toxic positivity, which tries to put a spin on the truth of how we really feel, pressuring us to be upbeat all the time.

The opposite of flourishing, that state of feeling connected and purposeful, is languishing. But remember, you are not alone in feeling this way – many people are feeling languid because this was our common state of being for almost three years. Once you are in this position, it is hard to simply bounce back into a state of connecting and vibing. It is going to take time and effort, but we can most definitely light the path out of the void.

Kirsty Watermeyer