Languishing: The Purgatory Between Mental Health and Mental Illness
Corey Keyes first conceptualized the term languishing as being the middle ground between mental health and mental illness. It is a state where one is neither in crisis nor thriving, neither depressed nor flourishing, or neither stuck nor making leaps of progress.
It is akin to someone being on a merry-go-round –they have been in it for far too long they have forgotten why they were even on it in the first place but are also too indifferent to even bother getting off. It is your “default mode,” your friend going through the motions of life, or your co-worker relying on the inertia of everyday tasks that need to be done.
If this resonates with you, you are not alone. The pandemic may have hit us hard in extreme ways – death, unemployment, economic disruptions, etc., yet one thing that was overlooked was the subtle yet pervasive ways in which it has affected all of us. Maybe you did not lose your job but working from home has blurred the boundaries you used to have between personal and work life and now you catch yourself working and juggling errands all the time. Maybe your classes switched to online, synchronous to asynchronous, or replacing face-to-face interactions with Zoom sessions. With your schedule and dedicated spaces for work (classroom, library, coffee shop, etc.) now gone, you now find yourself thinking, doing, and eating with schoolwork as soon as you roll out of bed (and perhaps, even sleeping with it). Maybe you did not lose a loved one to COVID, but you have heard the news of too many deaths that it has become part of your daily digest. Nothing new, let’s scroll to the next news. Maybe you don’t feel burned out or fatigued but neither bursting with energy and motivation.
What You Can Do
If you are like many of us, here are some activities that can perhaps help get you get off the merry-go-round that is languishing:
Permit yourself to enjoy.
Take some time off from your work and do activities that force you to be present with yourself. How about just sitting in the park and taking in the expansiveness of your surrounding? How about leaving your phone home for the next 2 or 3 hours and just sitting with yourself?
Try a self-compassion break.
Practice a self-compassion break. Dr. Kristin Neff offers this short exercise that reminds us that suffering is a part of our life and our common humanity. Acknowledge that languishing albeit not debilitating or painful is still a kind of suffering. We are meant to flourish as human beings, to feel connected not only to others but to a higher purpose, to a life filled with meaning and not just routines. Through this self-compassion break, remind yourself that you are not alone and to be kind to yourself through this moment of suffering.
Pursue an engaging activity.
Pursue something that excites you and keeps you engaged. It could be that 1000-piece puzzle, hitting that tennis ball repeatedly on the wall, knitting, creative arts session, yoga, or anything that mentally challenges you and gears your mind on “active rest.”
Reach out
Reach out to friends and loved ones. Give yourself and others permission to be vulnerable, to admit that while the pandemic may not have been too harsh on you, it still stirred feelings of unplaced uneasiness. Don’t minimize it. Having a perspective is good but sometimes it turns into self-shaming as we compare the gravity of our situation to others. We may not realize it, but others could also be languishing yet ashamed or afraid to acknowledge it out loud for fear of being labeled as thoughtless or lacking social awareness. Aren’t you tired of telling others you’re “good” and “fine,” when what you want to say is “meh” and “blah?”
Finally, if you need a safe, compassionate space to help you understand how the pandemic has impacted you and left you languishing, our skilled therapists can help.
You deserve to be flourishing, to live a life well-lived. Don’t languish for one more day.
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