Apr 29

Apr 29 Feeling a bit blah? What to do about lockdown languishing

The These Are The Heydays tagline - ‘Ideas To Help You Live Life To The Full’ - is always my guiding principle when I write these blog posts. But a full life is one that has downs as well as ups. Challenges as well as achievements. Sadness as well as happiness.

So an article that was published in the New York and Irish Times last week, snappily entitled ‘There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing’ caught my eye because it perfectly encapsulated something I’ve been experiencing myself recently, and that I know from my conversations with them, quite a few of my friends are struggling with as well.

The symptoms of languishing

The range of blah symptoms we’re noticing include, but are not restricted to, having trouble concentrating (the inability to finish books got a lot of mentions), feeling unexpected lack of excitement at being able to eat out in restaurants again, indeed a sense of general apathy about making social arrangements of any sort, and a dulling of work motivation.

None of us are actively unhappy. We still have energy. We’re still able to complete our day-to-day activities. We still find plenty to give us pleasure. But we’re experiencing a general sense of ‘meh’ that we’re finding hard to shake off.

And that, apparently, perfectly encapsulates languishing.

The mental health spectrum

The writer of the piece, Adam Grant, an organisational psychologist at the Wharton school of business at the University of Pennsylvania, explains it like this:

“In psychology we think about mental health on a spectrum from depression to flourishing. Flourishing is the peak of wellbeing: you have a strong sense of meaning, mastery and mattering to others. Depression is the valley of ill-being: you feel despondent, drained and worthless.

Languishing is the neglected middle child of mental health. It’s the void between depression and flourishing – the absence of wellbeing. You don’t have symptoms of mental illness, but you’re not the picture of mental health either. You’re not functioning at full capacity. Languishing dulls your motivation, disrupts your ability to focus and triples the odds that you’ll cut back on work. It appears to be more common than major depression.”

Somewhere in the middle

The term languishing was originally coined by a sociologist called Corey Keyes who became aware that many people who weren’t depressed also weren’t thriving. They were falling, and flailing, somewhere between the two.

And research is beginning to reveal that a lot of people who have survived the intense emotions of the initial stages of the past year - panic and grief being the dominant ones - are now struggling with the long-haul emotional demands that Covid is leaving in its wake.

How can we help ourselves?

It seems that the particular challenge that languishing presents is that we’re not necessarily aware that we’re struggling with it. That what Adam describes as our “dulling of delight or the dwindling of drive” blocks our ability to recognise it and therefore to do what we can to help ourselves.

He suggests two particular antidotes that I’ll come on to in a moment. But first I’d add a couple of blah-beaters (have you ever known me to resist an alliteration?) of my own. The first is

Be aware of how you’re feeling

The emotional dullness that typifies languishing can make it challenging to be aware of the ways it is affecting you. But if we can make a conscious effort to notice and (quite literally if that helps) take note of what I’m now claiming as the self-coined term ‘meh-ness’ (you’re welcome), it will be a helpful first step towards finding our way through and out of it.

Which brings me neatly on to the other

Talk about how you’re feeling

When we’re asked how we are, resist the temptation to give the usual “fine” response and be honest about how we’re feeling. If it helps to identify our meh-ness (and it’s been shown that naming emotions is a useful and successful way of handling them) then say “actually, I’m languishing, at the moment”. And if the person we’re talking to doesn’t know what that means, all the better. It’ll give us the chance to explain (and thus identify) the feelings we’re experiencing.

Article author Adam (entirely accidental alliteration there, but none the less satisfying), has his own pair of blah-beater recommendations both based on the principle of flow.

Go with the flow

Flow, he explains, is “that elusive state of absorption in a meaningful challenge or a momentary bond, where your sense of time, place and self melts away”. In other words, something that you a) give your undivided attention to and b) takes you out of yourself (and your head space) and makes you focus entirely on something else.

Adam’s first flow challenge is

Give yourself some uninterrupted time

We’ve all become masters of multi-tasking and devout believers in the power of busyness. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that to be truly productive, which brings with it a blah-beating positive sense of achievement, we need to carve out distraction-free time that enables us to focus on the task in hand. It doesn’t have to be long. But it does need to be long enough to concentrate and complete whatever it is we’ve set ourselves to do.

Which neatly leads on to his second challenge

Focus on a small goal

“One of the clearest paths to flow is a [task with] just manageable difficulty” says Adam. “a challenge that stretches your skills and heightens your resolve…that matters to you”. When you’ve identified and achieved what you set out to do (whether that’s weeding a flowerbed or doing a crossword), the feel-good ramifications will do wonders for your awol enthusiasm.

And with each of these small goals/steps you’ll find yourself a little further along the path out of languishing and back to flourishing.

You can read Adam Grant’s full article here