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machado: there's a name for that awful feeling, says adam grant
just because you're not depressed, doesn't mean you aren't struggling — but talking about it gives a voice to quiet despair.
languishing is more common than major depression, and could be a risk factor for mental illness. getty
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in a 2021 new york times piece, adam grant, an organizational psychologist, gives a name to the general sense of awfulness many of us have been feeling as the pandemic drags on: languishing. “languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness,” he writes. “it feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield.”
whew. what a relief, because i was beginning to think something was really wrong with me. i’m generally a chilled-out person. i laugh easily, i really like life with my kids, my dogs and good chocolate. all in all, i’m pretty happy just to be here on earth.
except one day i woke up and everything suddenly became really hard. the exercise routine i had been following religiously for months? well, that morning i could barely tie my shoes. my favourite coffee with the perfect splash of cream — i like mine to look like a sandy beach — suddenly tasted bitter and lacklustre. and the many deadlines that were looming — the very same ones i had written out the day before with complete confidence — seemed impossible.
and it wasn’t that i was tired, exactly. sure, i had been having recurring dreams about eating raw chicken (weird and gross), but that wasn’t it. it was more like i had lost something — my groove, my gusto, my joie de vivre.
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later that day, one of my favourite workmates who is usually upbeat with a ready smile started our zoom call with a long sigh.
“i think i’m depressed,” he said, a concerned crinkle between his eyebrows. “every day it’s the same thing over and over. and i am so, so … just something.”
and that’s just it. we can feel that something has shifted, perhaps in our ability to continue to live pandemic life day-after-day with a brave face, or maybe it’s in the confidence we may once have had that yes, everything will, in fact, eventually be okay.
until grant’s piece, this uncomfortable nagging pit in our stomachs remained nameless. languishing is “the neglected middle child of mental health,” he wrote, the absence of well-being, the space between depression and flourishing.
“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.”
boom.
if any of this sounds familiar, you are not alone. according to grant, languishing is more common than major depression, and could be a risk factor for mental illness.
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i guess there’s comfort in the fact that this empty sense of perpetual blah is not unique — maybe we are not alone in our languish. and while the hopelessness may feel new and daunting, exacerbated by a scary global health crisis, what if, in fact, we have been here before? what if we have “languished” before, but we never really noticed because a) it was buried by the mundaneness of life, and b) we survived, and moved on?
“most of us spend considerable time in the “languish” zone,” jeff haden wrote in inc.
“sometimes we feel like the queens and kings of our worlds; other times, we feel like pawns. sometimes we’re actually surprised by our skills; other times it feels like we can’t do anything right. sometimes we feel a genuine sense of connection and community; other times, no matter how many people we’re surrounded by, we still feel somewhat alone.”haden goes on to note that no one is always upbeat, productive, and focused. and while he comes at the idea of languishing from a business perspective, haden ties the uncomfortable feeling to the basic ways in which humans tend to respond to change: we don’t like it, it can make us uncomfortable and unsure — it can make us languish.
he points to one of the big changes the pandemic has foisted on employers: learning that employees can, in fact, be productive working from home. maybe you don’t care about this too much after months of living under siege from a deadly virus, but it’s what he says next that is especially important.
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“to languish is human,” writes haden. “as is deciding to look for, and take advantage of, the opportunities that inevitably result from change… and when you work to seize them, the fulfillment and sense of purpose that comes from pursuing something meaningful will help you emerge from the languish zone. a bit smarter. a bit more skilled. aware of the fact that sometimes we all languish. willing to forgive yourself for languishing.”
but most of all, “even more capable of dealing, both practically and emotionally, with whatever happens the next time things change.”
tooting the whole “with adversity comes opportunity” horn may be a bit tiresome at this point in the pandemic, but talking about how we are feeling is not. it’s actually great.
as grant writes, “not depressed” doesn’t mean you’re not struggling. “not burned out” doesn’t mean you’re fired up. by acknowledging that so many of us are languishing, we can start giving voice to quiet despair and lighting a path out of the void.”
here’s to that.
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