Not depressed, but not flourishing: How ‘languishing’ became the dominant feeling of 2021

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Fourteen months after COVID-19 first thrust the world into lockdown, many of us feel like a plant drooping in a pot: devoid of water, wilting, withered and weak. Our motivation has dulled and a constant state of blah-ness has taken over.

If a friend were to ask you how you’re doing right now and your go-to response would be “I’m meh,” or the classic “I’m fine,” followed by an unenthused shrug of the shoulders, you may be experiencing the “dominant feeling of 2021,” according to American organizational psychologist Adam Grant.

There’s a word for that feeling and it’s much fancier than “meh.” It’s called “languishing,” and as the person who coined the term explains, it may be the landing spot many people find themselves in after 2020’s dominant emotion: grief.

Undoubtedly, there’s much to look forward to on the horizon, with vaccinations ramping up and Bill Gates predicting a “completely normal” world by the end of 2022. And yet, many of us just can’t seem to get excited.

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It’s the middle ground between being mentally healthy and mentally ill

Our initial lockdown anxiety and panic has subsided, and while we don’t feel despondent, we aren’t in a state of nirvana, either. An overwhelming feeling of emptiness makes us feel like we are living life through foggy glasses, waddling around in an aimless, faded state where we were once on high alert for danger.

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Though we may not feel burnt out or hopeless, we sure don’t feel like we’re flourishing, said Dr. Corey Keyes, the sociologist who coined the term “languishing” in 2002. 

“It’s the middle ground between being mentally healthy and mentally ill,” he told the National Post. “It’s not depression, but it’s the absence and insufficiency of feeling good and functioning well.”

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Simply put, we are experiencing an absence of the good stuff: purpose, belonging, contribution, satisfaction and interest in life. But this absence can feel like a “piercing void in your soul,” Keyes said, meaning this state of stagnancy is actually a form of suffering, though we don’t acknowledge it much.

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The people most likely to experience major anxiety and depression in the next 10 years are actually the ones languishing right now, his research from 2010 showed. In an earlier paper, he noted languishing is “more prevalent than major depressive disorder,” indicating the need for intervention before people move towards mental illness.

“Imagine feeling really hungry — but psychologically and emotionally,” he said of those who are languishing. “Like there’s this void, this emptiness in there (that) you cannot fill.”

It’s a void that terrified early Christian scholars. They called the condition “acedia,” from the ancient Greek word akidía, which literally means an inert state without care. It was a state of listlessness, apathy and torpor with regards to spirituality, tempting monks to abandon their religious lives.

In fact, it was so abhorrent that it was known as the eighth deadly sin — eventually being grouped in with the sin of “laziness,” also known as “sloth.”

Imagine feeling really hungry — but psychologically and emotionally

Acedia, or “languishing” as we now characterize it, has continued into our current millennium. This feeling of emptiness and stagnation illustrates our pandemic lives, although this time, it’s not so much viewed as a horrible sin but our new normal (cue exasperated sighs).

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Before languishing, we collectively experienced grief at the onset of the pandemic. And it’s this period of grief that not necessarily fuelled our blah-ness, but perhaps foreshadowed it, Keyes said.

As our “old” lives were put to rest in 2020, we undoubtedly mourned the end of life as we knew it, said Rebecca Soffer, co-founder and chief executive officer of Modern Loss and co-author of Modern Loss Candid Conversation About Grief. Beginners Welcome. We experienced loss on many different scales: our loss of loved ones, loss of time, and loss of normalcy.

After acknowledging this reality, we then progressed into a state of standstill where we became indifferent to our indifference, she said.

“Now, we’ve been slogging through life for the past year,” Soffer said. “We see a little bit of hope on the horizon, but we’re not quite there yet and we still can’t access it. We can stretch our hands out, but we’re not able to fully grasp it yet.”

We see a little bit of hope on the horizon, but we’re not quite there yet and we still can’t access it

As someone who lost her parents in her 30s, Soffer said this current state of languishing is familiar to her as it had also followed that period of grief.

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“There were times where I wasn’t feeling this intense gut-wrenching pain everyday, but I certainly wasn’t feeling motivated, hopeful, driven or productive,” she said. “It was that feeling of blah-ness … the meh-ness where it feels like you’re just kind of existing.”

It’s a realization that what you once had is now gone, said Keyes. Pre-pandemic, we took for granted the things that brought us a sense of purpose, like activities where we felt we could make valuable contributions. For many, that involved in-person socialization.

Then, after the initial grief of losing what brought us comfort, we tried to get on with life and cherish the “right now.” But there was a lack of direction on where to go after grief — there was nothing to do that resembled much of normality. Thus, we melted into a state of languishing that has persisted into 2021.

“Hopefully we remember something really good was taken away from us under these circumstances: that was the ability to flourish,” Keyes said. “When we return to some normality, my hope is that people can renew their appreciation (for life) as it has amazing gifts that enable us to flourish if we’re willing to take them.”

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That’s exactly what Keyes suggests we do to eventually draw us out of this dull state: actively focus on reclaiming what was lost in a healthy way. People may look to fill this void with things that are “distracting but not necessarily healthy,” like overeating, spending too much online or engaging in other risky behaviour.

“But what you really need to focus on is that ‘functioning well’ state — reclaiming a sense of purpose and belonging,” he said. “We need to ask ourselves, ‘How could I do things under the new constraints we live under that helped me meet the criteria of flourishing?’”

To get out of this state of languishing, Grant describes engaging in something called “flow” — the “elusive state of absorption in a meaningful challenge or a momentary bond, where your sense of time, place and self melts away.” If that means watching Tiger King again, then, hey, catapult yourself into that world.

Trying to reclaim that energy or enthusiasm you’ve missed over the months may also be achieved by setting goals, even the smallest ones, like completing an interesting project or engaging in a meaningful conversation.

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And, of course, it’s always important to talk to others about how you’re feeling and to take this state of stagnation seriously, Keyes said, as languishing can be “as bad as depression in some of its outcomes, like suicides, lost work days, lost productivity and so forth.”

In a society that still stigmatizes mental health challenges, it will be important to rethink what mental health actually is and what that looks like, Soffer said. Periods of post-grief may not “look” like depression, but our struggles can manifest in different ways.

“My greatest hope is that we emerge from the ruins of this excruciating, deadly, awful, isolating pandemic more empathetic toward each other,” she said. “I hope we become more understanding and more aware of one another.”