Permission to Languish
A recent New York Times piece by Adam Grant introduced the concept of “languishing”: that feeling of listlessness so many of us have been experiencing as the pandemic drags on. The exhaustion of working longer hours with no clear delineation between work and home life, and no commute in which to decompress. Dishes are not being done, hobbies are being put off, exercising is a thing of the past. Family responsibilities and job duties compete for increasingly scarce time and attention, and interpersonal relationships suffer from too much distance — or not enough. Worst of all, productivity is lagging!
Sound familiar? It’s not just you. Putting language to this oddly specific feeling has helped many of us articulate and conceptualize what we are going through. In the last few weeks I’ve had several clients refer to the article and the term with a sigh of relief, as if they are finally being validated. Before encountering this new idea, they could only describe a sense of ennui or, even more generally, lack of motivation. The clarifying power of “languishing” is, clearly, useful: if we can’t put a finger on what it is we’re feeling, we’ll never learn to deal with those feelings in a healthy way. But what, exactly, are we supposed to do with this information?
The idea of mental health as a spectrum is not new, but the NYT piece defines the extremes as “Depression” at one end and “Flourishing” at the other. “Languishing,” Grant writes, “is the neglected middle child of mental health. It’s the void between depression and flourishing — the absence of well-being.” Illuminating as it may be, this framing also subtly reinforces a widespread and problematic attitude toward mental health — all too prevalent in the literature of self-help and self-improvement — that puts the onus on individuals to “fix” themselves, regardless of external factors contributing to the difficulties they face. The suggestion is that we should be Flourishing, or we may not even notice we are slipping into Depression.
If flourishing is the ideal, the self-help model offers few insights on how to get there, other than by striving to do more and do it better. Feeling depressed? Throw yourself into your work. Too busy? Learn to manage your time better. Scattered and unfocused? Work on your organizational skills! Whatever is ailing you, whatever is sapping your all-important productivity, is ultimately your responsibility to address, on your own time. Yet even the concept of leisure time has been repackaged and sold back to us as “self-care” — often little more than an invitation to spend money on consumer goods and services in place of authentically self-actualizing pursuits and meaningful engagement with others.
How did we get here? Who’s responsible? Every serious mental health professional, and anyone who’s ever sought therapy, understands the importance of personal responsibility in meeting life’s challenges. But in our individualistic and work-obsessed culture, we also tend to discount the material basis for those challenges. Far from making life easier, for example, multiple studies over the past year have shown that working remotely leads to longer workdays, bigger workloads, and more stress and fatigue for remote workers. No wonder we’re at the end of our ropes! But rather than reckon with material conditions over which we, at least individually, , have little control, we are taught to “manage” the feelings we understandably experience as a result.
To that end, the NYT article proposes three “antidotes” to languishing: finding your flow, blocking out time, and setting small goals — all good ideas and interventions I often discuss with people in therapy. Doing one thing mindfully, which can elicit a “flow” state, is a particularly great practice. So much of what we identify as anxiety comes down to to-do lists and little problems that overwhelm us, as there is too much to do and not enough time to do it. Learning to tune out that inner monologue that constantly drives us to do more is in fact the key to, and the goal of, mindfulness practice.
And yet, while the larger context of the pandemic is acknowledged, the article’s advice is directed squarely at the reader, implying a personal responsibility to manage the symptoms while otherwise disregarding the cause. Over and against this impulse to self-discipline, already deeply ingrained in so many of us, I sometimes challenge my clients to consider: what if how you are coping right now is good enough? Could it be that languishing is simply a natural reaction to this prolonged stress and uncertainty? Maybe the response you are having is a valid one?
Maybe a more appropriate strategy for coping with languishing would be allowing. Allow yourself to take a nap. Allow yourself to take things off your to-do list and opt out of Zoom meetings. Allow yourself to continue to grieve the losses. This pandemic is not over. The vaccine that we were told would return life to “normal” has not allowed us to resume pre-pandemic activities yet. We are still wearing masks and limiting outings. We are still putting off travel plans and family reunions. So, in this endless 7th inning stretch that is the pandemic, maybe we could all use a little more patience with ourselves to just be, with no expectation of doing more and doing better. Allow ourselves to feel whatever it is we are labeling this feeling and know that this too, shall pass.