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Do you want to start a new activity, exercise, go for a run, read a book, but when Monday comes to start, you are tired, you have a lot of work, you postpone it for the night and you realize that it is already Wednesday and you go back to say next monday i start?
The pandemic came as a surprise to us and brought with it many changes to endure in our daily lives due to a fatal disease, we have to face those emotional consequences that it leaves us and begin to be resilient.
We tend to hear our friends, neighbors and family complain of feelings such as annoyance, lack of courage, exhaustion, the feeling of not having a clear direction, which has generated mental fatigue that is becoming increasingly difficult to handle. Have you ever felt like this? Do you feel that you no longer have the same shine, the excitement of doing something new? Do you want to do things, but you do not have enough energy to carry them out and it only remains as an activity that you had the intention to do, but did not achieve it? This is called Languidity.
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The term Languidity was determined by the sociologist and psychologist Korey Keyes, who defines it as “a state in which an individual lacks positive emotion towards life is not functioning well either psychologically or socially.”
Languish is a mental health condition that consists of having the feeling of being stagnant, not having a clear direction, exhaustion, apathy, a feeling of not being present in your day-to-day life, abandoning activities that you used to do with pleasure, motivation and emotion, you want to take them back, but you don’t know why you can’t perform the same anymore.
“Languish is the ignored child of mental health. It is the gap between depression and well-being: the absence of well-being . You have no symptoms of mental illness, but you are not the living picture of mental health either. You are not running flat out. Languishing tarnishes your motivation, impairs your ability to concentrate, and triples your chances of cutting back on work. It seems to be more common than depression, and in a way it can be a major risk factor for mental illness, “Adam Grant told the New York Times.
According to the GQ magazine, only in Mexico 27.3% of adolescents presented depressive symptoms and 32.4 anxiety symptoms. But nevertheless; Most people do not realize that their “depression” is not depression but languor, since many confuse this last term for a concept closer to “roe or laziness”, and the reality is that it does not go there, the person has every intention of doing things, but his energy is not enough to carry out the activity in the ideal way.
Many times we self-diagnose or put our symptoms aside believing that we are exaggerating and that it will soon pass, without realizing that if we suffer from languor our levels of creativity will decrease, productivity will be affected, concentration will decrease and this will undoubtedly harm our performance at work and interpersonal relationships in our environment.
“Languishing without doing something to avoid it can ruin our life because: it weakens motivation. It interrupts the ability to concentrate, triples the chances that your professional performance will decrease, there is a greater probability of suffering from depression and anxiety in the next decade ”, says Mario Guerra Thanatologist, lecturer and psychotherapist.
So before this we have two options that position us in the middle of a straight line: 1) do nothing and let this turn into a severe depression or 2) treat ourselves and return to having that emotional balance that allows us to feel that full well-being .
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How can we treat our languor?
- Maintain contact with people who inspire you. When you surround yourself with people who are full of energy, wanting to grow emotionally and personally, they inspire you to fight for your dreams, to want to move forward and do everything you have always wanted.
- Respect your work hours. Now that many of us are in the home office, it is easier for us to exceed our working hours, a task that we can finish in two hours we extend to three or four, thinking that we have more time because we are at home and we can finish it later , without realizing that this causes the imbalance between our work life and our social life. If you start to respect and set your working hours, you will achieve better planning what you can do before or after your activities, thus having time to return to that book that you have saved since you bought it or simply left it halfway; to enjoy your family and most importantly, yourself!
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- Resume those activities that you had left aside , go back to exercising, going for a run in the mornings or, reading, meditation, going out to dinner or dancing with your friends, all this will strengthen the emotion of doing different activities and heading to new experiences and knowledge that will give you back the motivation and energy you had.
- Stay away from pessimistic people. Although people can inspire you and share their energy with you, they can also infect you with their way of seeing life, and if we add to this that they are going through the same problem as you and have languor, they are people who will keep you in a state constant mental laziness, choose to keep them away from you since neither you are a good company for them nor they are good for you, at least as you leave your recovery process.
It is important to take into account that this will take time, do it little by little with the intention of recovering your mood and not just to kill time and keep you busy. Do not pressure or overload yourself, go to a step that allows you to return to your emotional balance and regain the energy you need to feel full, to vibrate so high again that you become the person who inspires more languid people to go back on their path to depression and wanting to vibrate in your same tune.
