Languishing: The COVID Blues

This has been a really weird spring, for many reasons, not least of which is the weather.  After a really mild winter, we've had an unseasonably dry and warm spring.  While I love the sunshine, the pollen in the air is unbearable sometimes, and just having lunch on a patio makes me feel congested for days.  It also hasn't been great for my garden.  The bulbs started to come up a little too early and my tulips never fully bloomed.  Even the gorgeous flowering trees around the neighborhood are looking a little desperate for some moisture.  A very "blah" winter with not nearly enough snowfall has led to a kind of boring spring.  (But maybe boring is a good thing after the year we just had, right?)

Some languishing tulip bulbs in my front garden

And speaking of "blah," a friend recently shared an article with me about languishing, the feeling so many of us are experiencing right now of a general aimlessness, monotony, like we aren't fully flourishing ("Feeling Blah During the Pandemic").  This really hit home for me.  While in some ways I feel busier in the past year than ever before, working hard to balance the high demands of work and home life and managing my own stress, I also feel like I'm just running on a treadmill.  The novelty of the early weeks of the pandemic has worn off, the adrenaline that kept us going in 2020 is depleted, and yet the end is still nowhere in sight, so we're just here in the middle dragging our feet.

"Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield. And it might be the dominant emotion of 2021."

I'm meeting my deadlines and I'm working toward goals for the year, but sometimes I'm just not that enthusiastic about having to engage with other people, and the thought of yet another Zoom meeting is just too much sometimes.  I have some motivated and productive days, but I also have days when I just can't muster the energy I need to convince my patients to get out of their hospital beds or convince my preschooler to eat her dinner.  Why bother?  I'm not depressed.  I'm not burned out.  I'm just languishing, some days more than others.  And I find so much comfort in knowing that this thing has a name and that everyone else is feeling it too.  It seems, in some ways, to parallel many of the symptoms of "long COVID" that thousands of individuals are experiencing months after recovering from COVID, except languishing doesn't just affect COVID survivors.  As the months go on, we learn more and more that COVID affects everybody, whether you actually contract the virus or not.  

(In ultimate languishing manner, I've been trying to write this post for two weeks and I couldn't bring myself to put bulleted notes into real sentences or come up with a cohesive dialogue, so I just left it in draft form for days.  My languishing really got in the way of writing a blog about languishing.)  The thought of disrupting my normal daily routine to do something new or exciting, like starting running again after a long hiatus, or remodeling a bathroom that I've been talking about for years, is so daunting that I want to just crawl in a hole and avoid it forever.  I will sometimes have the enthusiasm and the creativity to come up with an idea at work, either for patient care or for a project I'm working on, but I seem to lose momentum in translating those ideas to tangible finished projects.  I have lost count of how many unfinished powerpoint presentations, case reports, or inservice topics I have in process right now for future presentations or committee meetings.  Part of this may be due to lack of time, but I'm struggling to take the final step in finishing something without a deadline.  The pandemic doesn't have a deadline, and maybe that's part of the problem.  We are all stuck in this thing for the foreseeable future.

One thing that is definitely contributing to this feeling for me is the teasers.  The false hopes.  The deep yearning for optimism.  We hear something positive, like the favorable vaccination rates, or the low number of hospitalized patients in the COVID unit, and we get our hopes up that life is returning to normal.  But then we hear about a friend who got COVID while vaccinated, or we learn about new, highly contagious variants that are popping up in other countries.  Or we watch as some places in the country start opening up completely when most of their population is not yet vaccinated.  And these things just burst any bubble of hope that we had and make us cautious about feeling hopeful again.  It also makes it really hard to make decisions, because there's conflicting information and the data is constantly changing, so we find ourselves being indecisive about everything from where to get takeout to whether or not to travel this year.

Another pandemic term I kind of love and also hate is "revenge procrastination," this concept of trying to reclaim control of one's life by staying up late, especially scrolling on a phone or staring at the screen, anything that give us a false sense of freedom over a day that was largely out of our control.  I can't tell you how many times I have fully intended to go to bed early, just to instead find myself still scrolling social media, shopping kids' clothing sales, or catching up on articles an hour later.  The screen is so easy and passive, yet also feels like a reward after a very active day.  It's harmful at bedtime, but also so tempting.

"Languishing is not merely in our heads — it’s in our circumstances. You can’t heal a sick culture with personal bandages. We still live in a world that normalizes physical health challenges but stigmatizes mental health challenges. As we head into a new post-pandemic reality, it’s time to rethink our understanding of mental health and well-being. '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. "

Beating the languishing blues with some new blooms

So languishing is real, and we're all experiencing it to some extent.  But what do we do about it?

1. Find immersion in a task that brings fulfillment: The New York times article discusses flow, a term coined by positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to describe a state of being fully immersed in a task.  As a psychology major, I love thinking about and talking about flow.  Flow is playing piano, doing a jigsaw puzzle, maybe reading a good book.  Flow is being "in the zone," when our sense of time is altered.  It requires mental energy, provides direct feedback about one's success in a task, leads to a sense of discovery, and makes us feel fulfilled.  Many people took up new hobbies during quarantine with the goal of discovering flow and contentment.

2.  Make a deadline: When projects or ideas don't have a clear end point, they languish on for weeks or months.  I find it really helpful to set a deadline for myself, and to write it down on my calendar.  Read x number of pages of my book every day to finish before it's due at the library.  Finish a presentation by the end of the work day on Wednesday.  Write this blog post before the end of April (oops).  Deadlines help a project feel tangible and offer a sense of accomplishment when it's finished.  

3. Create uninterrupted time: One of the hardest parts of the pandemic is that we have very little control over our alone time and our social time, and one part of the day tends to blend into the next.  I'm fortunate, in a way, to continue to go to work in-person, which helps carve out distinct chapters of the day, but I still find it really challenging as a full-time worker and a parent to find the uninterrupted time needed to translate ideas into actions.  I also believe, though, that we tend to create time for things that are important to us, and having that quiet space and sufficient time to think is crucial to our productivity.  A cure for languishing is having designated, uninterrupted time to accomplish something, and to avoid task-switching during that time.

4. Be cognizant of substance use: I think it's safe to say that I'm not alone in drinking too much coffee, too much wine, and not enough water in the past year.  I talk myself into one more cup of coffee to get through the morning, or I treat myself to a latte at the coffee cart in between patients at work, then I get home from a long day and feel the need to reward myself with the ultimate form of relaxation: a tall glass of red wine.  Repeat.  But I don't actually feel well when I'm over-caffeinated, and my sleep isn't that restful when I drink too much.  Studies show that people with lower rates of substance use have better mental health.  Having a clearer mind and feeling physically better can help us flourish.

5. Put the screen away: Mindless, passive scrolling is a great way to waste a lot of time and feel unproductive.  Languishing can contribute to anxiety and depression, and so can excessive screen time.  Screen time might be one of the things most contributing to our sense of aimlessness, fogginess, and blah.  We make make conscious decisions to limit our own screen time, to avoid using the phone a half hour before bed, and to take breaks from the computer to go outside.  If you made it to the end of this post then you have probably been on your device for too long.  So go for a walk, do a jigsaw puzzle, or maybe just go to bed.  

Let's hope that the summer can bring more flourishing and less languishing as we all get through the pandemic together!

Discovering signs of flourishing on our neighborhood walk