Meh. Blah. Can't be bothered? Not excited about the future? Perhaps you're languishing.

Adam Grant's NYT article, There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing, resonated with so many people as the coronavirus pandemic drew on. While not having a mental illness or being clinically depressed, many of us associated with a general stagnation or apathy towards things — an absence of, or poor, mental health. Languishing is a counterpoint to how we might feel in prime mental health, full of wellbeing or Flourishing.

While languishing may not be necessarily dangerous in itself, if you're languishing you may be at higher risk of mental illness.

Naming our state can be a first step to doing something about it

Looking for small wins that show us progress

Asking how our friends and family are doing — having the opportunity to speak to someone about it

You also might consider working on the 5 Ways to Wellbeing, getting in some forest bathing, walking a labyrinth, aiming for some flow, noticing when you're happy, or seeing what might bring you hope.

The term languishing for that part of the mental health continuum is from Corey Keyes. See for example, Corey L. M. Keyes. “The Mental Health Continuum: From Languishing to Flourishing in Life.”Journal of Health and Social Behavior, vol. 43, no. 2, 2002, pp. 207–222.

Armchair and inspiration, as usual, from Bill Watterson.

Languishing

When studying rates of infections, notably with measles, researchers have seen that in cases where a sufficiently large proportion of a population has been immunised or developed protection against a disease then infection rates also reduce in unprotected members of the population. In other words, the unprotected members appear to receive some indirect protection from the protected members of the population. This effect is known as herd immunity and is a tantalising goal for reducing the prevalence of epidemics.

While appealing in theory this article in Nature provides Five reasons why COVID herd immunity is probably impossible. These include:

Uncertainty around whether vaccinations prevent transmission. For example, herd immunity works when diseases can't be passed between protected members of a population to the unprotected. With COVID-19, vaccines seem to reduce symptoms but may still allow transmission.

It's also challenging to get vaccines evenly to all areas. These combined with complications brought by new variants, immunity fading before widespread vaccination is achieved, and people changing their behaviour — say, mixing more widely — once they've received some protection, means COVID-19 may be more likely to be something we live alongside rather than eradicate.

Herd immunity

Confirmation bias is the big one. The bias that leads us to live in a world of our own choosing, finding the information that already fits with our beliefs and ignoring or discounting what doesn't. It's the bias that makes two sides get further apart rather than closer together.

Edward De Bono in Water Logic suggested a metaphor for thought as channels of water. As water runs through the channels the channels get deeper, and as they get deeper it pulls more of the water into the main channels until there is only one way. Confirmation bias can act like that.

It's important to work to understand different opinions, not discount them upfront. To use our empathy to understand why others feel the way they do. And when we deliberately seek out information that challenges our point of view we will usually find a richer, more nuanced world that helps build bridges with others rather than drive us apart.

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Confirmation bias