Psychology Today: When "Languishing" Morphs Into Full-Blown Rage

Many people aren't burning out; they're boiling over.

Image source: Pixels.com

“The concept of burnout has gotten some much-deserved cultural attention over the course of the pandemic. Many voices are finally being heard: healthcare workers putting their lives at risk to take on extra shifts, working parents juggling a wasteland of extinct child care options, and small business owners pivoting constantly to try to save their livelihoods.

Last Spring, Adam Grant wrote movingly of “languishing,” a term coined by psychologist Corey Keyes. The sense of stagnation and emptiness he described resonated with many people, and it’s been a prevalent feeling for a while, a baseline malaise that’s become synonymous with this pandemic. The classic symptoms of burnout are disengagement, exhaustion, and cynicism, and physical signs of chronic stress like headaches, stomach issues and insomnia. I’m seeing plenty of all that, but there are often some important additional layers. You might recognize this boiling pressure in yourself if you’re feeling particularly resentful, are bone tired even of the people you love, and you fantasize (even idly) about starting completely over in a different type of life—or you keep playing the “what if” game while grieving your kids’ disrupted childhoods. Maybe your humor has grown caustic, you are frequently on the verge of tears, or you no longer trust the people, institutions and ideas that used to ground you. Many people feel they’re developing an “us versus them” mentality (despite knowing it’s part of the problem), and are noticing a growing gap between their feelings and their behavior: they’re putting on a show, biting their tongue, or just going through the motions, trying to hold it together.

So what is the path forward? Surely, individually, we can benefit from reexamined expectations. Surviving, itself, is productive—and some days, that’s enough. We must reject the “should”s that tell us that post-pandemic life needs somehow to barrel full steam ahead, without a true reckoning of the accumulated grief, outrage, and helplessness of the past two years. And psychological science says that labeling our feelings—even when they’re inconvenient or scary—can be empowering. And that sharing our experiences with others helps build our strength further, and being honest about the patterns that are weighing us down is the surest path to changing them."

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Reflection: Have you ever experienced Languishing and Burn-out? If so, in what context?

#Languishing #Burn-out #MentalHealth