Chapter Content
Okay, so, I wanted to talk about something that, uh, I think a lot of us have felt, especially recently. It's this feeling of, like, just… running on empty.
When I was a teenager, growing up in this tiny town in Wisconsin, I remember listening to the King Biscuit Flower Hour on Sunday nights, and there was this one song, "Running on Empty" by Jackson Browne. And, you know, staring at the ceiling, I heard this song, and it just… it became my high school anthem. He wasn’t saying things like "lonely" or "sad" or "anxious," but he captured this feeling, this, like, almost dull feeling of just going through the motions. It was like,
"I don't know where I'm running now, I'm just running on,
Running on, running on empty
Running on, running blind."
And, yeah, like, I felt so seen in that moment, you know? I was sixteen, about to learn how to drive. Things, on the outside, were actually going pretty well, especially considering I'd had kind of a complicated childhood. I had good grades, I lived with my grandparents who were awesome. But still, I just couldn't shake this feeling that something was... off. Good day, bad day, after school, my chest felt like this balloon, all blown up but also completely empty, you know?
It wasn't really depression, even though I would struggle with that later. It wasn't, like, that hopeless sadness, I could get out of bed in the morning fine. It was more like... autopilot. Like I was just compelled to keep *doing*. Throw myself into activity after activity, leaving no space for my own thoughts. It was a feeling of restless emptiness, just, you know, clouding everything else. Really disorienting as a kid, to say the least.
And, honestly, that feeling of languishing, or at least the fear of it, kind of stuck with me through adulthood. Which, I think, ultimately led me to become a professor and, yeah, to really dive into understanding what this "running on empty" thing was all about, and if other people felt it, too. Turns out, a lot of people do.
So, um, I don’t know if you remember, but a while back, uh, Adam Grant wrote this New York Times article, and it was called “There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing.” And it was like, BAM. There it was. He started the article by saying he was having trouble concentrating, colleagues weren't excited even though vaccines were coming out, family members were rewatching the same movies over and over. You know, just that feeling of not being thrilled by anything. Even Grant himself was, like, hitting snooze way more. He said it crept in after periods of stress or grief or loneliness, this mental weariness, which is easy to dismiss 'cause one of the symptoms is indifference!
Languishing kind of just creeps up on you. And then, bam, suddenly you're engulfed. Like, even the simple question, "How are you?" can feel like a pop quiz, and you're just, like, scrambling for some sort of response that's socially acceptable.
Anyway, the article went totally viral. Like, the *most* widely read New York Times article of the year. And it was clear people were desperate for the words to describe this thing they were feeling. You know, teenagers, frontline workers, parents, just *everybody* seemed to be experiencing it. Celebrities, royals, Trevor Noah even talked about it in front of twenty thousand people!
So, are you languishing? Well, do you feel emotionally flattened? Like, you can't muster excitement for stuff? Does everything feel inevitable, like you're not in control of your life? Are you procrastinating and just thinking "why bother?" Are things seeming irrelevant or boring? Like you're missing something to feel complete, but you don't know what it is? Do you feel disconnected from your community or a larger purpose? Has your job lost its meaning? Do you have brain fog, like, can't remember if you washed your hair in the shower? Do small setbacks feel devastating? Are you restless and rootless? Are you easily convinced by people with strong opinions 'cause you just aren't sure of your own? Is it hard to connect with friends and family? Do you feel like you can't really understand your strengths and weaknesses? Is your self-worth just, like, plummeting?
If any of that resonates, you know, this might be what's going on.
It's easy to confuse languishing with depression, and yeah, both can lead to a loss of interest in life. But depression is more persistent, you know? Hopelessness, sadness every day for weeks, maybe crying, sleeping too much, even suicidal thoughts. And millions of people are languishing without any of that. You can feel devoid of purpose without being clinically depressed. People who are languishing also tend to feel more out of control, unsure about their future, and paralyzed by decisions.
And what about burnout? I mean, that's the word we all reach for, right? After sending that last email at midnight, or dealing with your toddler throwing a tantrum, or swiping on dating apps until your fingers go numb. Burnout captures the mood of a whole generation, but it's not technically a mental health condition. It's an "occupational phenomenon" about the mismatch between your workload and your resources. But burnout *can* lead to languishing. If you're constantly stretched too thin, it's really hard to find joy in the things you used to love. Like, a parent reading a bedtime story and having intrusive thoughts about their to-do list, or a graphic designer who used to get excited about their campaigns now just sees repetitive banner designs.
Our society loves to tell us to "take personal responsibility," right? If we're not happy, we should exercise more, sleep more, whatever. But I'm a sociologist, and I'm more interested in how systems can fail us. If we're feeling record levels of stress, anxiety, burnout, and languishing, how can that *only* be our fault? A lot of the time, it's the system itself that's robbing us of our ability to create better lives.
Think about that young doctor I read about. The demands of the healthcare system were forcing him and his colleagues to sacrifice their values. Hospitals are understaffing themselves while sitting on billions of dollars. Billing systems maximize profit instead of care. So, is it any wonder that healthcare workers are feeling helpless and losing their purpose? The system is wearing them down from the inside out.
And it's the same in other fields, too. A teacher at an underfunded school who always loved her job might start to feel detached and weary. It's not her fault; the system failed her.
Over time, these conditions can crumble our self-narrative, that story we tell ourselves to make sense of our lives. And that weakened sense of self can lead to, like, feeling "dead inside." We need to be accepted by our communities, and we need to accept and respect ourselves. But what happens when we don't like who we see in the mirror? It's a vicious cycle.
So, maybe we've been asking the wrong questions. For a little while, I was actually involved with the positive psychology movement. But I started to see it focus *too* much on feeling states: feeling optimistic, feeling happy, feeling strong. And I wondered, what if we stopped measuring our well-being based on our emotions? What if we focused on meeting a deeper set of needs?
My research shows that improving our psychological, relational, and social functioning builds well-being from the ground up. Learning to hold our emotions more loosely, changing the stories we tell ourselves, accepting ourselves and others, forming communities of care... That creates a virtuous cycle. It increases our tolerance for stress and the pressures of modern life. Over time, improving our *functioning* creates life satisfaction and emotional well-being. In other words, you feel good because you *are* functioning well.
I know, easier said than done, right? But focusing on healthy functioning might require a shift in priorities.
I remember a paper I reviewed about the mental health of healthcare workers in Lombardy, Italy. They found that languishing tripled the odds of frontline workers being diagnosed with PTSD. But the workers who were flourishing were almost four times *less* likely to get PTSD.
So, if languishing makes you vulnerable, flourishing builds immunity, giving you the resilience to live in a world that grinds us down.
Think about it this way:
Flourishing protects against…Languishing makes you vulnerable to…
Delinquent behaviors in teenagers.
Suicide attempts and suicidality.
Self-harming behaviors.
Wanting to quit school.
Depression.
Anxiety.
PTSD.
Relapse of mental illness.
Mental distress from stressful work.
Reduced work productivity.
Frequent healthcare visits.
Activating genes that increase inflammation and decrease antibody production.
Premature death.
It's a lot, right? Languishing isn't just about feeling blah. It impedes our functioning and can be a gateway to serious mental illness and early death. And we just can't ignore that.
Even though the media has moved on, we can't downplay languishing. It's a serious threat to public health.
Mental illness is a huge burden, and a lot of the time, we focus on diagnosing and treating the *negative* symptoms. But even after billions of dollars, a lot of medications are still less effective than exercise or meditation.
I've been treated for depression and PTSD, I've contemplated suicide, I've been on medication, so I've dedicated my life to studying the positive side of mental health. I think mental illness and mental health are related but different. Health isn't just the absence of disease; it's the *presence* of well-being. And we often overlook the possibility that you can learn to function well and flourish even without completely "curing" anxiety, PTSD, or other mental illnesses.
It sounds weird, right? To be mentally ill and mentally healthy at the same time? Languishing is more common in people being treated for mental illness, but even among patients with schizophrenia, flourishing can happen. I read about a study that said over 25% of patients with schizophrenia met the criteria for flourishing!
So, I don't want to languish, and I definitely don't want to be mentally ill. And I bet you don't either. But we need to define our end goal and figure out how to get there.
I remember giving a presentation once, and this group of people came up to me afterward. They were part of the Mad Pride movement, and they said they were advocating for "full" recovery from mental illness. They don't just want to be free of their illness, they don't want to be defined or stigmatized by it. And they said, “This flourishing thing may be new to some people, but it is nothing new to us.” And it was just amazing to be aligned on that vision of recovery. To belong, to contribute, to have purpose, to express our ideas, to be accepted and accept ourselves. I felt a sense of pride, you know? I, too, was living proof of Mad Pride.
For a lot of us, mental illness will always be with us, in some form. But we can expand our vocabulary and our potential. We can focus on healthy functioning and take positive steps to create a virtuous cycle of flourishing.
So, you know, I’ve even developed a fourteen-point questionnaire that can help you assess your own well-being. It looks at emotional, social, and psychological well-being, and the key thing to remember is that you don't have to have it all figured out to flourish.
Basically, to flourish, you need six of the eleven functioning well components – that’s social or psychological well-being – along with one of the three facets of emotional well-being almost every day. So there’s pretty much endless combinations.
If you’re *not* flourishing, you’re probably languishing to some degree. If you circled more low numbers on that questionnaire, you might be languishing severely. If you circled more of the higher numbers, probably moderate languishing.
But the point is, wherever you are today, it doesn’t mean you have to stay there.
And, you know, I think we need a new anthem for our time. It kinda feels like that song is “Numb Little Bug.” That line, "Like your body’s in the room but you’re not really there."
That haunting reference to languishing and that feeling of invisibility.
And then she asks, “Like you’re not really happy but you don’t wanna die.”
Yes, Em, we do. So many of us do.
Naming something gives it power, and gives us power over it. We need to understand the psychology of languishing and its causes, to move toward healing.
We keep hearing the pandemic just sped everything up. As Niall Ferguson said, "It would have been astonishing if the abrupt closure of real-world social networks had not been detrimental to the mental health of a gregarious species of naked apes." We were plunged into loneliness, uncertainty, fear, grief, and sleep deprivation, and it took a toll.
Emotional distress is on the rise, especially for young people. High school girls reporting sadness or hopelessness rose to a record high. Adults are reporting stress and worry.
The pandemic magnified everything, but we were already headed down this path. It’s almost like we built a world designed to make us languish! And many of us are hungry for richer, more meaningful lives.
We’re hungry to matter. Hungry to belong. Hungry for better relationships. Hungry for a society that accepts us.
And that means we have to feed those same hungers in others. So, how do we, as a society of hungry people, feed one another what we need?