You’re not sad, but you’re not happy either. It is a disturbing state of mind because one lives paralyzed without knowing why. Activities you once enjoyed no longer. The focus appears and disappears. You wonder if you’re depressed and the psychologists tell you you’re not, even though they can’t find what you’re having. This is how my last years passed, in a kind of functional apathy, without finding myself. I repeat, neither sadness nor happiness. Just as we are creatures of habit, we learn to live with it. Or instead of getting used to it, we resort to it to any justification to understand this emotional warmth: what if financial difficulties, what if a divorce, what if the crisis of 40; In short, reasons once overcome have not improved the situation.
As I came to terms with my new reality, I happened upon a story in this newspaper with a headline that captivated me: “‘Longing,’Although it is not depression, it could affect your well-being“From the first paragraph I identified myself. “Being on vacation and traveling to a dream destination until the car suddenly breaks down and stops in the middle of the road.” On the sides, thousands of cars continue their march, but the traveler seems lost with the stopped vehicle, disoriented. With no phone signal to call for help and no tools to check or solve the car problem, you find yourself in a state of limbo. “He cannot approach his destiny or face the situation that is holding him back.”
That’s exactly what happened to me! I languished. My mood wasn’t a mental problem, although there was clearly something there. From one day to the next I stopped running with the discipline with which I had done it – six days a week, for four years straight; The music I loved listening to in the car came on; The fascination with devouring magazines and newspapers froze. And that also applies to other passions of mine.
According to American psychologist Adam Grant, “languishing” was the predominant feeling of 2021. The strange thing is that those who suffer from it are still functioning people, not like the depressive who is drowning. The lazy person has little or no joy in things. “Everything they do and live is done with too much effort and effort “You don’t feel like you’re attached to an accomplishment at the end.”reads the newspaper article. Paragraph after paragraph, I felt as if TIME was x-raying me.
And why am I saying this?
The fear of not knowing what is happening to your mood It can stress you out so much that if you don’t sort it out, the consequence can lead to depression. The “languishing” is so silent that it is difficult for those who suffer from it to recognize it, but to imagine it for their loved ones or colleagues to do it. For them everything remains normal, without any helpful information.
As if that wasn’t enough, everything around Mental health is still taboo in the country. Despite the medical community’s commendable efforts to normalize the discussion and encourage us to view these diseases as natural – which are more common than we think – we still avoid the topic as much as possible. “Don’t tell anyone you’re taking medication,” some advise. Deeds as commendable as those of Juan Pablo Raba, whose podcast “Men Cry” had an important reception, They are fundamental, even if they are isolated and inadequate to the scale of the problem.
On the other hand, “pinning” is a relatively new term, coined only at the beginning of this century by psychologist Corey Keyes, although depression has been widely documented and its symptoms are mostly obvious. The EL TIEMPO report explains that mental health is divided into four levels: 1) thriving or good mental health, 2) moderate mental health, 3) dullness or poor mental health, and 4) depression. Do you know the third point?
I don’t have any numbers on how many Colombians might be in a phase of languor, but I believe it is quite a few. Close people who are not there, as happened to me. Familiar, but we don’t notice it. Present, absent beings. And it’s not that they don’t want to treat themselves, but they don’t know what they have. And since it doesn’t seem serious, they hardly notice the threat.
“Longing” is the prelude to depression. To discover it in time, one must make the effort to name what is happening to us: to take away the power of this emotion and to give a face to this intermediate state that is neither sadness nor happiness, which is not depression but exhaustion.
I tell you this because it doesn’t hurt that they also identify with what is happening to them. The pining is mild but persistent, like the car beeping when you don’t fasten your seatbelt. Normalization doesn’t turn it off; As a result, the response is getting louder every day.
How did it start?
It’s difficult to pinpoint the starting point, but a few years ago I suddenly stopped playing music in the car, I didn’t feel like it; Things that used to spark a lot of excitement in me, like going to the movies or reading the newspaper until I was tired, I didn’t like it anymore; Traveling and going to the best Japanese restaurants I could afford were no more. The same goes for other things that made me happy. Little by little, the routine lost color and the activities that used to fill me with satisfaction became less important. Even the small joys of everyday life faded away without me being able to see any particular reason and plunged into one A kind of emotional lethargy that I couldn’t get out of.
Since I ran up the Alto de Letras – 83 meters in altitude – I have started training less and less. I went from 70 kilos to 78. There was a strange discouragement within me that was not sadness, but a slow fading. I kept running, but I got bored; And staying at home and resting bored me anyway. I trained for two days and then stopped for four days. I haven’t worn tennis shoes for weeks. As I said at the beginning of this column: I lived in limbo. Everything was important to me…but nothing was really important to me.
Nobody around me knew what was happening to me. Well, neither did I, but because of this subconscious intuition of social survival, I became an expert at feigning happiness, despite the warmth that each activity or its outcome generated within me. Be careful, my everyday life continued as if nothing had happened, at home, at work and with my friends. I have never neglected my responsibilities, obligations and tasks. It wasn’t that I was extinguished like a candle overwhelmed by a blow, but rather that the candle within radiated a light that I could barely see.
Without trying to make a clinical diagnosis here, which should only be made by mental health professionals, I believe that the most dangerous thing about pining is getting used to it and allowing this emotional paralysis to spread in the soul, like a calm sea does in the sand on a beach. We humans have progressed by being untamed spirits and moving through emotions to create and build. In this order of ideas, The emotional state of warmth is an almost fatal numbness. How did I get out of there?
I actually don’t know if I’m out. I live with this feeling sometimes, but I enjoy some of the joys I mentioned. Books, magazines and newspapers flow through my hands and I consume them constantly. I got used to the cinema and music again. A trip cheers me up and I can’t wait to eat the best sushi.
It wasn’t a psychologist who brought about the change in me. Not a psychiatrist either. And not because I don’t believe them, but because after interacting with them, I have built an insurmountable barrier of trust. But just as I’m not sure when my existential lukewarmness began, I know when I pinched myself and decided to fight the invisible enemy. It was on Facebook when a friend’s post slapped me mercilessly in the face. In the midst of a tumultuous divorce, he uploaded some photos showing a very positive personal change. I felt like I was going in the opposite direction.
A few days later I walked into a restaurant in Bogotá where I was having lunch with a congresswoman and her husband, and at the bar I saw Juan Pablo Vanegas, a great friend who I used to run with. I saw him happy and about to go to Berlin to run the marathon. I couldn’t help but compare myself to him. Not long ago we fell together at the marathon. No longer. What happened to you, Diego Santos? I asked him for his trainer and he gave me the phone number. Things went like this.
And my personality requires order, discipline, a roadmap that motivates me and a goal that makes me competitive in everything. I called the trainer and told him what was happening to me and how I felt; what I told you here. It was in August. I told him how difficult it was for me to run, that I was bored, that I couldn’t do more than 30 kilometers a week even though I was used to running more than 100 kilometers.
For the first month he had me run 25 miles every week, something easy, with speed tests in between. And just like that, piano piano as the Italians would say, my head began to readjust and the intense emotions began to emerge again. Order and discipline returned (including the weekly 100 km); The long-awaited feeling of happiness was reborn. Languishing does not scream. He doesn’t knock on the door. It is not devastating like depression or disturbing like an anxiety attack. But it erodes, it numbs. And when there’s too much slumber, you stop living and just start hanging on. It took me a while to notice. I hope this column raises an alarm, because emotional lukewarmness seems harmless, but it’s not: It’s a gentle, slow… and deeply dangerous threat.
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