As a holistic nutritionist, I focus on many aspects of health with my clients – yes, diet being a huge one. And mental and emotional well-being is part of what rounds out the holistic approach to health.
Last year at this time, I had a bunch of feelings that I could not figure out – until I read an article that named them “Grief”. It was bang on. Exactly what I was feeling. What many of us were feeling! And it helped me to process my feelings and to work with them, knowing there was a name, and knowing that I was not alone.
Lately, I have had a new mix of emotions….I know there is some grief still lingering, but I also could feel something more than that. I am feeling unmotivated, unable to focus or concentrate, feeling no excitement for life…overall just feeling “blah”. A recent New York Times article describes it well:
“It wasn’t burnout — we still had energy. It wasn’t depression — we didn’t feel hopeless. We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless. It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing. 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.”
What I feel makes this even more complicated is the feeling of guilt that can accompany this. Often we are quick to brush away feelings of languish, telling ourselves and others that we should not feel this way because of how lucky we might be in other aspects of our life. And while it is always important to be grateful for what we do have, it is also important to recognize that we may just not always feel “ok”. And that is ok.
Maybe “naming” an emotion will not help all of you, and maybe not all of you will be feeling any of this! But for those of you who are – you are not alone. If this describes what you are going through, then it might help to know it has a name. And that there are ways to work with it.
I encourage you to give the article a read.