Today’s question is about apathy: Is Apathy the same as Depression?
Recently, we’ve noticed a dramatic increase in clients presenting for counselling with what I would describe as apathy or resignation.
Naturally, this is in part a by-product of what we’ve all been experiencing with the global pandemic. There’s a lot that has been completely out of our control about how to direct our lives.
Coping with that over a long period of time has led to a certain fatigue or apathy, and disempowerment.
It is not our intrinsic nature to feel that we don’t have agency over the direction of our lives. Momentum has been interrupted and impeded in many ways in our lives, as I’ve just mentioned.
But unfortunately, apathy, if left unidentified, and unchecked can create deeper issues. When we communicate, process, and reframe apathetic thoughts we can completely change the trajectory.
Unfortunately, it can and often does lead to various forms of depression if unprocessed. Depression is sometimes, as I’m sure you’ve heard me speak about before, a correlation between the brain and the mind.
The mind is our thought process, and we have a lot of control over directing our thoughts in a certain direction.
In the case of apathy, if we feel this sense of repetitive futility or dis-empowerment, and compliance over time, we can begin to develop a depressive spiral from this apathy.
The direction of our mind and thoughts is one, but certainly not the only, contributor to a depressive state. For that reason alone, it’s super important to recognize the context we’ve all been implicated in for the last couple of years has really changed our experience of our lives, how much we have within our control, and how much we don’t have within our control.
It’s incredibly important as we begin to rebuild our lives, that we take our personal power back to direct our lives in a direction that we want.
I am noticing an increasing, and alarmingly for me as a practitioner, a number of clients experiencing feelings of defeatism, why bother, and apathy in the past few months.
Even if you are not experiencing depressive signs, it can be very important to keep your attention on apathy.
Apathy is a self-perpetuating cycle that ultimately shuts down aspects of our creativity, vitality, and certainly our sense of empowerment.
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