How To Deal With Apathy As An Overthinker
Relatability
How It Feels To Overthink In Apathy
When it comes to overthinking when you’re feeling a deep sense of apathy, I think the overthinking comes in the form of why can’t I feel anything. It’s a really disconnected feeling to feel absolutely nothing, have a severe lack of interest, and a general disconnect of the life in front of you. When I feel this way my mind is constantly asking why are you feeling this way, you have nothing to complain about, or you shouldn’t feel this way.
The thing about feeling very apathetic though is it’s just a general feeling of nothingness, and having a hard time identifying why. For me, when I don’t know why I’m feeling some type of way my mind will ruminate on the cause if it doesn’t make any sense.
What Is Overthinking About Apathy Doing To My Life
Being in an apathetic state makes me pause at every feeling life offers. I’m not sad or depressed, it’s a feeling of disinterest which is almost worse sometimes. That disconnected feeling makes it difficult to do anything, since a lot of the point of doing things is to feel something that you’re engaging in.
If I find myself feeling really apathetic for too long, I notice such a constant feeling of almost a dissociative state that gets so draining. I believe it’s draining because being disconnected from yourself and the world around you for so long, doesn’t allow any part of your human experience to be felt. I think disconnecting from yourself is a way to avoid pain and feeling, and when it goes on for too long is when you start to lose that connection with yourself.
Reflection
What Made Me Want To Change My View On Apathy
I think when we start to feel apathetic it’s because there’s a really firm disconnection between ourselves and the world around us. And I think the only way to get out of something that is really draining is to make the the opposing emotion really apparent in our focus. To me the opposite of apathy is feeling connected. And I think on a deeper level that connection is to feel the connection of just being human.
I think apathy is both a defense mechanism for really deep feelers that feel everything around you as well as a byproduct of not feeling human. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of things that we have to do that don’t connect us with our feeling of being a human. And while you can never truly do anything all the time and feel great all the time it is something to pay attention to whenever you notice that you’re not feeling it at all which to me is what apathy is.
What I Thought About To Make Changes With Apathy
So to get back to feeling connected to yourself and moving away from apathy, we have to find what makes us feel human and what makes us feel connected. Interestingly enough, I think moving away from everything that’s been presented to us as what’s fun, for example, scrolling on our phones and drinking alcohol and being really busy are more distractions than they are fun.
I think a primal state of feeling connected and granted will be different for everybody, but to me it’s being as close to nature as you can. We can look at the opposite of apathy and learn a lot from nature to feel more connected and at least put us in the starting point of getting back to connection with ourselves.
Reinvention
What I Chose To Do With What I Learned About Apathy
Feeling connected to ourselves is a vital part of life. To feel connected to yourself is to be able to hear what you need without distractions, it’s letting yourself feel and breathe through hard feelings and thoughts, and it’s realizing you are so much more than your thoughts. To feel the opposite of apathy, and to lean into our natural state as humans is to slow down.
I think apathy and burnout go together quite often, and if you have no energy to do anything what makes you think you’re body has the space to think and feel. In that mode, it’s purely survival and going thought the motions of your day.
How I Carried Out What I Learned About Apathy
With this in mind, we can we look at what’s around us in nature to teach us how to regain that feeling of being connected to ourselves. I think this is when we do less of the things that are overstimulating us, distracting us, and keeping us in an unnatural, unintentional state.
The first thing that comes to mind, is the stillness of nature. There’s not a lot going on, and yet there’s everything going on. Everything in nature has its own role, and is meant to be utilized, appreciated, and observed. I think the same goes for being connected to yourself. In a state of feeling apathetic remembering things you enjoy or are good at can be utilized to bring you back to yourself.
You are meant to be appreciated by yourself most importantly, but speak to yourself with encouragement, write yourself letters of your praises and things you’re so proud of, and be loving without doing anything because like nature you don’t have to be doing anything to appreciate yourself.
Finally, observe yourself as you would a really scenic spot in the world. Observe what thoughts come up for you in this state, are they yours and do you agree with them? What feelings come up? Are we feeling apathetic because we don’t want to feel the pain? To feel the pain is to allow yourself to move through it to be on the other side where the joy is, life is a balance.
You are nature. You aren’t meant to run yourself into exhaustion, which I do often and need to take my own advice. Revert back to nature to turn you away from apathy, and into connection with yourself.
