Is this apathy? Or spaciousness?
Every Wednesday morning, I meet (on Zoom) with an awesome group of humans for an Empathy Standup practice, hosted by my friends at Empathy Lab. As part of our weekly routine, we do a “five senses” meditation, where we spend a minute focusing our attention on each one of our five senses (logical, no?). It might seem pretty basic, but try it for yourself, and you’ll be surprised at how much input there is, all around us, that we don’t typically notice. After the five senses, we move on to identifying our Energy + Baggage—everyone takes a few minutes to think about what’s giving us light right now, and what’s weighing us down.
I can usually come up with a few things in each bucket. Sometimes, the same things are giving me energy AND feeling like baggage. But today…I couldn’t come up with anything on either side of the fence.
It was like nothingness. A blank canvas. An empty space.
Not gonna lie—the nothingness felt weeeeird.
I was present and engaged in the rest of our 45 minute Standup, listening to others and contemplating the conversations. But I didn’t feel like I personally had anything to share or contribute. I was just…there.
When our session ended, I got up and walked into the kitchen to make myself some breakfast, and I started wondering what the eff was wrong with me. Not in a panicky, red-alert kind of way, but more like a low-level suspicion that something was a smidge off.
The first place my mind went was: “OH shit! I’m getting my period in 7 days. This is my PMDD.” I sat down to investigate it, and it didn’t feel sad or hopeless, like depression. I AM pretty tired, which is normal for me (hormonally) right now, but I wasn’t detecting any kind of existential exhaustion along with it. Just more like the sense of needing a nap. There was no self-loathing, or questioning my worth, or relationships, or the meaning of life, either. There really wasn’t much of anything, to be honest. There was just me.
I am a person who needs to label things in order to make sense of them. The labels don’t have to be rigid, but they do need to exist. And I needed to label this…this lack of feeling. But all I could come up with was “apathy.” (In an earlier post, I talk about how I always tend to look for things to be wrong, so this is just part of my M.O.)
I started Googling apathy, ended up on WebMD, the source of so-many-wildly-inaccurate-self-diagnoses, and discovered that apathy is “when you lack motivation to do anything or just don’t care about what’s going on around you…including anything that involves thinking or your emotions.” WebMD also explained that it can be a symptom of, or connected to, other mental health problems.
Welp. Two things I already knew.
Put those them together with my concurrent/co-affective PMDD and jackpot! Apathy it is. It felt good to give it a name. I even started writing a blog post about it.
BUT THEN…(because who doesn’t love a good plot twist??)
About an hour later, it was time for my weekly Zoom session with my life + mindset coach, Kimberly Napier. When she asked me how I was feeling today, I had a hard time explaining it. I think I said something like: “I feel neutral. Even-keeled. I couldn’t come up with any energy or baggage during Empathy Standup this morning. It’s like, there’s nothing stirring either way.”
She smiled a knowing smile back at me, and said “Goooood.”
Wait.
WHAT?
(Below is my best recollection of the rest of the exchange that followed.)
Her: “How does this feeling of being neutral, of not having big highs or lows, feel to you?”
Me: “It feels weird. Like something’s wrong. I’m wondering if it’s apathy.”
Her: “Why?”
Me: “Well, I can usually find something that’s charging me emotionally, either negatively or positively. I’m problem solving. Or I’m in planning mode. Or triage mode. Or relief mode. Sometimes things are good and sometimes they’re not. But there’s nothing at all coming up for me right now.”
Her: “Does that make you feel uncomfortable?”
Me: “Yes.”
Her: “Well…what if what you’re feeling right now doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong? What if this isn’t apathy—it’s not that you’re not caring or motivated—but that there’s nothing on fire for you to get swept-up in? What if what you’re feeling is ‘being grounded?’”
LONG. PAUSE.
AND THEN.
MORE PAUSING.
Her: “You’re so used to being in a state of doing. You’re solving problems at work, or problems at home, and carrying other people’s emotions, and working on your own emotions. Do you feel the weight of any of that right now?”
Me: “No, not really.”
Her: “You’re also always starting new projects, and wanting to create things, and building, and connecting the dots. Those give you energy, but also keep you occupied and can get in the way of just ‘being.’ Are you doing any of those things right now?”
Me: “No, not really.”
Her: “So what you’re feeling isn’t apathy. You’re in a place of ease. You’re not fighting or striving. You’re ‘being.’ This is the space we’ve been working together to create for you, for the last five months.”
Me: “This is space?”
Her: “It is. And I want to acknowledge that it’s a big deal. This is the work you did. You made this space.”
Me: “I made this space. This is what having room feels like. Huh.”
Her: “And what’s coming up for you when you think about that?
Me: “That it feels strange.”
Her: “You’re just not used to it yet.”
I could get used to this space.
Space to think, to read, to breathe, to nap, to laugh, to play with clay, to focus my attention where I want it to go vs. where others want it to go. Space to not overanalyze things. Space to get out of my head more.
Space is good.
I think I will try staying here for a while.
And if I get pulled back into the highs and lows, the fighting and striving, the questioning and busyness, at least I know I’ve made it here once. I should be able to do it again.