For sophomore and international student Michael Chow, languishing has been a continuous part of his college experience, especially given that he has yet to know our campus without COVID.

“You always tell yourself that when you’re in a stressful situation, you can power through it like, ‘oh, it’s no big deal,’” a toxic thought pattern that has negatively impacted Michael and his studies as he continued to languish throughout his freshman year.

Michael feels that having a simple definition and basic understanding of languishing helps students self-actualize and better reflect on their emotions. “It helps to put into perspective that you don’t always have to be like, super on the ball,” said Michael, a concept that many college students have a difficult time grasping. 

Unfortunately, Michael isn’t alone in his experience. When Mauricio Murillo, an Annenberg sophomore and Starbucks barista from Dallas, TX, read my message, he knew exactly what I was describing, though he didn’t know a word to define his experience.

“It was crazy that I had never really heard a term for this in-between state. And I never really had heard it presented in any, I guess, like, academic way.”

I could see the all-too-familiar furrow of Mauricio’s brow as he described languishing as feeling like “I’m not in my best moment, but I’m not down bound.”

But different students languish for different reasons, and for Mauricio, his languishing stemmed from the constant comparison to other schools returning back to normal while USC remained online. “I think [languishing] does have an impact on your academic performance, your social performance, your work outside of class” which is even more difficult when students don’t have a word to label and validate that sentiment, explained Mauricio. 

Stephanie Bower, an upper-division writing professor at USC, wholeheartedly agrees with Mauricio, explaining that while those diagnosed with depression or anxiety typically seek treatment, “if you don’t even know that you’re not feeling the way you could be feeling, then it becomes more difficult ,” making languishing challenging to both detect and treat, explained Bower. 

Psychologist Corey Keyes, who originally coined the term, found that the risk of a major depressive episode was nearly six times greater for those languishing as compared to thriving individuals. He also found a direct correlation between languishing and extreme social and emotional impairment from difficulty completing menial tasks to hesitancy attending social gatherings.

This was the exact experience for Claire Paul, a junior at Los Angeles’ prestigious Harvard Westlake high school. After her first day of eleventh grade, Claire met with her SAT tutor who said that Claire was his first student to ever regress in their reading section.

“I thought to myself, oh my god. I’m a failure.” 

-Claire Paul

This discouraging feedback in tandem with the pressure of preparing to apply to college led Claire down a deep dark rabbit hole, as she started experiencing acute stress, OCD and anxiety which presented itself through body tremors while losing sleep and weight. When Claire realized that her experience was not healthy nor anywhere near tolerable, she started seeing a therapist, who prescribed her medication and guided Claire as she took the remainder of the semester off of school.

Claire explained that when she first sat down with her now weekly psychiatrist, “she was like, you were a pot waiting to boil over…this is gonna happen to you whether it be now in college or in grad school…it’s like a mix of burnout and anxiety altogether at one time.”

Claire can acknowledge that this anxiety was no new friend, as “I’ve always been incredibly anxious [in] social situations where I don’t know what people are like, and just new situations. I’m quiet and I thought I was shy. But nothing really clicked until this all happened,” she explained.

I asked Claire why she waited until she ran out of gas to seek help, to which she said, “if you’re not clinically diagnosed with anxiety or depression, you’re like, ‘oh,’ I shouldn’t be medicated. I shouldn’t go to therapy. But I think the people in the middle range are struggling the most because they don’t have all this attention or a diagnosis,” said Claire.

Claire believes that she was languishing for months on end, a time during which she knew she wasn’t happy, but decided to accept her bleak outlook on life. “Had I been in therapy prior to this whole ‘mental breakdown,’ as I call it, it probably wouldn’t have been as severe.” 

Much like what Claire experienced, Bower has noticed the direct impact that languishing is having on her students, as many come to class ready to“show up as human beings, and not just as more limited, intellectual beings, but also just people who are reflecting the trauma of the era,” which is a sign of the more transparent times, and maybe a silver lining of the pandemic, said Bower. 

Bower is also seeing many of her students be vulnerable about their emotional state within the walls of the classroom, which she finds refreshing. She explained that USC now encourages Professors to pay close attention to their students’ wellbeing, as compared to the pre-pandemic days where their main prerogative was the intellectual capacity of their class. This shift is a product of the pandemic and carves out a space for students to come to terms with their internal suffering in an academic setting, which is revolutionary.

While USC has returned to in-person, non-mask learning, many students continue to opt for a zoom classroom. But Bower feels that this habit is silently contributing to her students’ languishing.

“If you’re in your room, you acclimate and you forget what it’s like to be in other spaces and you languish…you're missing out on that energy that's in the classroom…my worry is that we've acclimated to this other mode of being together” which doesn’t come close to the value of in-person interactions, and makes students feel even more isolated, said Bower. 

When we lack in-person interactions, it becomes even easier to ignore our indifference to life.

The effects of languishing don’t just impact one’s mental state, but their physical body, as well.

Journalist Florence Williams, who is the author of “Heartbreak,” a New York Times bestseller on the physiological toll heartache can take on the body, referenced the American inability to process uncomfortable emotions. “We want to distract ourselves. And that’s because we’re not really taught a lot of emotional literacy and emotional intelligence,” said Williams.

When Williams had her heart broken by the sudden end of her 25-year marriage, she was startled by her weight-loss, insomnia and extreme physiological symptoms in the early days of her divorce. This troubling experience prompted her curiosity and initial research process. What Williams then discovered was even more telling, as she quickly learned about our global disregard for the life-threatening consequences of the mind-body connection of emotions. 

“I think we sometimes just dismiss it as something that happens in our psyches and we don’t sort of understand how seriously [severe emotions] can actually affect our health. And not only heartbreak, but other big emotions as well,” said Williams, referencing languishing and the toll it can take on individuals. 

Williams explained that it is imperative for students to act on their languishing as soon as they feel it. “[Languishing] should be a signal and a warning, that action is required sooner rather than later. We need to take these feelings seriously because they may get worse,” as they fester and spiral out of control. 

Not only could ignored symptoms lead to something worse––they already are something worse. 

The real danger in languishing, many mental health professionals believe, is how easy it is for those suffering to disregard their symptoms, as an indifference to daily experiences and fragmented attention span are difficult to detect.

While “languishing might sound harmless, the evidence shows it can be a warning sign and perhaps a gateway to real mental health challenges. The people at the greatest risk for depression and anxiety disorders in the coming years aren’t the ones experiencing those disorders now; they’re the ones who are languishing at this very moment,” Adam Grant explained. 

But what would life look like if students could label their languishing?

 It would actually look a whole lot different, said Sisi Peng, a communication and cognition graduate student at UCLA. Peng believes that it all starts with meeting younger generations where they are, which means showing up on screens. “If there are more portrayals of languishing in the media, then more people will become aware and be able to recognize that this is actually, you know, validating in a way [of feeling] ‘I am not alone,’” explained Peng. 

Peng contributed to a study centered around the unorthodox television show, “13 Reasons Why,” which analyzed the positive effects of rendering unfiltered mental health challenges on the big screen.

“With this study, we found that authentic portrayals of mental health are really important… it opens up conversation, and it just helps teens understand what they’re going through, [as they] see someone that they can relate to in a show,” which leads to groundbreaking dinner table conversations and concrete change, explained Peng. She believes that the languishing crisis is a call to action for storytellers and screenwriters to raise awareness and tell the many stories of mental health battles that are decades overdue.

Outside of hit shows on Hulu or HBO Max, social media might offer another piece of the puzzle to educate and break stigmas around the languishing experience. But it can be a double-edged sword. When Claire scrolls through her Tik Tok feed, she will see one video about a “hot girl mental health walk” and the next showcasing a prescribed antidepressant weaved into a morning routine.

For Andrea Sonnenberg, the dangers of languishing hit close to home. Sonnenberg lost her son, Bradley, to complications with a psychiatric drug interaction in December of 2017. He was 21.

 “As I reflect back on, like, what my son experienced, he really was languishing. It wasn’t like a depression where he couldn’t get out of bed, where he didn’t take a shower. But he wasn’t enjoying the kinds of things that he usually liked to do,” which really is languishing at its core, explained Sonnenberg.

While she wishes that Bradley could have known the label of languishing, Sonnenberg doesn’t believe that treatment would be all that different from a depression. Sonnenberg thinks that languishing should serve as a loud wakeup call to re-evaluate ones meaning, habits and value systems. “Because it’s the timing that could make all the difference,” she said, in emphasizing the importance of urgency for those experiencing severe mental health battles.

Bradley’s struggle, like so many others’, demonstrates this call to action for employers and educators to look out for the signs and symptoms of languishing, particularly in the early stages, to help better understand this silent enemy.

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