APATHY: Meaning, Symptoms and How to overcome it

We are facing a wonderful day; You will never see and live this day again, the universe offers you the opportunity to smile one more day and do everything you propose with high self-esteem. It is true that we are somewhat compelled to enjoy and constant pleasure that sometimes costs us so much to allow ourselves moments of indifference, moments that fill us with reluctance, rest and absent motivation. This imperative of satisfaction should be another of the objects of attention when addressing the subject of apathy already that its apparent counterpart "motivation" also overshadows a type of adverse effect on the quality of lifetime. In the following Psychology-Online article we will explain the meaning of the Apathy, its symptoms and how to overcome it.

Index

1. Apathy: meaning and definition
2. Apathy: symptoms
3. Difference between apathy and abulia
4. Apathy and depression
5. Apathy: a survival mechanism
6. The danger of positive thinking
7. How to overcome apathy

With this article we do not want to create an apology for apathy or a rejection of motivation but we want to share tools to establish a critical thinking that is practical and beneficial for the mental health of the readers.

Apathy is a impaired motivation that implies a significant decrease in goal-directed behaviors, for example a lack of strength, interest, detachment, and indifference to some of the following events:

• Go out to eat with friends.
• Do sport.
• Get out of bed.
• Dress up for a date with your partner or friends.
• Job.
• Establish emotional ties with friends and family.
• To converse.
• Have sex
• Eat.

The emotional response in people with apathy is greatly reduced, which is known as flat affect. There is a absence or reduction of emotions that generally appeared in the life of the subject in response to a certain event. Whether emotions of sadness, anger, fear, joy or shame, people devalue or create a meaninglessness for any of these emotions. This feature is frequently observed in the schizophrenia and in some depressive disorder.

Some of the characteristic symptoms of apathy:

• Cognitive indifference.
• Affective indifference.
• Disinterest in personal care.
• Disinterest in establishing affective bonds.
• Disinterest in starting a conversation.
• Difficulty getting up in the morning.
• Little or no emotional response.
• Loss of appetite
• Disinterest in sexual activities.
• Disinterest in activities that involve contact with other people.
• Little interest in carrying out their responsibilities.
• Hopelessness
• Loss of interest in having new experiences, learning.
• Reduction or feeling that thoughts are slowing down.
• The decision-making capacity becomes very complex for the person.
• Altered executive functions.
• Alteration of perception (especially you feel that time is very slow or you are not able to perceive how much time has passed from one moment to another).

Some of these activities may not be carried out because they end in abulia. In the case of loss of appetite, there is little food intake or a poor diet.

Apathy is related to an alteration in motivation, abulia is involved in lack of will. When our apathy is presented in a very high severity (a greater deterioration in our functioning in which it does not allow us to act as we usually did it and it makes it difficult for us to make decisions or it makes it impossible for us to act or carry out our responsibilities) is called abulia.

In apathy there is disinterest but still activities can be carried out, in apathy there is an absence of will to action or difficulty in initiating and maintaining movements on purpose.

Apathy is of the most common symptoms in depressive disorders. This state of disinterest, indifference, emotional flattening and hopelessness can lead to a reduction in the will to act and thus also present with a absence of pleasure in activities that were previously called anhedonia, these symptoms being characteristic and necessary for the diagnosis of a disorder depressant.

There was a point - writes Dr. Victor Frankl (1946) - in which the only appropriate and logical emotional state to the circumstances is precisely the absence of emotion. Apathy works as a necessary mechanism for self-defense within which reality is blurred and all effort and emotion is focused on a task: the preservation of one's life. Dr. Frankl's experience in the concentration camps of World War II allowed him to understand that after a certain time, the prisoners appeared apathetic to the suffering of others and the own self.

The constant observation of violent or aversive stimuli causes the ability to experience physical, emotional or cognitive discomfort to be progressively lost. The subject becomes - as Dr. Frankl explains - a non-sensitive entity.

Apathy as a survival mechanism manifests itself in our activities even though we are not inside a concentration camp. When we suffer from a breakup, the death of a loved one, failure due to a bad business or a professional frustration the last thing we think about is to smile and enjoy the wonderful day that there are. Emotions of sadness or anger may occur that are unavoidable not to feel as emotions cannot be controlled. This is where the apathy works as a protective balm by allowing us a space of solitude and indifference to the needs of others, especially that external and urgent need: "You have to be well and smile, you still have life and you can lift your self-esteem!"

Depriving emotions amplifies apathy and makes it chronic by not letting it live and exist in the life of the sufferer. It is here that we provide the opportunity to discuss a constant principle from self-help books such as Positive thinking.

Be happy, get out of the comfort zone, smiling, being the best version of yourself, not settling for little and never stopping are not a treatment. However, self-help books, the media, colorful notebooks, mugs and photographs flood us with this idea.

The problem arises when these motivational phrases are used to force people to live in a kind of dictatorship of happiness in which, even if everything goes wrong, the important thing is to remain positive and smiling.

When someone is diagnosed with cancer, it is very common for her environment to insist on the importance of staying positive. These characteristics of forcing someone to be happy can lead the person to isolate themselves from their environment for fear of being reproached for being sad, anxious or worried. Each emotion has its function. Sadness, for example, allows us to adjust to a significant loss in our life, it can also lead us into an introspective isolation where we mourn the loss and begin to understand the effects that will have.

Entrusting our health to these motivational phrases can lead to a level of self-demand and perfectionism. People may feel that they will never live up to expectations and remain in a process of frustration and guilt, which can lead to anxiety disorders, eating disorders or mood disorders.

Apathy was described in the article as a survival mechanism of which we are often deprived. The corollary of this opportunity to make way for apathy allows people to restructure everything that causes them pain deep, general disinterest, indifference to things that can be relatively wonderful and a terrible reduction emotional.

By listening to the people we love and by talking about this experience of apathy allows our emotions to be respected and expressed, we are allowed to go through our phases of apathy.

How do you combat apathy? In apathy we must listen, explore and attend with priority the following situations explained:

• The things we disagree with.
• What are our interests priority.
• Be aware of emotions that we are experiencing.
• The possible Causes of my emotions.

Each of these situations is preferable to be addressed by a clinical professional.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Apathy: meaning, symptoms and how to overcome it, we recommend that you enter our category of Clinical psychology.

• Victor E. Frankl. (1946). Man's Search for Meaning. Editorial Herder.