I Love this post from my friend and colleague on intimacy! Enjoy !
I Just Have a Little Apathy, But So What…
By Matt Sandford, LMHC
Okay, so I spend some of my free time playing Halo or Facebooking. So what!? Okay, maybe it’s a little more than that. Okay, maybe it’s a minor obsession; get off my back! I’m just having fun and blowing off steam. Because my life is really stressful. I have to figure out where I’m going in life. At least, that’s what I’m told. I think. (I tuned it out awhile ago, but I think they’re still droning on about it.)
Apathy in the young crowd today is as common as cheap sex, as common as credit card debt, as common as short shorts and too big pants, as common as whatever fad is popular at the moment. Although I am not suggesting that apathy is a fad. Yeah, maybe we could chalk it up to being a normal adolescence phase. But I’m guessing that many of you are finding that that doesn’t sit well for you. Particularly because that phase is lasting longer and seeming to be more pronounced that if it were simply a “phase”.
And if you are a parent of a late teen or young adult struggling with this or if you are that teen or young adult, then you may be frustrated. Let’s face it, apathy is a problem. Well, if you’re in it yourself you may or may not think it’s a problem. But it probably presents problems in the form of parents bugging you about it. Let’s take a look at the nature of the problem and then I’ll offer some approaches to dealing with it.
What’s Going On?
I certainly won’t claim that I can succinctly and completely explain all of the workings and nuances of current apathy in our culture. But I will make some suggestions. I will break it up into a couple of groupings, or types of issues.
- Loaded or Overloaded
In Kevin DeYoung’a book Just Do Something, which is about discerning God’s will, he says that for most young folks there are so many more options than there were a couple generations ago; too many choices presented. What do you usually do when you are bombarded with more choices than you can take in? Maybe we back up and slow things down? Maybe we run? Maybe we just randomly pick one? Or maybe we freeze? What if one element at least has to do with this sense of being overwhelmed by all the options, decisions, choices, and possible directions. And then on top of that, I am wondering if there is a sense in our culture today that the consequences are so much more dire as well. That that young person is feeling that they only have one shot at getting it right – that is, finding the path that will make money, make a difference, do something they are good at, enjoy and brings lasting satisfaction. Oh and make my parents proud (or get off my back, or stop worrying about me). That is a lot of pressure. Sometimes we conclude that if we can’t make the grade, we won’t bother to show up for the tryout.
2. Limited
Now let’s go the other way. What if, among all the myriad of choices that are out there presently, that you believe your options are limited by your situation. Maybe you don’t think you are smart enough, or good looking enough, or skinny enough, or popular enough, or talented enough, or positioned to get onto the track that you long to get on. From your perspective you’ve been dealt a crappy hand and there’s nothing you can do about it. So why try?
3. Loss
Here’s another category. What if something has come along and hindered your path? Maybe you were on the right track and things were going well. But then something happened. A loss of some kind. A disappointment. Maybe your family went through divorce, or someone who believed in you, like a grandparent, died? Maybe you experienced rejection from someone close to you, like a boy or girl friend or a sibling? Maybe you tried out for something and didn’t make it? Maybe it was a personal failing or weakness of yours? Maybe you got caught and experienced humiliation? Or it could have been something traumatic or something evil, like abuse? But something took the air out of your sails and now you’re just drifting. Motivation is long gone.
What is apathy really, other than a loss or lack of hope? Hope produces motivation, hope keeps dreams alive or awakens us to new dreams, hope wakes us up in the morning and hope keeps us going when it’s hard and the road is long. But when you are overwhelmed with pressure, or you feel boxed in by your situation, or have lost something or been victimized, hope can seem more like a taunt from those more fortunate or maybe from a God who doesn’t seem to care.
When hope has been lost, what really matters? Exactly. Not much. Achievement, striving, virtue, long term goals, even love. They all seem, well, a lot of bother. But fun – now that’s something you can wake up for. Why? Because it distracts me from the weight of dragging myself around through a life that is devoid of hope, and offers me a reprieve in the now. And without hope all I can live for is the present moment. There are those who talk about a way of experiencing life in which one embraces the moment and how this is a mark of maturity. But, that is sadly not what this type of living for the moment is. Because this type is more running from the future and often the past and so the person of apathy does not live in the moment in freedom – but rather through avoidance.
I believe the key to overcoming apathy does not lie in simply finding something to get excited about, although developing new goals can revive some hope in us. Overcoming apathy is more about understanding the source of one’s apathy and choosing not to run away from those emotions, thoughts and beliefs that got us there. You see, working through the negative emotions of anger, sadness, disappointment, regret, resentment, or to sum these up – grief and loss – is the way to free our hearts to hope again. This can be a painful process. But don’t run from it.
This would be a new kind of hope different from what you may have experienced before. Maybe before your hope was built on rosy circumstances, or your talents, or your socio-economic background, or your intellect, or your experience? See the trend there? Your, your, your. Hope placed in ourselves – when overrun can be devastating and drain the life out of us. And, it can help us to find hope in something more secure and more worthy.
Dig deep and allow your apathy to direct you to the fountain of hope and water that truly satisfies. And I’m not really getting preachy about coming to Jesus here. Not in the getting saved sense. I guess this is more a getting saved from your apathy sense. I think a lot of folks who have Jesus haven’t quite figured out how he saves from loss and apathy and aimlessness and lack of desire.
But I think that was what he meant in the first place.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating a Jesus who fills our happy cup and came to help us fulfill all of our desires. Hardly! Jesus came to remake us and to get into us true desires that bring true fulfillment. Because he knows what would be fulfilling better than we do!
There is no better place to go when you need to grieve than to the guy who knew how to suffer better than anyone. He really does want to lift our apathy – by giving us the hope that we need.
If you would like to make a counseling appointment with Matt, call 407-647-7005.
Reprint Permission– If this article helped you, you are invited to share it with your own list at work or church, forward it to friends and family or post it on your own site or blog. Just leave it intact and do not alter it in any way. Any links must remain in the article. Please include the following paragraph in your reprint.
“Reprinted with permission from the LifeWorks Group weekly eNews, (Copyright, 2004-2012), To subscribe to this valuable counseling and coaching resource visit www.LifeWorksGroup.org or call 407-647-7005“
Excerpts from the book, A Grace Disguised, How the Soul Grows Through Loss
By Matt W Sandford, LMHC
This is my next entry in my foray into Gerald Sittser’s book about Loss and Grief.
The chapter is about – regret. Something none of us is familiar with, certainly not me!
“Loss puts a sudden halt to business as usual. The process as we knew it ends… and the growth stops. The motion picture becomes a snapshot.”
He goes on to explain that we are all in process. We experience each other’s “irritating idiosyncrasies, bad habits and mean streaks”. And when a relationship ends what is lost is something that is “both precious and incomplete.”
“This sudden halt…forces us to recognize the incompleteness of life and admit our failures. Regret is therefore an unavoidable result of any loss, for in loss we lose the tomorrow that we needed to make right our yesterday or today.”
“Regret is bad because it is irreversible. Regret keeps the wounds of loss from healing, putting us in a perpetual state of guilt.”
“Can people with regrets be set free and transformed? I believe that there can be redemption, but only under one significant condition: People with regrets can be redeemed, but they cannot reverse the loss that gave rise to the regrets.”
“Thus, for redemption to occur, they must let go of the loss itself and embrace the good effects that the loss can have on their lives.”
He then explains what he calls the second death, or the death of the spirit. “…the death that comes through guilt, regret, bitterness, hatred, immorality, and despair. The first death happens to us; the second death happens in us. It is a death we bring on ourselves if we refuse to be transformed by the first death.”
He says that destructive emotions” like hatred, bitterness, despair and cynicism” are natural after a significant loss, but that we can become prisoners to them. He warns that although our feelings are natural and legitimate, that they do not define reality. Rather, he says that through self examination, and leaning in and surrendering to the God who is the center of reality, that we can set a new course for our life and experience God’s forgiveness.
If you have gone through or are now going through the “first death” type of loss, then you are likely going through at least some of the emotions he referred to. Are you in danger of experiencing the “second death” and becoming a prisoner to these dark emotions? This is really hard, partly because you feel you cannot change or let go of them, and partly because they feel ‘right’.
I am extremely grateful that we have one like Sittser, who has gone before us through this journey and can assure us that we can face our emotions, run to God, and learn through them and come out on the other side and find life.
I invite your feedback.
Keep on the lookout for the next except, which tackles the experience of the randomness of loss.
mattwsandford 