Apathy: how do you overcome it?

[IlyaK1986]

How do you avoid apathy? Depends on what you call apathy. I believe that everything will work out for the best when we are at our most efficient and are secure in our beliefs, whether they are politically correct, or not.

 

[INA]

Thank you all for your suggestions.
I think kitty has found her catnip and a new scratching post. *purr*

 

[runvardh]

Thank you all for your suggestions.
I think kitty has found her catnip and a new scratching post. *purr*

Catnip? Where?!

 

[INA]

Catnip? Where?!

Ahem . . .

 

[runvardh]

*pads off looking for a couch to destroy*

 

[iwakar]

I angst...

...in between bouts of couch-drooling stupor about how to overcome my apathy until it passes. I don't know that it's so much a solution as just "waiting it out."





*typo*

 

[Spectre of the spam]

I do something that frightens me or excites me. It usually doesn't work to long but it temporarily does the trick.

 

[Chrysanthea]

Cocaine

 

[prplchknz]

you don't if you're truly apathetic you wouldn't care enough to stop being apathetic because you just don't care.

 

[Chrysanthea]

Okay if you are truly that apathetic, GET OFF YOUR ASS AN GO VENTURE INTO THE WORLD OF CHAOS! And by that I mean.... Leave everything you own and find a completely new life, one that gives you more freedom and adventure... More excitement and stimulation for your mind. Never live in the same place for more than a year, and try to expand your possibilies! : D Go build a boat and sail off, where you can be free! Goddamn now I am starting to sound like a fucking insane preacher:

 

[SiegfriedSchtauffen]

As an alternative to sailing away and escaping from the unbearable world that forces you into a life you don't like: you can persist and change your environment but it takes effort. I think most apathetic people would be interested in something but their lack of knowledge hides these things from them or renders these choices as unreachable. Being apathetic is a down-spiral, If you are not interested anything, in any of the paths you think are available for you then your life becomes a burden in which you are just executing tasks you are expected to execute. The amount of your daily joy becomes zero or less. There is no amount of physical activity or shitty mediocre advice can help with this. An apathetic person has to find a dream that can be pursued, or he/she has to realize that one of his/her unreachable dreams is actually reachable. It takes a single day to turn into excited from apathetic.

 

[SiegfriedSchtauffen]

you don't if you're truly apathetic you wouldn't care enough to stop being apathetic because you just don't care.

Apathy is a self-defense mechanism. A lot of people use it just to turn away from a bad situation that they can not solve (or think they can't solve) because of their lack of power or knowledge. With time apathy indeed turns into something you mentioned (a totally blank mind with "I don't care" attitude), but it starts out from a state where the given person is struggling without being able to solve the problems he/she is facing. Getting back to this state and gathering the power to break can be extremely difficult.

 

[Sunflower_Moon]

I first avoid the negative people in my life that could be causing stress and the apathy, and if some need to be completely left out of my life permanently, then I do it --self-care is absolutely essential! Then I try to remove as much stress from my life that isn't caused by people and do some of the activities I enjoy doing that gives my life quality. I also practice meditation (rebuilds gray matter in the brain after eight weeks), and relaxation techniques in general, yoga, etc. When I feel emotionally relaxed and calmer, then I turn on the sad movies or read a sad book, etc...anything that can make me feel empathy and/or sympathy for others and their struggles. Oh, and I stop watching the news, even though it sort of makes me outdated for a while.

 

[Frosty]

Wrote a whole long thing, didn't like it, and decided not to post it. So maybe not reaching acceptable standards of apathy to post, but ah well.

Interest just grabs me or it doesn't. If it does it is pretty unrelenting-heh, this site-not particularly typology, I would need a particular set of circumstances to really engulf myself to the depth I would like in that-an unblocked focused solid block of time, resources, all of that. Anyways, real apathy for the things I do not want to think about or do... common and debilitating seeming. Seems torturous. Honestly, I do the things that I do not care about to the most minimally acceptable degree possible. Figure out what I absolutely need, and do nothing beyond it.

Not sure what to do beyond that, actually though I thought up a hypothetical, but it is longwinded. More of a try to look at a situation-one that you aren't really interested in and ignore everything you are not interested in, find something that you really are, and build around it to include all the rest you are not. I have to remind myself to come back and clarify and complete this for me, maybe tomorrow. But yeah, story of my life. Breaking it down for me would take a while, and don't feel like running in cirlces with myself and a bunch of extraneous repetative thoughts.

 

[Duffy]

I can't help but feel a sense of annoyance towards people who find it so easy or who so actively find purpose and wonder and happiness in their lives. Sometimes it seems they are so adamant about "doing" something, just for the sake of doing something, it looks purposeless. As if they are trying to distract themselves from something.

On the other hand, apathy is one of the worst. It's like a walking corpse. You can't even find the dignity to kill yourself.