State of apathy, weakness, fatigue, drowsiness: how to cope. Proper nutrition and exercise are excellent cures for apathy

There is not a single person who has not arrived at the state apathy. This condition is familiar to many people. There is nothing terrible if this condition appears in us occasionally and for a short time.

But if apathy for a long time does not leave us, then you should worry and contact a specialist (this could be a psychologist, psychotherapist, etc.).

So what is apathy? Apathy translated from Greek means - insensitivity .

A person who has fallen into apathy immediately stands out from those around him with his indifferent attitude to what is happening, lack of emotions and aspirations. He ceases to be interested in things that recently were of great importance to him. Such people limit themselves in communication and have little interest in their professional activities. They can spend a long time immobile, sitting either at their workplace, or at home, or somewhere else. But everyone’s attitude to this condition is different. Someone gets scared of their condition and begins to intensively “treat”, while others, being in a state of apathy, do nothing, hoping that the condition will go away on its own.

What causes apathy?

A profession that promotes emotional burnout (Manager syndrome);

Severe illness, vitamin deficiency;

Prolonged emotional stress;

Negative events (breaking up with a loved one, death of a loved one, threat to life, loss of a job, etc.);

Decline after a bright and long emotional upsurge, etc.

Emotions are the driving forces of life activity.

Thanks to emotions, we work with pleasure, watch arguments with colleagues, enjoy a delicious lunch, wait for the end of the working day and the subsequent meetings, walks, dates, and rest. But man is designed in such a way that the source of energy dries up, strength runs out and emotions become dull. And, conversely, a long life without positive emotions sooner or later leads to a breakdown. Sometimes we overextend our emotions and a deficit of energy forms in the body, and a pause is required to replenish it. It is at such moments that apathy usually appears.

Naturally, a temporary emotional and physical decline is quite normal. We all need a kind of mental break from time to time. For many people, it is during such periods that a reassessment of values ​​occurs, a change in life guidelines, which subsequently allows them to make an important decision for themselves.

Not worth it too much sharpen pay attention to your apathy!

The current course of life sometimes requires a break. Limit contact with others as much as possible, postpone planned meetings and trips for a while. If the situation allows, take a few days off from work at your own expense.

But you should also pay attention to duration apathy!

If a person’s apathy lasts more than two to three weeks, then they should immediately consult a specialist. Failure to promptly contact specialists (psychologists, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, etc.) can lead to serious mental consequences.

It would be a huge mistake if you start taking antidepressants and other medications (on the advice of friends) without a doctor’s prescription. And, under no circumstances, do not try to “treat” yourself with alcohol.

The best thing you can do is get a good night's sleep. Herbal teas will help restore energy, dark chocolate will increase the hormone of joy, and in due time you will gain new energy! Treat your feelings and emotions with care! Good luck.

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It would be a huge mistake if you start taking antidepressants and other medications without a doctor’s prescription.

How to fall into apathy

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How to fall into apathy

Each of us knows the word “apathy” and has even experienced this state at least once in our lives. Sometimes it doesn’t last long and goes away quickly, but sometimes it can become a serious problem and even develop into a serious illness over time.

You can easily recognize a person who has fallen into a state of apathy by several signs at once:

Firstly, he ceases to be surrounded and interested in the world around him.

None of us can avoid apathy, so people can relate to this condition differently. Some try to find meaning in apathy and even learn new things about the states of the human soul, others are frightened by such states, and still others prefer to treat apathy in all possible ways. You need to know an enemy or an ally by sight, which is why it is so important to find out where apathy comes from.

How to recognize a dangerous case of apathy in a loved one:

1. You will see that the person’s speech and movements are greatly inhibited.

Knowing everything about the disease, from A to Z, is sometimes not enough. Be careful and in case of a serious illness, be sure to ask your loved one to see a psychotherapist.

It is very useful for people suffering from apathy and those caring for them to know that:

1. Apathy can last for different periods of time, depending on the person’s personality type and character. Strong-willed people They will try to get out of the state of apathy on their own, but this can be harmful to health (depression and a state of passion are possible).

Of course, it is better to prevent the disease in advance, so remember the possible causes of apathy:

1. Difficult work that takes a lot of energy and strength.

Is it possible to overcome apathy?

Without a doubt, the main thing is to recognize the symptoms in time and take appropriate measures. Boost your energy levels with green tea and chocolate (they contain energizing substances) and try to get enough sleep to quickly restore much-needed energy.

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fall into apathy

Universal Russian-German dictionary. Akademik.ru. 2011.

See what it means to “fall into apathy” in other dictionaries:

apathy - and, f. A state of complete indifference, indifference. Fall into apathy. □ The anxiety has passed, but apathy remains, similar to constant fatigue. Krymov, Tanker "Derbent". But even the reminder of food did not bring him [the boy] out of a state of complete apathy. He doesn’t even... Small Academic Dictionary

apathetic - APATHY, and, g. A state of complete indifference, indifference. Fall into apathy. Ozhegov's explanatory dictionary. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. ... Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary

APATHY - APATHY, and, female. A state of complete indifference, indifference. Fall into apathy. | adj. apathetic, oh, oh. Ozhegov's explanatory dictionary. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. ... Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary

LOWER - LOWER, I feel, I hear; pinched; Sovereign 1. whom (what). Move to a lower position. O. flag. O. curtain. O. hands (also translated: to lose the desire to act, to be active). 2. what. Incline, tilt. O. head (also translated: become... ... Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary

apathy - and, only units, g. A state of complete indifference, indifference to what is happening, in which internal motivations, interests, and emotional reactions are reduced or completely lost. Complete apathy. Fall into apathy. For minutes a painful apathy took over,... ... Popular dictionary of the Russian language

lower - let me in, let me in; lowered; puppy, a, o; St. 1. who what. Tilt down or move to a lower position. O. flag. O. gun. O. child on the floor. O. book on your lap. The flowers lowered their heads. O. wings (lose energy, vigor, become ... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary

omit - let/, let/stush; lowered; puppy, a, o; St. see also lower, descend, lower, omit 1) a) someone what Tilt down or move to a lower position ... Dictionary of many expressions

Belinsky, Vissarion Grigorievich - - was born on May 30, 1811 in Sveaborg, recently annexed to Russia, where his father, Grigory Nikiforovich, served as a junior doctor for the naval crew. Grigory Nikiforovich received his last name upon entering the seminary from his educational... ... Large biographical encyclopedia

Olga Sergeevna Ilyinskaya (“Oblomov”) - See also She was twenty years old. O., in the strict sense, was not a beauty, that is, there was no whiteness in her, no bright coloring of her cheeks and lips, and her eyes did not burn with rays of inner fire; there were no corals on the lips, no pearls in the mouth, no... ... Dictionary of literary types

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - gg.) composer Great talent requires great hard work. There is unconditional truth in the artist, not in a banal, protocol sense, but in a higher sense, opening up to us some unknown horizons, some inaccessible spheres, where only music can go... ... Consolidated encyclopedia of aphorisms

spirit - a (y); m. 1. Consciousness, thinking, mental abilities of a person. IN healthy body healthy d. Matter and d. Properties of the human spirit. // In materialistic philosophy and psychology: thinking, consciousness as special property highly organized... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary

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What does APATHY mean?

"Apathy" translated from Greek means "insensitivity." A person who has fallen into apathy immediately stands out from those around him with his indifferent attitude to what is happening, lack of emotions and aspirations. He ceases to be interested in things that recently were of great importance to him. A person suffering from apathy sharply limits communication and professional activities. He spends most of his time motionless.

What are the causes of apathy?

* Energy decline due to severe illness, vitamin deficiency, deficiency sunlight,

* Prolonged physical and emotional stress,

* Stress after a negative event (breaking up with a loved one, death of a loved one, threat to life),

* Decline after a bright and long emotional upsurge.

Of course, temporary emotional and physical decline is quite normal. We all need a little time out from time to time. For many people, it is during such periods that a reassessment of values ​​occurs, a change in life guidelines and intense internal work, which subsequently allows them to make an important decision.

However, in some cases, apathy may indicate a serious illness: schizophrenia, depression, organic brain damage, and so on.

Therefore, you should persuade your loved one to see a psychotherapist if:

* the patient's movement and speech are inhibited;

* there are memory lapses and disruptions in thinking;

* external stimuli cause a weak and delayed reaction.

The timing of recovery from apathy largely depends on the person suffering from apathy. If he is ambitious, active and too demanding of himself, he may begin to struggle with his condition, trying to get out of it by force of will. This is fraught with serious complications - depression and a state of passion.

Don't dwell on your apathy. Take it as a respite from the turbulent flow of life. Limit contact with others as much as possible, put things aside for a while. If the situation allows, take a few days off from work at your own expense.

Never take antidepressants or other medications without a doctor's prescription. Resist the temptation to “neutralize” your condition with alcohol.

The best thing you can do is to get a good night's sleep and thereby restore the energy you need so much right now. Green tea and chocolate can also become your allies: they contain substances that can increase your tone.

Where does apathy come from and how to deal with it

Each of us has gone through a state of apathy at least several times in our lives. If it does not last long and does not have a noticeable impact on our lives and actions, there is nothing terrible about it. However, if apathy persists for a long period of time, you should consult a doctor.

Apathy lasts more than three to four weeks;

The patient's movement and speech are inhibited;

There are memory lapses and disruptions in thinking;

External stimuli cause a weak and delayed reaction.

The timing of recovery from apathy largely depends on the person suffering from apathy. If he is ambitious, active and too demanding of himself, he may begin to struggle with his condition, trying to get out of it by force of will. This is fraught with serious complications - depression and a state of passion.

Energy decline due to severe illness, vitamin deficiency, lack of sunlight,

Prolonged physical and emotional stress,

Stress after a negative event (breaking up with a loved one, death of a loved one, threat to life),

Decline after a bright and long emotional upsurge.

Immediately after a long-awaited event, as a result of fatigue and emotional emptiness.

After major public holidays, when the entire city plunges into apathy nap, especially if you are sensitive to changes in public mood.

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How to fall into apathy

Apathy is a common phenomenon in Russia. This is facilitated by wars, revolutions, and the triumph of anarchy. However, what does our society know about apathy?

Apathy is traditionally understood as passivity, reluctance to participate in anything, inability to be active, to overcome circumstances and one’s own indifference.

But apathy comes in different forms. A person does not go to the polls because he does not want to (the first type of apathy). Or he doesn’t go to the polls because he’s apathetic and doesn’t know why (the second type of apathy).

The Happy Apathy of the West

Although we are interested in Russian apathy, we are forced to compare it with apathy in the West. Because Western interpretations of apathy conceptualize an elusive state. This is also necessary in order to show the specifics of Russian apathy.

The West is characterized by “happy apathy.” It arises from satiety. There is nothing left to wish for. All conditions have been created for humans - in accordance with the American “Declaration of Independence”. There is a right to life, to freedom and the pursuit of happiness. But there is no happiness itself.

In general, the concept of “happiness” is not entirely Western. Moreover, it is not sociologically imaginable. But be that as it may, the point is that liberal democracy does not provide happiness.

Thus, one study argues that the sources of mental illness and apathy lie in social institutions, especially market ones: “The source of our unhappiness and depression is the tragic decline in family solidarity and other human connections, aggravated in a market economy and not made better by political institutions ... The economic and political institutions of our time are products of the utilitarian philosophy of happiness. But most likely they led us to a period of greater unhappiness, partly due to Bentham's philosophy of money..."

As a result, the areas in which there is “no happiness” are listed: family, work, finances, place of residence, mutual trust. Faith in progress doesn’t help either; respect for public authorities is lost. “Happy apathy” turns into the idea of ​​the unattainability of happiness and the globalization of local misfortunes. And the limit of apathy for the Western consciousness is disappointment in money. It turns out that money can measure not only joy, but also pain.

This feeling is so strong that works have appeared that talk about the need for new paradigms in economics. There is even a graph of the dependence of happiness on money, first directly proportional to its growth, and then intricately meandering. In short, according to the old Russian proverb: “Money doesn’t buy happiness.”

Thus, the apathy of everyday life in the West is an existential and psychological problem.

A separate topic is political apathy in the West. In Russia it is a historical and social problem, and only very few have the same existential basis for their apathy as the West.

Political apathy (of the first type) arises due to deep immersion in family affairs, relationships in the community, and passion for consumer culture and practice. One could even say that permanent responsibilities in civil society lead away from interest in big politics.

Yet apathy is viewed by Western scholars largely as identical to political apathy. The problem of political participation is characterized as a central concept of democracy. And non-participation, refusal to participate, political indifference and passivity are usually called apathy.

American sociologist Charles Wright Mills viewed apathy as a state of alienation from politics that arises through the fault of the dominant subject of politics - the “power elite.” Another source of apathy was the end of ideology, or, as Raymond Aron said, “the end of the century of ideologies.” Daniel Bell, Charles Wright Mills, Albert Camus celebrated the end of ideology in the West, the end of the utopia of building a perfect society, which, no doubt, contributed to the growth of political apathy. Multiculturalism and pluralism, which replaced ideology, could not replace social meaning and aggravated the mood of apathy.

Mills's radicalism was consistent with the mood of the 1950s, but was soon replaced by the less radical ideas of Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. They denied the reducibility of the political culture of a democratic society to a culture of participation and did not perceive non-participation or withdrawal from politics as deliberate apathy.

Both Almond and Verba believed that three types of political culture coexist in American democratic society—parochial, tributary, and participatory. In their interpretation, parish political culture is based on the indivisibility of connections between people and is closely fused with other cultural manifestations. Submissive culture highlights policies towards which the population can be passively benevolent. The culture of participation acts as a democratic culture in the narrow sense of the word. In the formation of civil culture, according to Almond and Verba, a balance is established between all types of political culture existing in the country. It is impossible to imagine or even encourage the participation of everyone; this would deprive society of stability and intensify contradictions and confrontations.

IN in a broad sense democratic political culture combines the three named types of political culture and creates a balance between them. Therefore, political non-participation cannot be clearly interpreted as apathy.

The revolutionary wave of youth movements of the 1960s again raised the issue of political non-participation as apathy. Thus, Herbert Marcuse continued radicalist approaches to apathy as the “defeated logic of protest” directed against power. It was the manipulations of the authorities, striving to achieve a passively approving position of the population, that were considered as a purposeful production of apathy, from which the authorities themselves began to suffer, losing their social base.

Who falls into apathy and how?

With all the enormous activity of the authorities in Russia, this is a modernization project put forward by Vladimir Putin, which includes the fight against poverty, army reform and doubling of GDP, administrative reform, and noisy scandals over the monetarization of benefits, and threats of housing and communal services reform, and attempts from above to initiate construction civil society, because the authorities are beginning to feel increasing responsibility, especially after the events in Beslan - society as a whole is in a state of deep apathy.

There are interpretations of this condition that fully correspond to the radical Western tradition, which views apathy as a consequence of the conscious manipulation of power.

According to Tatyana Kutkovets and Igor Klyamkin, in Russian political culture there is a struggle between the prevailing modernist culture today (it is focused on the development of needs and free competition of individual abilities, on the right to individually make decisions and feel the rule of law) and the “Russian system” of relations between the authorities and the people, in which “non-acquisitiveness” is encouraged - low needs and state guardianship, bureaucratic domination and the absence of the rule of law.

Kutkovets and Klyamkin conducted a sociological study, the results of which are interpreted as the predominance of modernist culture in Russia over the traditionalist relationship between the authorities and the people. 70% of the population, in their opinion, shares modernist values, and yet the “Russian system” continues to function, undergoing only cosmetic repairs.

This conclusion is made due to the predominance of answers in the questionnaires in which people recognize the importance of the values ​​of economic prosperity and put family and individualism in the leading place. The figure is very exaggerated; other sociologists talk about 30%. But it's not just about numbers.

At the same time, it is noted that among bearers of modernist consciousness the share of apolitical people is 25%. They go into private life. That is, the most apathetic, indifferent to everything outside of private life, according to these researchers, is precisely the potentially most active part of the population.

Social apathy is a product of the lack of a modernist project in the state, Kutkovets and Klyamkin believe, commenting in the article “New people in the old system (a modernist development project has not yet been proposed to Russian society)” on their sociological study “Self-identification of Russians in beginning of XXI century."

This statement seems plausible. By comparison, Mills considered the most apathetic layer in the United States of the late 1950s to be white collar workers. Interpreting this point of view in terms of Kutkovets and Klyamkin, we can say that they were representatives of the most modernizing political consciousness, but the ruling elite (“the American system”) disappointed them and took them into private life.

However, even this analogy does not convince us of the adequacy of assessing the level of modernist political consciousness in Russia. The indicated percentage of the apathetically minded population among supporters of modernist political culture calls into question its very dominance over the traditionalist one in today's political culture of Russia. The perception of any declared individualism, which recognizes the primacy of the interests of the individual, his rights and freedoms, his private life and family over the interests of any communities, including the state, is necessary, but insufficient sign transition of traditional political culture to the modern state.

The individualist does not necessarily represent modernist political culture. In the described case, it most often expresses primordial (primary, primordial - clan, tribal, family) values ​​and primordial (initial, original) identity, without which a person simply does not exist and which do not at all characterize him as an autonomous individual. In Russia he may very often be a representative of anarchist political culture. He may be an individual of the mass, as impersonal as its other representatives. And the masses are a product of modernity, consisting, however, of individuals who do not have a modernization consciousness.

Kutkovets and Klyamkin interpret primordial values ​​and identity as modernist values. In reality, these are not values ​​at all, but conditions of adaptation that cut off higher levels social existence - setting goals, social differentiation and integration, developing cultural patterns (following the logic of Talcott Parsons) - or characterizing the lower levels in a set of individual needs such as physiological: the need for safety and protection, spiritual closeness and attachment to other people ( social needs), respect and self-esteem, self-realization (if you follow Abraham Maslow's scheme of individual needs). At the primordial level, a person can be a “negative individualist”, rejecting not only social connection, but also perceiving another as a danger to himself.

The anarchic order of the 1990s mass produced the individual who understood freedom as will. After the 1998 default, which destroyed the businesses and hopes of such people, many of them were struck by apathy. Apathy also struck the state itself, which had previously experienced, paradoxically, an anarchic state.

The strata that were least affected by apathy are national minorities inspired by nation-building or protest, people from small and medium-sized businesses (except during the time of default), who no longer have reasons for “unhappy” economic apathy and do not yet have reasons for “happy” apathy overconsumption. Political careerists and extremists are not infected with apathy.

With regard to terrorists, the situation is more complicated. Materials published in the Izvestia newspaper about Russian girls who decided to become suicide bombers testify to their complete apathy. It is caused by the lack of meaningful life goals in society, the apathy of young people, manifested in drug addiction and alcoholism, the apathy of Russian guys who have no life plans, unlike full of energy Chechens, under whose influence they fell.

Apathy manifests itself in the poor performance of an economic incentive, where increased pay does not lead to better performance.

The apathy hit the traditionalist population to the greatest extent. Because the state ignores his condition, his needs and moves from ignoring to exploitation.

A situation may arise when post-revolutionary, post-anarchist apathy (a phenomenon typical of Russia) again turns into an anarchic or revolutionary rebellion. After all, there are no legal channels for the population to influence the authorities. The Duma, incapable of discussion, the government, which is not political but rather technical, and the lack of assessment of the real situation in the country do not help the population to perceive the situation actively.

Globalization has also made a significant contribution to the emergence of apathy, which has not brought Russia to its rightful place in the club of development champions.

There are two models of order that are considered most relevant for assessing post-communist transformations. In accordance with the first model, it is assumed the unification of contents and actions, the planning of events and the suppression of what interferes with the implementation of the chosen ideals of order. Signs of the second model are some immutable principles of organization that ensure the basic rights of citizens, their central regulatory values, without much interest in the variety of fluctuations that exist in society.

But between these types, which can be designated as totalitarian and democratic order, there is a “no man’s land” of poorly formed social structures, often perceived as disorder, a lack of order, in which, however, society exists and functions for quite a long time.

And in the “no man's land”, where orders of the lower level are reproduced, we distinguish two types of order - anarchic and apathetic, as well as trends in the emergence of a new type of order of the lower level, which we will call formal-rational (like McDonaldization).

Injured

Post-communist transformations were described by successive theories of modernization, crisis, transition and, finally, trauma. The last description is the most profound and applies to any of the post-communist countries and the majority of their population.

Developing the concept of social change as trauma, Piotr Sztompka showed that the post-communist period traumatized the Poles, despite the fact that the greatest trauma for them was the advent of communism, from which most of them dreamed of leaving as soon as possible. Russian society, which consciously and not unsuccessfully conducted a communist experiment on itself, continued to remain more liberal-communist-minded when it received the “blow” of capitalism, similar to the caricatured descriptions of communist propaganda. Both Poland and Russia were shaken by changes that caused great disappointment.

The resulting trauma, according to Sztompka, includes: the syndrome of mistrust; a gloomy view of the future; nostalgia for the past; political apathy; traumas of collective memory.

Russian development scenarios can be described by changing attitudes towards trauma. The Poles have almost overcome the injury. Their dislike of communism, the presence of a Polish diaspora with Western experience, innovation, human capital, patriotism, etc. helped. As Sztompka points out, “contrary to the expectations of pessimists, relatively soon the trauma of post-communism entered the healing stage. In Poland in the mid-1990s, most of the negative trends changed, and some symptoms of trauma disappeared. The most obvious changes are in the area of ​​trust. The syndrome of mistrust after 1989 gave way to a reverse trend, especially public trust in the institutions of democracy and the market. Poland has a large, wealthy middle class that feels confident. In addition to new forms of personal and social capital, there are traditional sources that are successfully used in new conditions. Strong friendships, partnerships, dating networks. ".

Apart from the very fragile last factor, in Russia there is nothing described by Sztompka.

Deepening of the trauma is possible due to new rounds of shock therapy or when the situation worsens, new manipulations in elections, due to natural disasters, terrorism. The population maintains Putin's high rating, despite deferred expectations, understanding that further deepening of the trauma is impossible for the health of the nation.

Preserving trauma but adapting to it is something that has been happening in Russia for a long time and characterizes the apathy of society. This is a very dangerous scenario, something like immunodeficiency. Long-term preservation and modification of trauma is already a “challenge of the devil,” as Arnold Toynbee said, to which there is no answer.

On the eve of suicide

Trauma caused anomie. It is described by Emile Durkheim as a state on the eve of suicide. Anomie means, first of all, that the values ​​that people took for granted and the reproducible order of things achieved practically and behaviorally are destroyed.

People are only now talking about the anomie of entire societies.

Ralf Dahrendorf in the early 1990s diagnosed post-communist societies: anomie (lack of norms or their mismatch) instead of the previous hypernomy (over-normality of the period of communist regimes). Socially accepted meanings have become dispersed across different sectors of society, creating opposing realities and a lack of shared values. This no longer created a split, but a split into pieces.

Having experienced this anomie in the 1990s, our society found itself at the level of adaptation, lost its understanding of cultural patterns, lost its understanding of the meaning of life and socially recognized ideals. And they began to perceive any value integration that constructs society as a manifestation of totalitarianism.

The idea of ​​starting over from scratch, as in America, contradicted the real distribution of social knowledge (memory, tradition, experience), which could not be discarded, but could only be distorted. A similar plan would lead to a similar result in any country.

Anomie in Russia in the 1990s arose for the same reasons identified by Durkheim. Namely, due to the rapid change of economic relations to capitalist ones in the absence of new moral justifications for this activity.

Another reason was, according to Durkheim, that the emerging organic solidarity existed alongside and together with the mechanical one. And this created serious conflicts and weakening of solidarity. In our society, anomie arose both because of the radical rejection of previously collectively sanctioned values ​​and norms and because of the complete destruction of the mechanism of social construction of reality under the anarchic order of the 1990s.

And today we have no collective ideas about the difference between good and evil, about what compassion, justice, pity, mercy, kindness are, good tone, correct speech, self-respect, respect for others, the traditional Russian concept of truth has lost its meaning, etc.

This is not about inventing norms for a society that has lost them. But in a situation of their destruction, to accumulate all the remaining and existing meanings in some environments, in the minds of many people, in today’s everyday life and practice, and to theoretically substantiate new ones. To make these meanings not only the property of the “free-floating” intelligentsia, but socially recognized throughout society.

Order, but anarchic

Anomie produced the anarchic order of the 1990s. If the state refuses to help, then the system of social connection and security collapses and the population moves to self-help outside of social connections.

This kind of self-help is anarchy. Her final result: primitive adaptation. Self-help does not add up to a social institution. The question of identity and the formation of society's interests does not arise at this level. This is a typically anarchic state when social ties are destroyed and are not formed again.

It is a mistake to consider the adaptive behavior of the population as amateur cooperative behavior, as some perceived it.

The essence of the anarchic order was determined by the weakness of the central government, the absence of collective ideas, the ineffectiveness social institutions(which is typical for an international system that has an anarchic order), as well as specifically Russian features - self-help and cooperation (directly according to Peter Kropotkin) and a break “with the alien culture of the intelligentsia” (directly according to Mikhail Bakunin).

Anarchy, which was traditionally perceived as disorder in Russian post-communist society of the 1990s, could become a type of order due to the inertia of previous social institutions and structures, emerging not because people valued them in the past, but because the function of reproducing a pattern (in this case self-repetition) and made disorder into order.

The interpretation of an individual included in the anarchic order as adequate to the Western one is simply illiterate. The bourgeois autonomous individual is fundamentally different from this cornered loner. The Western individual is autonomous, independent, instrumentally rational and personally integrated. An anarchic, negatively free individual cannot be autonomous, he is dependent, limited in his instrumental rationality, since he acts in a sea of ​​chaos, and is personally disintegrated.

The relationships of the negatively free individual helping himself with others are especially tense. With all the Russian penchant for collectivism and spontaneously emerging cooperation, the “other” increasingly appears to be a source of danger. Therefore, autonomy is conceived not as independent goal-setting, but as isolation.

Anarchy as a type of order did not contribute to the formation of identities and interests other than adaptation (survival or enrichment).

Consolidating power or building democratic institutions provides a formal structure for overcoming anarchy, but is not effective until there is a collective understanding of shared values.

Anarchist practices helped, in our opinion, to finally overthrow communism, but they are dangerous. Firstly, because they were neither modern nor democratic, they threw the country back into early feudal civil strife. Secondly, having existed for quite a long time and in their own stable way, anarchist practices began to represent a force that impeded positive changes.

The apathetic order developed after the collapse of the anarchic one under the influence of people’s desire to find a more stable order and the election of Vladimir Putin as president on this wave. By the second term of his election, a certain consensus of values ​​had emerged, replacing the previous disintegration due to the real situation of the country.

These are the values ​​of stability and security, recognized by everyone today. They appeared alongside primordial values ​​mistaken for liberal or modernist ones. In essence, stability and security are not so much values ​​as conditions for adaptation.

Mass and sounding

The main form of relations between the Russian authorities and society is sounding. For example, the idea was thrown in about the inevitability of housing and communal reform, which consists in the fact that the population must pay the full amount for bad housing without subsidies in exchange for an improving quality of service. Everyone knows that higher fees do not improve service, that half of the housing is so worn out that it needs to be replaced. If several thousand residents of Voronezh, where the governor immediately began to raise prices, had not taken to the streets, the reform would have passed.

Another example. The first suggestion of the idea of ​​regional consolidation was made by the presidential representative in the Volga region in relation to the Penza region. It is supposedly subsidized, dull, etc. (note, like any Russian city where there is no oil), and it needs to be disbanded, consolidating the neighboring regions. This project was the embodiment of liberal contempt for the Russian city, it ignored the importance of Penza as a cultural center. Controversy in the press stopped these plans.

A new idea is the idea of ​​consolidating regions. And if society does not express a negative attitude towards the project due to the fact that today it is dangerous to touch the sensitive national nerve of the autonomies, that such a plan could give rise to Russian separatism in the Don, in the oil-bearing regions, that consolidation in conditions of depopulation means the collapse of the country, then who will knows how this will all turn out. In Siberia and Far East- sparsely populated territories - we need new subjects of the Federation, and not consolidation of old ones, our own Silicon Valleys producing high-tech products.

The disciplinary structure of university teaching was probed. It was supposed to leave only such “humanitarian” disciplines as physical education and a foreign language. Academician Vyacheslav Stepin and a number of other scientists were able to object and defend philosophy and national history as compulsory subjects of study.

We decided to transfer some universities to local budgets, that is, simply close them. The probe remained without comment. So they will transfer.

Pension reform. It was so difficult to understand the meaning of the supposed actions of the reformers that the masses did not respond to the probing. And the reform began.

The monetarization of benefits has slowed down under pressure from the masses. For a threat has arisen that the masses will stop responding sporadically and will single out a layer capable of participating in a sustainable social movement.

Today there is a probe into the Academy of Sciences - the work of Peter, the pride of Russian science. What will we be left with if we destroy NA?

The peculiarity of sounding is that it communicates with the masses. The mass sometimes responds to probing, sometimes not. But the authorities have no other way of communicating with the population. Communication through probing produces mass even where there was none before.

Jacques Baudrillard, a recognized researcher of mass society, recognizes that the mass is not always silent and is only capable of absorbing influences. The silence of the masses, in his opinion, imposes a ban on speaking on its behalf. However, he doubts the ability of the masses of today to move: “The imagination of the masses seems to oscillate somewhere between passivity and unbridled spontaneity ... today they are a silent object, tomorrow, when they take the floor and cease to be the “silent majority,” the main thing is actor stories. However, the masses have no history worthy of description—neither past nor future. They have neither hidden forces to be released, nor aspirations to be realized. Their power is actual, it is entirely here, it is the power of their silence.”

The experience of history does not teach such an interpretation. Formed new type mass produced not in one place, but remotely through the media, is new. He has no past, and therefore it is unclear what his future will be.

From all this it follows that apathetic order characterizes the attitude of the authorities towards the population as a mass with which they communicate through probing.

Mass and mass culture

Mass society is associated with the phenomenon of mass culture.

Explanation of the situation in political terms lack of democracy forgets about the age of democracy in comparison with the age of Russian history, which allows us to see another aspect - the tension of the poles, their dialectical connection, the presence of “precedent phenomena” (cultural bonds), or “cultural constants,” as philologists say, and that’s what the other pole. This contradiction has the meaning, in the words of Baudrillard, that “everything here is a structure that supports the stakes of politics and various contradictions, here the social meaning is still in force... In the pair probing/silent majority... there are no opposing or even isolated elements... no, consequently, the social flow: its disappearance is the result of a shift in the poles..."

This means that if we apply this statement of Baudrillard to Russia, the destruction of the poles of culture here is fraught with the destruction of sociality. It is in this way, according to the scheme of shifting poles, that the all-consuming mass acts - not a community, not a layer, but the property of people of different strata to an apathetic perception of reality.

The masses today have burst into society with cultural claims. The debate about whether it is a product of the media, and especially television, or whether television adapts to its own essence and responds to it, can only be resolved by understanding the mechanisms of cultural production both in general and in Russia itself.

The emergence of a mass society, whose life is apathy and whose relationship with power is the silence of power, sometimes awakened by cries caused by the probing of power, is the highest embodiment of the apathetic order. Under this order, everything is subject to apathy, including culture.

The apathetic order that came after the anarchic one did not overcome the identity crisis. Identity is determined not only and not so much by power, but by the entire set of practices. Russian and Western classical literature, classical art, and fundamental education were among these practices along with communist practice, although in some internal contradiction to it.

These identity structures gave rise to a layer of Soviet intelligentsia capable of living anywhere in the world, not just in the USSR, capable of continuing its activities in the post-communist period.

The anarchic order ensured the defeat of the intelligentsia in the cultural market and the cultural uprising of the masses. The apathetic order created and brought onto the public stage the extreme forms of cultural apathy, all kinds of pop music.

Culture production is carried out both in a non-specialized form and in a specialized one. The forms of folk art are non-specialized. It is generally accepted that the people and the masses are not the same thing. The people have a certain integrity of mythological and poetic vision and manifest themselves mostly in traditional societies, where they act as a rather undivided community, a bearer of traditions.

The specialized production of culture is the work of trained elites, whose existence and creative character are institutionally supported in the same way as is the case in science or technology through control by the scientific or technical community. As the German professor Igor Smirnov writes, “sociality... creates such circumstances for creative, historically relevant work that prevent any individual from participating in it as he would like, which filter candidates... In society there are also institutions in which its creative vanguard is concentrated (be it a princely court, a monastery, an academy, a university, institutions for public leisure in the form of theaters, etc.). Inhibition of spontaneous creativity emanating from the masses. accompanies... the encouragement of creative activity in enclaves specially designated for it. The most important result of this positioning of creators should be seen in the fact that they, by virtue of their inclusion in the team, subject each other to mutual control. They themselves weed out ideas that for some reason seem to them not worthy of being cultural capital.”

This mechanism in today's Russia is completely destroyed. The defeat of the intelligentsia in the national cultural market and the triumph of the masses here, who broke with the “alien intellectual culture” during the anarchic order of the 1990s, in our opinion, formed a social order for extremely simplified forms of mass culture, pushing aside the precedent forms of Russian, Russian and world culture (then there are significant cultural phenomena that were cultural bonds, cultural constants and are still characteristics of Russian culture abroad) into enclaves.

Russian classical literature, known to most Russian citizens at least from the school curriculum and serving as a precedent for understanding Russian culture in general, today exists on such outskirts of culture that the question arises: is it part of the culture of our people? The Russian literary elite has made it fashionable to reflect on the consciousness of the masses, to display it and model the archaic in a grotesque form. The result is not a rapprochement of cultural poles and not the interpenetration of mass and elite culture, but a fierce desecration of the masses, whose consciousness is not opposed by any cultural models.

A significant part of the creative forces allocated by society plays along with the masses, shaping it as it was not yet before their idea of ​​it and the efforts made to make it adequate to their ideas.

Let's compare two woeful texts: Mikhail Kuraev's story "Captain Dickstein", published during the years of perestroika, and Valery Popov's story "The Third Wind", published in 2003.

Complete absorption in a difficult life, survival, struggle for existence, apathy is inherent in the heroes of both stories. But in the life of Captain Dickstein there is a meaningful past, bright days. There is nothing in the life of Popov’s hero except the final moral determination not to take his alcoholic wife to the hospital and continue to suffer. The characters are not possessed by unaccountable fear and hidden anxiety, which Baudrillard characterizes the masses and their representatives, but rather real fear and anxiety, caused by the unbearable heaviness of life. This is not political apathy, although time and politics have shaped the current type of behavior of the heroes.

And how many millions of people are in apathy for a similar reason: the unbearability of life, poverty, and the independence of life from oneself.

The phenomenon of mass produced by both industrial production and the media today significantly strengthens the view of apathy as a consequence of the dominance of the masses.

Indeed, the mass of industrial society on the path to consumption turned out to be unsatisfied, and they were allowed to consume vulgarity, which they greedily grabbed, without leaving a state of indifference, apathy, and vague anxiety. But who gave this vulgarity, which is described as the true essence of the emerging masses today? Those who speak, in contrast to the silent majority. The liberation of the masses turned out to consist in becoming what they were described as.

What's ahead?

The difficulties of today's Russian development are such that they cannot be resolved within the framework of a choice between good and even better. The reproach of Western analysts to Putin that he is curtailing democracy in the name of authoritarianism has no relation to reality. It could have been expressed at any stage of post-communist development. Thus, scientists who had mastered the geometry of Lobachevsky or Riemann could reproach Euclid for ignorance.

The West will not understand the realities of other peoples, burdened and enriched own history. We flounder in simplistic types of order. And apathy can even be considered an achievement in comparison with anarchy, ready to collapse into chaos.

What happened in last years? Much of what happened has a plus sign and a minus sign: common values ​​emerged after anomie - stability and security. But these are the values ​​of adaptation, not development. Abandoned the concept of universal political participation, recognizing the diversity of political cultures in a democratic society. But this contributed to the formation of an apathetic mass. We found a certain set of targets. But this set is random. The authorities began to show interest in creating a civil society, as they began to feel the burden of responsibility that they wanted to share with others. But there is a danger of forming these institutions as branches of government. Collectivism has been destroyed. But he was replaced not by an autonomous individual, but by a mass individual, with a primordial identity. The problems of scientific and technological policy, competitiveness, depopulation and the threat of territorial disintegration, Russian separatism in the implementation of the plan for the consolidation of regions, etc. are not being resolved.

At the same time, apathy, a stabilizing type of order, like anarchy, was not found in project activities authorities, but in a certain game of historical consequences of the course of Russian history both with the authorities and with the people. To understand this, we need not a simplified ideology, but serious scientific analysis.

In order to talk about the transformation of this order into a new one, it is necessary, following our methodology, to trace the dynamics of values, which values ​​are approaching as generally valid.

Today's values ​​of stability and security are not sufficiently ensured. People are starting to demand efficiency. We again see modernist exaggerations on this score, liberal hopes.

There is a new tendency to consider simplified formal-rational schemes of order with horizontal integration, built on the basis of extreme efficiency, calculability - love for the quantifiability of success, talent, progress and everything else, predictability - habitual behavior in contrast to troubled times. This pattern is called McDonaldization. For the McDonald's fast-food restaurant embodies this formula of order, primitive in content, but the highest in terms of formalization of rationality. This leads to a formal-rational order that is essentially poor: efficiency, predictability (stability), calculability (doubling GDP) and control (security).

Do we want to live in such a future order? Not, of course, if it arises for its own sake. Yes, if the choice is between “to live or not to live.”

Passing through a series of pre-orders became our fate, because we did not know what we were doing, destroying sociality in the name of a bright tomorrow.

Valentina Gavrilovna Fedotova – Doctor of Philosophy, Professor, Head. Sector of Social Philosophy of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Initially, the meaning of the word “apathy” implied an extremely useful and positive state of the individual. A term borrowed from the ancient Greeks - followers of Stoicism ( apatheia – dispassionateness), was used to denote the ability of wise persons to lead a life in which there are no anti-moral passions and negative affects. This is a state of a stoic way of thinking and acting, when a person does not experience joy and suffering from phenomena that cause such feelings in an ordinary mortal.

Today, the term “apathy” is synonymous with athymia and anormia, denoting the presence of dominant properties: emotional passivity, deep detachment from what is happening, a hopeless lack of liveliness. Apathy is a human condition that can be described with the words: “ I don’t want anything, not because I’m lazy, but because my whole life is uninteresting, unexciting, insipid, boring».

At the same time, the reluctance to do anything and act somehow is not at all the momentary whims of an eccentric and spoiled personality. Constant apathy is a specific status of a person’s inner world, a special structure of the psyche. Lethargy of thinking, coldness of feelings, detachment of experiences can arise gradually or abruptly. The person does not understand the nature of such sensations and is not able to control them, that is, she cannot change her perception of the world through conscious efforts.

What is apathy? Description

In fact, the resulting apathy towards life is a kind of lever of the nervous system, used to protect and save the psyche from accumulated stress, warning of the depletion of the body’s resources. A state of indifference and indifference occurs during a period when the reserves of mental energy have been exhausted due to the influence of psychotraumatic factors. Detachment from the events of reality is a consequence of prolonged excitation of the central nervous system: to stabilize the functioning of the body, the brain initiates processes of inhibition of functions. This natural mechanism is designed to prevent irreversible depletion of mental resources. This is a specific reliable “fuse” for the body against excess nervous tension.

However, for many people, apathy is not an isolated and short-term phenomenon, but takes possession of a person for a long time, makes changes in character, becoming a unique personal property. Social apathy in the form of passivity and lack of initiative can be a character trait of individuals at certain stages of development, manifesting itself in low professional activity and social inertia.

As such, there is no diagnosis of “apathy” in psychiatry. In the understanding of clinicians, this is a symptom of the existence of a certain problem in the human psyche, which can be described as “total indifference.” It is this sign that most accurately reflects a person’s position at the moment. It is worth noting that indifference does not extend to any specific area of ​​life: a person is indifferent to all manifestations of life.

Apathy is well conveyed by the speech construction “ I do not care" That is, it is the same for a person: the sun is shining or it is raining, he received a bonus or lost his wallet, he will go to a friendly party or stay at home alone, he will eat a delicious steak or get soy sausages for dinner. For a person with apathy, there is no fundamental difference between joyful and sad events, achievements and failures, gains and losses. Any phenomenon, regardless of its sign: “plus” or “minus” will not cause an emotional reaction.

However, it is worth distinguishing apathy from a related anomaly - abulia, which often go hand in hand. Apathy is insensibility, and abulia is inactivity. If with apathy a person continues to exist as if by inertia, without feeling any emotions, then with abulia his urge to do anything simply disappears.

The state of contemplative inactivity is a sign. Indifference to the surrounding world is a negative manifestation of various somatic, neurological, and mental pathologies, such as: dementia due to Pick's disease, senile dementia of the Alzheimer's type, tick-borne borreliosis, HIV infection. Apathy may develop when taking certain pharmacological agents, for example: antipsychotics.

Apathy can be specific clinical symptom within the framework of depressive disorders. Apathy and depression are kindred spirits. But if with “pure” depression a person is exhausted negative feelings, then with apathy contrasting concepts disappear. A person does not feel the difference between “sad - happy”, “sad - happy”. In a word, everything is “nothing” for him.

However, the absence of external manifestations of feelings in a subject with apathy does not always mean that the person has completely lost the ability to feel something. It’s just that true sensations are often hidden in the deep parts of the subconscious and are not demonstrated at the conscious level. In addition, apathy deprives the richness and brightness of experiences, so it seems that a person has no emotions at all.

Symptoms of apathy

A person in a state of apathy can be easily distinguished from others, since the symptoms of this anomaly are clearly visible externally. The main essence of apathy is complete indifference to what is happening, which manifests itself in a noticeable decrease in vital activity. A person loses interest in hobbies, does not perform previously favorite activities, and reduces the number of contacts with friends. A person loses interest not only in joyful events, but he does not show any reactions to phenomena that normally cause hostility, disgust, and anger.

When surrounded by people, he is distinguished by his absolutely dispassionate speech and indifferent behavior. The complete alienation of the individual from society is established. He tends to ignore questions addressed to him or answers them in monosyllables. A noticeable sign of apathy: lack of sympathy for the problems of loved ones, disappearance of empathy for the difficulties of relatives, inability to rejoice for their successes. It is often his fault that family relationships become hostile. Moreover, the more attention a relative pays to him, the further the person with apathy tends to move away from him.

The person prefers to be inactive, to spend time aimlessly. A person continues to go to work or attend classes, but he does this out of inertia. He does not show any initiative and performs his duties, not trying to get some worthy result, but performing them, just to somehow get the job done.

The posture of a person with apathy is static, as if lifeless, the head is lowered, the gaze is dull. Visual symptoms of apathy are the complete disappearance of facial reactions to some phenomena. A person’s face does not reflect either sympathy or antipathy, neither sadness nor joy. The subject's speech is devoid of any emotional modulation. The narrative reveals indifferent notes in relation to all objects of reality.

A sign of apathy, noticeable to the naked eye, is the disappearance of any vegetative reactions to an event, that is, a person’s face neither turns red nor turns pale if the individual witnesses an objectively alarming situation. There is also a significant paucity of gestures, complete absence any spontaneous movements.

There may be signs of sloppiness and uncleanliness, even complete disregard for personal hygiene measures. Many people with apathy experience senseless obsessive actions, for example: tapping their fingers on the table, rhythmically swinging their legs, rubbing their hands, and staring at their hands for a long time.

Causes of apathy

Apathy– a symptom that may indicate diseases of a somatic, neurological, mental level. Before starting treatment for an abnormal condition, the following causes should be excluded:

• schizophrenia;
• depressive disorders;
• diseases of the central nervous system of organic etiology;
• dementia of various origins;
• AIDS;
• oncological lesions of the brain;
• alcoholism and drug addiction;
• endocrine dysfunction.

Quite often, the causes of apathy are the use of certain medications, including: benzodiazepine tranquilizers, sleeping pills, tricyclic antidepressants, antibiotics, oral contraceptives. Therefore, if you experience fatigue, drowsiness, weakness and indifference while taking any medications, you should consult a doctor to change medications.

Among psychological reasons apathy holds the palm psychoanalytic concept, according to which apathy is a protective mechanism of the psyche, designed to neutralize intense personal experiences. According to adherents of this teaching, apathy helps to temporarily reduce the importance of the desires and needs of the individual, which allows you to change your worldview, thereby eliminating internal conflict.

Another group of psychologists believes that the cause of apathy is a consequence of excessive personal experiences, and its task is to reduce the intensity of manifestations of the emotional sphere. Since the process of experiencing emotions is associated with a significant expenditure of mental energy, there comes a moment for any person when the body’s resources are simply not enough for emotional reactions. Apathy is a kind of “switch” of the sphere of feelings to work in energy-saving mode.

Another opinion is that apathy is a way to prevent a nervous breakdown, restraining responsible and purposeful people from excessive labor feats. Often, sudden insensitivity occurs in proactive and enterprising subjects who dare in the professional field 24 hours a day. Due to the development of indifference to what is happening, the workaholic’s body receives the necessary rest.

In some cases, it is quite difficult to establish the causes of apathy, since the culprits of a person’s vital lethargy are hidden in the deep parts of the psyche - in the subconscious. By immersing the person in a hypnotic trance, it is possible to establish that the reasons for the current cooling to life are mental traumas of the past. That is, in the personal history there was some kind of psychotraumatic situation that caused the individual severe suffering. By creating apathy, the subconscious tries to protect the individual from new mental anguish.

Feelings of anxiety are a common condition that occurs when exposed to traumatic factors or the anticipation of trouble.

Apathy is a complex psychological states, in which a person feels indifference to something. This disease is characterized by a mass accompanying symptoms that make life difficult. Similar pathology has been studied in psychology for a long time. There are a significant number of provoking factors that can push a person to such a state.

The disease can be short-term or last for many years. It is much more difficult to get rid of a protracted pathology than a fresh problem. Difficulties in treatment lie in the complexity of diagnosis, since the causes are sometimes hidden deep in a person’s subconscious.

Experienced specialists use a whole host of approaches. Psychotherapy in most cases is combined with the use of drugs that improve mood and have a tonic effect. Apathetic people lose their zest for life. They stop being interested in anything. This condition is often combined with depressive and behavioral disorders. Timely diagnosis extremely important.

What is apathy?

What is apathy and how does it manifest itself? This psychological term means a state of detachment that does not bring satisfaction. An apathetic person lives with a lack of motivation. The disease may worsen over time. With such a pathology, a person ceases to perceive the world painfully and seems to lose all its colors. The patient looks lethargic.

An apathetic state can develop gradually and become a response to the past psychological trauma. Disappointment or a serious shock that leaves an imprint in the subconscious can contribute to the development of the disease.

The apathetic state from a medical point of view has a complex characteristic. The disease manifests itself as a syndrome that allows a person to see the world through a dense lens, sensitivity and perception are lost.

The state of apathy should be differentiated from depression. Although both of these diseases are often combined, they still have fundamental differences. With depression, a person feels depressed and sad. Apathy syndrome is not manifested by any feelings, but rather by indifference. A person may refuse to eat, his appetite and general condition worsen.

Apathy, what it is, how to cope with it, interests all patients. And this is no coincidence. Self-therapy is necessary along with the help of a professional. The term apathy in psychology means manifestations of reduced perception of the surrounding world. At the same time, there is often laziness and lack of desire for any activity.

The meaning of the word apathy is associated by many with a complete loss of meaning in life. Pathology can occur against the background of chronic fatigue syndrome. There is a burnout of feelings, emotions and aspirations.

Apathy is a state that does not bring satisfaction to a person. Many note the only plus - the absence negative emotions. Apathetic mood, recurring periodically, quite warning sign, which should be alarming. The disease cannot be ignored, otherwise it may become chronic.

Causes of the disease

The causes of apathy can be different. The peak of exacerbations often occurs in the autumn and spring periods. At the same time, weakness is felt. The disease can be provoked by many factors, the main of which are:

• long-term psychological trauma;
• death of loved ones;
• problems that cannot be solved;
• a lot of work and little rest;
• family problems;
• the birth of a child (especially at an early age);
• chronic fatigue syndrome;
• serious illnesses;
• taking certain medications that affect mood;
• puberty;
• pregnancy.

Indifference to everything often occurs after a breakup. This condition is typical for both women and men. Apathy, the causes of which are varied, is characteristic of workaholics and people engaged in activities that require increased responsibility.

Apathy towards everything and the weakness that accompanies it are often chronic process, repeating at certain intervals and manifesting itself in the presence of provoking factors. When you don’t want to do anything, there is fatigue that cannot be overcome, it is recommended to pay attention to this predisposing condition.

Psychology identifies this disease as a separate group, since it has a complex etiology. When apathy occurs, the first signs are loss of strength and weakness. This condition occurs when a person is exposed for a long period of time. The psyche simply cannot cope with such overloads.

Apathy can be not just a temporary condition, but also a constantly present syndrome. At the same time, some people cope with the initial signs of pathology on their own, while others have to seek help from specialists.

The resulting weakness during apathy is characterized not only by sluggish thinking, but also by inhibited psychological processes. Quite often, the precursor to the disease is vigorous activity or a fight against something that ended unsuccessfully.

The result of apathy syndrome is not only weakness, but also a lack of emotions. A person can go from a depressed state to depressed and indifferent.

Symptoms of pathology

Complete apathy towards life is manifested by a number of characteristic signs. Sometimes people who are used to controlling their emotions do not show any signs that are noticeable to others, but this only aggravates the problem.

Apathy, the importance of which is often underestimated, is an illness that causes not only psychological symptoms, but also physiological ones. Patients often experience stool disturbances and sluggish digestive function.

Main symptoms of apathy:

1. Lack of emotional reaction to what is happening. The person experiences weakness, lethargy and does not pay attention to anything.
2. Constant desire to lie or sit in one position. It is sometimes very difficult for a sick person to get up in the morning. A lethargic state can accompany you throughout the day.
3. Deterioration in appearance and well-being. Signs of apathy are complemented by a person’s indifference to hygiene, work and any activity. Even with passive behavior, the patient experiences symptoms of fatigue.
4. Reluctance to make plans for the future, complete lack of any interests. Such people often withdraw into themselves; they practically do not communicate with anyone.
5. Impaired memory and thought processes. It is very difficult to pull a person out of such a state.

The disease can lead to other concomitant pathologies. A disease such as apathy has a wide variety of symptoms. In some cases, the patient experiences attacks of aggression and irritation when another person tries to pull him out of his comfort zone. Based on the recommendations of the attending physician, other family members may participate in the process of stabilizing the condition.

The disease is especially severe in people with cancer pathologies and those who suffer psychological illnesses in a chronic form. Most people are afraid to admit the symptoms of an apathetic state, because this indicates instability in the emotional sphere. Thus, they only aggravate the course of the disease.

Patients often experience low blood pressure. Such people tend to constantly sleep or doze. Any activity, even one that does not require effort, leads to fatigue. A person's house is in disarray. Against the backdrop of indifference, family conflict may occur.

If the disease is not paid attention to, it can lead to depression. At the same time, chronic diseases. The gastrointestinal tract suffers and is disrupted cerebral circulation. Vegetative-vascular dystonia may occur.

Treatment options

A doctor can determine how to cure apathy. In most cases drug therapy is relegated to the background. When the question arises of how to overcome apathy, modern methods of psychotherapy come to the rescue.

However, in severe cases, drug treatment is an auxiliary method. Main group of drugs:

1. Antidepressants - help improve the patient’s mood, tone up and slightly increase performance blood pressure. They have a number of contraindications and lead to addiction.
2. Nootropic drugs. Improves cerebral circulation. Regulate the tone of the vascular wall. By improving brain nutrition, the body's resistance to stress increases.
3. Anxiolytics. Used least often. Used when apathy is accompanied by anxiety disorders.

Most people wonder how to get out of it, because it’s not always that simple. In the initial stages of the disease, it is much easier to fight the disease. Individual consultations with a psychotherapist are very helpful. At the same time, provoking factors are studied in detail: trauma, problems, conflicts. Group classes also give very positive results.

Fighting apathy in adolescence includes fairytale therapy, modeling, sand therapy. The main thing that needs to be done is to get the person out of his condition. Sometimes difficulties arise when the question arises of how to deal with apathy. It is not always easy to convey to a person the appropriateness of therapy. Some patients refuse basic treatment methods, considering themselves absolutely healthy.

Everyone needs to know how to deal with apathy that progresses. In addition to modern methods of psychotherapy, you can also use home methods.

Additional treatments

How to deal with apathy on your own? Treatment at home in severe cases is excluded. Therapy should take place in a psychoneurological clinic. However, a specialist will help you figure out how to deal with mild apathy.

First of all, you need to change your lifestyle. At first, there shouldn’t be any drastic changes. New habits need to be introduced gradually. Must be taken regularly cold and hot shower, which will increase blood circulation and help cheer you up. At first, even such an easy task will cause difficulties.

To answer the question of how to cope with apathy, it is first recommended to assess the severity of the problem. It is necessary to sort out the essence of the negative state, based on the following recommendations:

1. Express the feeling of apathy on a piece of paper using colored pencils. Draw your emotions as vividly as possible.
2. Understand what exactly is stopping you from changing your behavior.
3. Analyze the reason for what is happening.
4. Reframe a negative attitude into a positive one.

The answer to the question of how to overcome apathy is not always easy. Before attempting complex techniques, it is recommended that you work through the core of the problem. Treatment of apathy is primarily aimed at overcoming the barrier that prevents you from leaving the state.

It is necessary to decompose the problem into its component parts and understand why it protects the patient. Maybe a disease allows a person to take a break from boring work. Before talking about how to get out of a state of apathy, you should understand the benefits of your illness for the unconscious. After all, if a person does not pay attention to his emotional state for a long time, then the psyche begins to manifest itself, but only with negative attitudes and images.

Everyone wants to know how to treat apathy caused by dissatisfaction with oneself or the conditions of one’s life. The necessary method of therapy is to increase self-esteem and self-worth. To do this, you need to take a blank sheet of paper and write all your negative beliefs on it. Then rephrase them into opposite, motivating attitudes.

How to get rid of apathy in this way? You just need to recite positive attitudes 3 times a day every day. Gradually, the unconscious will remember the information, and thinking will begin to change.

Self-therapy

To know how to overcome apathy, you should carefully analyze your past. If the problem is known, then this makes the task easier. The question of how to deal with it worries everyone without exception. You need to imagine yourself from the outside with this problem, feel it and hear the sounds, perhaps it will be a voice. To get rid of the problem you need to replace it with positive image yourself.

Apathy, the treatment of which is complex, lends itself to many techniques. The presented method is based on replacing a negative image with a positive one. After a person has presented a negative image in all its colors, you need to do the same thing, but a little differently. The obstacle must not be overcome, but gradually replaced. You should form a positive image, make it bright in your thoughts, with sounds, and see yourself from the outside as healthy. Mentally replace the negative picture with a positive one. Do this 3 times. The exercise must be performed regularly.

We fight apathy with the help of self-hypnosis. However, less words, more action. Because the unconscious does not perceive words well. It is better to imagine everything, mentally immersing yourself in a healthy atmosphere.

If you feel apathy towards everything, what should you do? Of course, you need to see a psychotherapist. And don’t forget about self-treatment. When apathy arises, what to do if you don’t want to do anything is interesting to many. The first thing is not to force yourself. Do not scold yourself under any circumstances, but, on the contrary, focus on your merits.

Drawing, modeling, and swimming are helpful. A doctor who has pulled a sick person out of apathy cannot give guarantees for the future, so it is recommended to constantly analyze your thoughts, displacing negative ones.

The disease apathy, how to get rid of it correctly and what to do if the symptoms worsen, can be found out only after analyzing the general condition of the person. A problem can only be assessed by approaching it from different angles. A psychotherapist or psychologist will tell you how to get out of apathy and overcome it.

Many mental disorders are the result of conclusions and actions that a person has made throughout his life. You can remain mentally healthy, but in the process of life you can get sick because you did wrong things or formed a negative worldview. These prerequisites lead to apathy, the signs, symptoms, causes and treatment of which will be discussed in the article.

Apathy can strike at any moment in life. Stressful periods, for example, apathy during pregnancy, become especially dangerous. It is often confused with other phenomena such as laziness, depression, fatigue, drowsiness, etc. How to deal with apathy? Everything you need to know about this condition will be discussed below.

What is apathy?

What is apathy? Psychologists consider apathy to be a serious mental state that requires elimination. Apathy is a mental state in which a person is absolutely indifferent to everything that surrounds him. It is in this state that there is no energy even to get out of bed or put yourself in order. A person “doesn’t care”; nothing pleases him or encourages him to take action. In some religions this state perceived as dying.

An apathetic person is very easy to recognize. He doesn’t want anything, doesn’t show emotions, and often takes a stationary position. Most often he stays at home because he has neither the desire nor the energy to move. All interests and aspirations are absent, even if they were there before.

Apathy is often compared to a loss of meaning in life. Only a healthy person feels lost in the world when he doesn’t know where to go or what to do. An apathetic individual no longer worries about the fact that he has nothing to strive for. He doesn't care, which is often expressed as "I'm depressed." However, these states are different from each other.

Apathy manifests itself in two directions:

• Lack of energy to do anything - abulia.
• The absence of any desires.

These signs are interconnected. Lack of desires leads to lack of energy, and when a person achieves nothing, he cannot have desires. This is a vicious circle that must be broken by the person himself by any means necessary.

Emotions, which are generators of energy and desires, become significant. They can be positive and negative. Another thing is important - the experience of emotions evokes some desires in a person, and they, in turn, provoke the production of energy that is needed to perform actions. Thus, apathy can be called a unemotional state, indifference and indifference.

Depression and apathy

Depression and apathy are different conditions. However, apathy can develop into depression, just as depression can be one of the signs of apathy. These states should not be confused with chronic fatigue, which is associated with physical fatigue of the body. The person will rest and act again. The apathetic version of depression manifests itself in decreased activity, slowed thinking, emotional distress, and low mood. Somatic disorders may occur, e.g. intestinal disorders, headache.

What differences can be seen in these two states?

1. Depression may be accompanied by the experience of negative emotions. With apathy, a person does not feel any emotions at all - neither positive nor negative.
2. Depression can be a temporary phenomenon from which a person can recover on his own. Apathy is often an advanced form of depression, which can only be eliminated with the help of a psychotherapist.
3. Depression does not deprive a person of desires. Temporarily one may feel a loss of strength, but the person suffers not because of the loss of desires, but because of their unattainability. With apathy, a person has neither desires nor strength, they do not appear.

The most interesting difference between depression and apathy is the state of happiness. A depressed person is a priori unhappy. He understands what he wants, realizes the unattainability of his goals, worries negative emotions- a state of unhappiness. A person in a state of apathy can be happy. He is indifferent, nothing bothers him. He can only be happy because he lies on the bed and does nothing.

Both states can transform into one another and also complement each other. If depression also speaks of the presence of meaning in life, then in apathy a person no longer sees any meaning of his existence.

Laziness and apathy

It is very easy to confuse apathy with laziness. In both states, a person is in a passive position. He doesn't want to act. However, while laziness can be a symptom of apathy, then apathy is not part of laziness.

Often people lead the wrong lifestyle. Constantly tired of doing jobs they don’t like, doing uninteresting things, solving issues that don’t interest them, they lose vital energy and motivation. Physical fatigue is as natural as laziness. If a person has worked hard, he is tired. If a person does not see the meaning in his actions or in solving any problem, then he becomes lazy.

Apathy and laziness are similar in that a person does not want to move. The difference is that with laziness a person has desires. He simply does not have the motivation to act and achieve his desires. With apathy, a person does not move due to lack of desire and lack of motivation, and one can no longer remember about energy.

Psychologists say that it is quite normal to be tired and lazy for a while. Modern negative attitude to laziness is unfounded. People tend to get tired and lose motivation to act. Laziness and apathy indicate the need to rest, think about the appropriateness of your daily routine and the need to change it. Often, laziness goes away if a person gives himself rest and is a little distracted by other things that motivate him to action (this is the second difference from apathy - a person loses motivation for one type of activity, but experiences interest in another; with apathy, motivation and desires are lost in all areas life). With apathy, no matter how much you rest, energy will not appear, since the most important factor is missing - desires and goals, which give a person energy.

Apathy during pregnancy

Apathy becomes negative if it manifests itself in a woman during pregnancy. Its causes may be hormonal imbalances, the manifestation of chronic diseases, as well as fear of motherhood or the inability to provide for a child in the future. Often this condition occurs during pregnancy; if a woman is left alone, the man leaves her.

Apathy will not cause harm if a woman takes all measures to eliminate it. It's normal to feel depressed for a while. If there are any life problems, then they naturally cause negative emotions. Apathy is the suppression of emotions so that they do not cause unpleasant thoughts and experiences.

Apathy will become a dangerous condition if a woman aggravates it with her inner mood. Lack of external support in the form loving man(the father of the unborn child) or relatives, friends will also provoke a prolonged apathetic mood. In this case, it is better to seek help from psychologists, since the factors may be much stronger than the will of the pregnant woman.

Here, such methods of eliminating apathy as doing what you love, going for walks, are actively used. fresh air, visiting interesting and beautiful places that will evoke positive emotions, light gymnastics, communicating with nice people, meeting new friends. During pregnancy, a woman should not give up delicious dishes, aromatherapy (inhaling calm and pleasant smells), and embroidery. Healthy eating and travel, which will inspire, give new impressions, and will be remembered for a long time, become important.

Apathy during pregnancy is dangerous because a woman stops monitoring her own health. But her physical state completely influences how the baby inside her develops. It’s good if a woman remembers at least the baby, whom she wishes health, if she no longer thinks anything positive about herself.

State of apathy

Psychologists calm many people who periodically fall into a state of apathy. They say that for a living being who experiences emotions, it is quite normal to sometimes not experience them at all. This is the result of both strong emotions and constant failure.

• A person burns out emotionally when he experiences some outbursts of feelings. Here we can talk about both negative and positive emotions. A person cannot be emotional all the time. The limit comes when “silence” sets in - a person feels neither positive nor negative emotions.
• A person gets emotionally tired of the failures that overtake him. Constant stress, dissatisfaction with oneself, and irritation lead to apathy. Loss of meaning in life is fatigue from constant struggle that ends in failure.

Here we're talking about about apathy as a period that sometimes occurs for everyone. Whether a person is successful or the poorest and most unhappy, he is sometimes inclined to fall into a state of apathy. This is a kind of respite to think, rest and calm down, which is a useful mental property when a person is forced to move away from everything that aroused emotions in him.

The situation gets worse when a person reinforces his negative attitude towards apathy with dissatisfaction with his personality. He begins to criticize himself, which delays the day of emerging from apathy for a long time. The longer a person is in a state of apathy, the deeper it becomes entrenched, which leads to the need to seek help from psychotherapists in order to get out of it.

If there is a “temporary respite”, you should not criticize yourself. This is a break to reconsider your own actions that led to " emotional fatigue" At the same time, we do not forget about the meaning of our life and consider plans to achieve our goals.

Signs of apathy

By what signs can you recognize apathy? The most important of them are:

1. “Paralysis of emotions” - indifference, indifference, lack of emotional manifestations.
2. Abulia is a decrease in activity with a lack of mental motivation.
3. Inactivity.
4. Lack of initiative.
5. Taciturnity – speech is slow, indifferent, inhibited.
6. Memory losses.
7. Slow thinking.

Among people, an apathetic person can be recognized by two signs:

1. Indifference to everything that happens around.
2. Self-destruction through self-harm or suicide attempts.

A depressed and gloomy mood is normal if it lasts for several days. However, if this condition lasts for weeks, accompanied by hopelessness, depression, hopelessness, deep sadness, loss of interest in active life, then you should sound the alarm.

An apathetic person is distinguished by his unkempt appearance. Often such a person’s apartment is dirty. He himself is not washed, not made up, not combed, etc. There are frequent cases of an apathetic person wanting to completely isolate himself from the surrounding society. He feels good alone, where he can not force himself to act when he is in apathy.

The life of an apathetic individual develops exactly as he thinks about it. He does not act not because of laziness, but because life, in his opinion, is boring, uninteresting, tedious, gray. It is not surprising that a person in apathy begins to live such a life.

Symptoms of apathy

Apathy is characterized by its distinctive symptoms, which are visible to others. It manifests itself:

• In the absence of initiative.
• In indifference to the world around us and what is happening.
• Alone.
• In laziness.
• In isolation.
• In sadness.
• In a bad mood.
• Drowsy.
• Stupid.
• In the absence of emotions and appetite.
• Limiting communication.
• In passivity.
• In the unwillingness to love and be loved.
• In the absence of joy from little things.
• In attracting suffering.
• In devaluing everything in the world. A person knows neither suffering nor happiness, therefore he is completely devoid of feelings and attachments.
• In the elimination of will.
• In the absence of plans for the future, daydreaming.
• In the absence of empathy, sympathy.

The most noticeable symptom is a loss of interest in things that used to excite you. Try inviting the person to do something that used to be his hobby. Refusal with a bright expression of sadness on the face speaks of apathy.

Outwardly, a person looks lifeless, emotionless, insensitive and indifferent to everything (no desires). His actions are static and emotionless. There are no manifestations of feelings or emotions on the face. If you ask him questions, he can ignore them or answer them in monosyllables. An apathetic person rejects any manifestation of interest in him in the form of attention and a desire to see him.

A person does not show initiative in activities. He can work and do something, but everything happens at the level of inertia. He simply does some work with his usual actions, without caring about anything.

In addition to lack of hygiene and sloppiness, one can note obsessive movements: tapping, fixating one's gaze on something, etc. A person loses his appetite and may sleep for a long time, which is caused by fatigue, both physical and emotional.

Causes of apathy

What reasons lead to such a gray existence as apathy? Knowing about the factors that lead to it, you can carry out preventive measures to eliminate them in advance:

1. Depression.
2. Severe stress due to dismissal from work, death of a loved one, war, breakup, etc.
3. Brain dysfunction.
4. Heredity.
5. Influence medicines: sleeping pills, birth control pills, antibiotics, heart medications, steroids.
6. Endocrine dysfunction.
7. Chronic diseases that are physically and emotionally exhausting to treat.
8. PMS ( premenstrual syndrome) from the fair half.
9. Alcoholism and drug addiction.
10. Unrealization, failures.
11. Lack of self-expression, moral suppression.
12. Elderly age.
13. Emotional burnout as a result of the fast pace of professional activity.
14. Vitamin deficiency, lack of sunlight.
15. Energy decline.
16. Physical and emotional stress.
17. Serious illness.
18. Mental illnesses: depressive disorder, schizophrenia, etc.

Apathy is considered a psychological protective reaction of the body to external stimuli that cause negative experiences of strong intensity. Problems affect a person because he attaches great importance to specific things. If a person is not able to quickly eliminate the problem and satisfy his desires and needs, then the psyche defends itself through apathy - complete indifference to the problem. This is a kind of way to reconsider your worldview and attitudes, which previously caused strong emotions.

Sometimes apathy becomes a means of inducing rest. In a short time, the person experienced strong emotions that exhausted the body. To turn them off, you need to create a state of apathy.

Any life crisis can cause apathy - when you need to reconsider your life and find a purpose or leave your previous goals, but achieve them in other ways. In any case, apathy is a form of reboot if a person helps himself to get out of it.

How to deal with apathy?

It is quite easy to fall into apathy. Your rejection of the world, situations, constant dissatisfaction with yourself and other negative manifestations - all this perfectly allows you to stop living in the literal sense of the word, but only exist, fulfilling the basic physiological functions. Apathy is not far from depression and is characterized by the same lack of desire to do anything, imagine oneself happy and not see joy in life. How to deal with apathy?

First, you should stop comparing yourself to anyone else. You - unique person, who does not have to be like the people around him. Each has its own features and characteristics that significantly distinguish it from the rest. And this is good, despite the fact that it may seem otherwise. What matters is not what qualities you have, but how you use them. After all, even negative sides your personality can be controlled in such a way that they will bring good. This should be learned, and not eradicated just because other people think so.

Don't compare yourself to anyone. You are unique and that's wonderful. It’s better to find a new use for your abilities than to be depressed about the fact that you can’t eradicate something in yourself.

Compare yourself only with your past self, what you previously were and what you have achieved. You must grow not in comparison with other people, but above yourself. If you understand that something is not working out for you, were you able to correct the situation? If you want to change something about yourself, were you able to achieve it through volitional efforts? Compare yourself only with yourself: have you become better than you were before, or have you dropped to a lower level?

To get out of apathy, you need to start wanting. It doesn’t matter what exactly you want, the main thing is that it is your sincere desire. You don't have to want what other people want. However, it is useful for you to have those desires that you have not yet realized in your life and that can truly please you. Start wanting what you really want, and then you will begin to have the energy to move towards your goal. And this will make you forget about apathy.

Ambition will help in the fight against apathy - the desire to live better than you currently have. You must sincerely want to get rid of apathy, because you do not want to lie like a vegetable on the bed. Set new goals and take action. Get rid of the idea that nothing in this life can be changed. As long as you don't do anything, no changes will happen.

Your assistant should be the idea that you have the right to make mistakes and be imperfect. Failures overtake everyone who acts. Only those who do nothing do not experience defeat. Your apathy has become a defense mechanism against your feelings of failure. Stop suffering and it’s time to hit the road again, fearless.

Apathy treatment

The treatment for apathy is the use of psychostimulants, which affect the functioning of the nervous system. However, the main ones here still remain unconventional methods improving your mood: drinking herbal teas, delicacies, relaxing, walking, communicating with interesting people, visiting exciting places. Hobbies that a person has previously engaged in or that will become new, as well as giving up drugs and alcohol, become very important here.

The most important mechanism for getting rid of apathy remains psychotherapy, where a person works through his own problems, because of which he entered this state. This will require a lot of willpower, since living without action and outside of public criticism and evaluation is much easier than constantly facing some kind of conflict situations.

It is important for a person to realize his own worth, as well as the importance of his life. Problems are nothing compared to living and sometimes achieving success. It is important to realize that life does not always have to go on without stopping. It is normal to feel apathetic from time to time. If you have fallen into apathy for several days, then allow yourself to do so - perhaps this way your psyche calms down and is protected from stress or makes you rest.

The main medications prescribed by doctors for apathetic people are:

1. B vitamins.
2. Nootropics.
3. Psychostimulants.
4. Preparations to improve tissue metabolism.
5. Natural adaptogens.
6. Neuroleptics for severe apathy.

Physical activity, massage, and contrast showers can also be ways to get out of apathy or at least awaken from “emotional paralysis.”

Sometimes changing your life helps in treating apathy. If you burn out at work, you should change it. If your friends betray you, you should make new ones. If a relationship has broken down, you need to find new love. The absence of what is important provokes a worsening of the situation. It's time to find at least some replacement for what you lost.

Bottom line

Apathy is not considered a dangerous condition unless a person remains in it for a long time. In some cases, it protects the psyche and allows you to take a break from failures and frustrations. However, a long stay in apathy indicates that a person on our own unable to get out of it. The result can be boring and gloomy, since an apathetic person is deprived of the joys of life, meaning and contact with others.

Many people associate apathy with a loss of meaning in life. However, if you pay attention, this only happens when a person is faced with failure. Looking for the meaning of life is like experiencing a desire to acquire something, but not understanding what exactly. Searching for something that you don’t understand what exactly you want to find leads to the fact that you find nothing. There are two ways out of this situation:

1. First, understand the answer to what question you want to get, so that you can look for it later.
2. Stop looking for anything and just follow the path of life; when something attracts your attention, you will look for answers to your questions in it.

The meaning of life is not to find it, but to set goals and then achieve them. Life itself is aimless. And only the person himself fills it with meaning with the goals he wants to achieve. The meaning of life lies in how you live, what you strive for and what methods you use to achieve something. Therefore, each individual has his own meaning of life, which consists in the kind of life he lives.

There is no need to look for the meaning of life, you need to create it, create it yourself, invent it. Either your meaning in life lies in constantly searching for it, or in determining what you live for by setting specific goals for yourself and then looking for, trying, how to most effectively achieve what you want to have.

Looking for something without knowing what leads to you simply marking time. You need not to search, but to create the meaning of your life yourself (it lies in what you will have). Don't ask what life can give you, but determine what you want to get from it and take the appropriate steps to get it. This will save you not only from apathy, but also from depression and other forms of depression.

The term apathy, which is often used in psychiatric practice, is understood as a psychopathological state, expressed in a persistent lack of interests, a suppressed emotional background and complete indifference to current events and surrounding people. Painful indifference demoralizes the individual and throws him out of the social sphere of society. Without taking drastic measures, internal reserves are quickly exhausted, and the situation only gets worse.

Provoking factors

When highlighting the reasons that lead to the appearance of this psychopathological syndrome, doctors pay attention to the fact that apathy is a condition that most often signals a whole complex of somatic and neurological disorders in the body. Before starting treatment for a mental disorder, The following diagnoses need to be excluded:

Often the culprit of apathy is taking medications.

If during a course of treatment any medication If symptoms such as general malaise, lethargy, dullness of emotions arise, or interest in the future has disappeared, then you should discuss these points with your doctor.

The dominant position among all the causes of apathy is occupied by the concept according to which the disorder is defensive reaction psyche, designed to retouch a person’s depressive experiences. According to supporters of this psychoanalytic theory, an apathetic state is capable of minimizing for some time the significance of the subject’s needs and desires, which allows one to reconsider one’s attitude towards life in general, thereby eliminating internal contradictions.

Some psychology experts view apathy as an affordable way to protect against a nervous breakdown. It sounds paradoxical, but often pathological indifference overtakes the most responsible and purposeful individuals who give their all in the professional field. Thanks to apathy, the workaholic receives much-needed relief.

In individual clinical episodes, diagnosing the exact cause of the disorder is quite problematic, since the trigger of the pathology is hidden in a hidden part of the psyche - in the subconscious. In other words, on his life’s path a person had to face a traumatic situation that caused him severe mental pain. The subconscious thus protects a person from a new portion of experiences.

The development of persistent indifference has also been linked to burnout. Such an abnormal state is a response to monotonous and hard work, lack of due recognition for the work invested.

Forms and connection with depression

Conventionally, the disorder can be divided into several main forms. The following types of apathy are described in psychiatry reference books:

There is also such a term as social apathy, which is characterized by a loss of interest in the system of social relations. Such pathological passivity can be experienced by either one person or a separate group of people.

The connection between a state of complete indifference and depressive disorder is beyond doubt. Apathy can give rise to depression, and can also be considered as one of its signs, but its presence in the symptomatic picture is not enough to make an accurate diagnosis.

The clinical manifestations of depression are more varied. It is characterized by symptoms such as depressed mood, sleep problems, impaired mental function, and so on.

However, a detached attitude towards the outside world sometimes directly indicates the presence depressive disorder and leads to the development of the so-called apathetic type of depression. In such a situation, apathy determines the specificity of a depressed mental state, is in close connection with other affective disorders of this pathology and affects their course.

Risk group

Unfortunately, no one is immune from apathy. Neither age nor social status play absolutely any role in this matter. Due to the wide range of reasons leading to the impoverishment of emotions, it is not possible to single out any one category of people susceptible to apathy. Nevertheless, one cannot help but say about persons who have a slightly greater predisposition to this mental pathology. These include:

A mentally balanced person tries to normalize his condition as quickly as possible and return life to normal. It is much more difficult for those people who are inherently following properties character:

Clinical picture

A person in a state of total indifference is very easy to identify, since the manifestations of such a mental disorder are visible to others even with the naked eye. Typical symptoms of apathy include:

The overall impression produced by a person mired in apathy is quite depressing. A conversation with such a person is difficult and uninteresting. If measures are not taken to return to normal, the patient faces an unenviable fate.

Diagnosis of the disorder

Not every person can independently come to the conclusion that there has been a malfunction in the psyche, so a specialist with the appropriate education must diagnose the pathology. Despite the colossal progress in medicine and the field of information technology, many people still do not find the courage to seek help from a doctor, whose consultation could save a patient caught in the network of insidious apathy from gloomy thoughts and detachment.

In most cases, this is caused by fear of public reproach. However, it is important to understand a simple thing: a psychologist is exactly the same as a doctor, whose methods of influencing not the body, but the psyche can protect the patient from a mortal threat. A conversation will be held with the patient, during which the doctor will try to determine the cause of the apathetic disorder. The consultation also makes it possible to determine the degree of neglect of apathy and its form. To get a more detailed picture of the patient’s psycho-emotional state, the doctor conducts specially designed psychological tests.

Introverts, as a rule, do not strive to open their souls to strangers, even if an experienced psychologist is in front of them, so in this situation the only thing the right decision there will be deep introspection. When practicing this valuable technique, it is extremely important to be completely honest with yourself. It is necessary to reflect on the reasons that caused the mental disorder, as well as give a sober assessment of your condition and ability to fight the disease without outside help.

Therapeutic strategy

In a state where an individual is deprived of any desire to do anything and become emotionally involved in social life, emergency measures are required, which are developed taking into account the reasons that caused apathy. It must be understood that such a mental disorder does not always represent a serious illness that requires serious medical intervention.

If it is known that apathy arose after exposure to some traumatic factor, hasty and thoughtless steps can have the worst impact on the apathetic state. The rehabilitation period can last for several days or weeks, during which a person needs peace, physical and emotional rest, as well as freedom from everyday worries.

Miracle medications that can normalize a patient’s emotional background in the blink of an eye simply do not exist.

This is why consultation with a psychologist or psychotherapist is so important. The indispensability of such a step is determined by the fact that only a small percentage of people are able to independently diagnose apathy and relieve its symptoms on their own. Prevention of a chronic form of mental disorder is based at the following events:

• correct alternation of work and rest;
• avoidance of stressful situations;
• compliance with the daily routine.

When faced with apathy, you need to balance your diet. The table should contain foods rich in vitamins and minerals. Among other activities that will contribute effective treatment apathy, worth highlighting:

• regular stay on the street;
• active physical education and sports;
• visiting the swimming pool;
• massage and acupuncture.

The use of pharmacological agents is resorted to only in particularly advanced cases.

Among the most harmless drugs, natural adaptogens and complexes containing a loading dose of vitamin B are used. To eliminate severe symptoms, psychostimulants, antipsychotics and nootropics may be needed. The selection of medications should be done exclusively by a doctor.

Pathological condition during pregnancy

While carrying a child, a woman experiences extreme physical and emotional stress. During this crucial period of her life, hormonal changes begin and a partial reassessment of life guidelines occurs, so it is not surprising that the expectant mother begins to suffer from apathy.

The condition of a pregnant woman should be constantly monitored. Due to reduced criticality of perception, she may miss alarming symptoms. Usually emotional, active women who temporarily maternity leave They lost their usual social circle. The symptoms of the disorder are classic; they may be accompanied by thoughts about the future fate of the baby and his place in a changing world.

This condition during pregnancy requires mandatory correction. You shouldn’t expect passivity to disappear - the health of two people is at risk at once.

Without a doubt, apathy is the real scourge of our time. The feeling of the meaninglessness of existence against the background of neurosis is familiar to almost every second person. To face apathy means to test your nervous system's strength. The main thing is not to let the disorder take its course and strictly follow all the instructions of the doctors, and even better, take preventive measures, and then you won’t have to get rid of the painful psychological condition at all.