Recently I held an online mini workshop on Shadow work.
(To give some context: Our shadows are the parts of us we have suppressed out of shame and fear of rejection and are now for the most part not conscious of. Hence we like to project them onto others. And just like the YinYang symbol teaches us, each shadow trait has also a hidden medicine inside of it, a lesson that wants to be embraced.)
So naturally the question from one of the participants arose: What's the medicine in apathy? I hate myself lying on the couch for example, feeling disconnected and numbed out. I can't see anything good about that.
And I totally get it. I mean, who does? It's quite easy to reject that part of ourselves, that just wants to switch off and not feel.
Especially in a world when our personal transformation, healing, spiritual and new age gurus tell us to feel it all! Quite naturally do we then feel ashamed of not being able to find that capacity within ourselves to even want to feel.
Because for me that's the definition of apathy: rather than reaching towards feeling, my being reaches towards the void. The absence of everything. It's the ultimate contraction.
And since life is movement and therefore life IS the presence of feeling itself, it seems that this contraction is the very resistance and annihilation of it. That's probably why it's such a big taboo.
But maybe…
it's not as black and white as that. Because, as stated before, apathy is not just the contraction away from, but the reaching towards something.
And that something is utter stillness.
And in this very noisy and busy world of ours, that is getting harder and harder to experience.
When are you ever not being stimulated these days? Now even when I'm lying on the couch to rest, my phone is just a hands-reach away. And as much as I would love myself to be above screen addiction, the truth is that it created a restlessness in my being and body that compels me to stay on the treadmill. (of constant stimulation)
Put on top of that any emotional, physical or mental stressors and our system simply gets overwhelmed. Our capacity to process diminished.
Apathy then seems to be the beings natural and adequate response to regulate and to STOP. And through that stopping to regain its balance and to go deep.
A full out-breath to drop into the stillness underneath the noise and to let that nothingness permeate each cell, as to make sure that the next impulse to move comes from a deeper place.
A place that is beyond the knee-jerk reactions of our mind that is always ON.
Like a detox, it serves to neutralize the effects of excessive thinking/doing/processing and the constant overwhelm that it comes with, by going to the extreme of total withdrawal.
And only once that stillness has been reached, allowing for old habits and residue to die away, (just like during winter), the soil becomes fertile again with the promise of fresh life.
Or in modern language: liken it to a system shutdown and then reboot.
I have always emerged from my moments of 'utter collapse' (apathy), rejuvenated and more rested somehow. More clear and less reactive.
There is relief in this kind of 'death' experience.
A facing the fear of 'who am I without all my personal will and agendas' right in the eyes. And a realization that even in that utter freeze, there is still the seed of life. That life is more than just movement. Life is in fact what holds both those polarities- movement and stillness- within its embrace.
'Apathy' has the potential to become a doorway for rebirth.
If we can skilfully navigate that state and not succumb to the mind's judgments and criticism of it, that is. If we can surrender to it and fully stay awake to what it's doing to us, rather than resisting it through shame (I'm not good enough, I should be different), it has tremendous medicine to offer.
It's an invitation to go deeper, if we are willing to take it.
The only thing that we need to watch out for, like with all of life, is to not get stuck. And how do we get stuck, you ask?
By making up stories in our heads on why and how our experience is bad. As soon as we do that, we are not anymore in the experience itself. As soon as we have a 'story', we think we have an answer and that stops us from actually staying curious and honest. When we are not in honesty we cannot feel from moment to moment.
It's such a funny thing. At least when you see through it.
Until then I wish us to be kinder to ourselves and simply keep connecting to the one thing that we all know, beyond a doubt, to be true:
this too shall pass.
If you like what you read, you can buy me a coffee! Thank you!
Kasia Patzelt is an Artist, Laughter Yogi, Embodiment and Integration Coach. She helps people to release trauma and learn the art of self-compassion through embodiment practices and creativity.