Is anyone else extremely apathetic?

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Hormones----both male and female---tend to cause emotional lability. This is especially true in adolescence.

being "apathetic" could be good, in that it is emotionally stable.

being "apathetic" could be bad, in that, if you are so "extremely apathetic", then maybe there does not appear to be a reason to do much of anything.

That's what I think too. It's not exactly a bad thing. I was wondering if anyone had the same experience.

I'm pretty flat effect apathetic indifferent regarding most things, most of the time. Not so much in a "what's the use?" kinda way. More of a "meh whatever" unaffected shrug it off nbd kind of way.

i see a psychiatrist for health anxiety which has abated, but i have described to him that i have what i describe as a "malignant laziness".

i just can not be bothered to do anything i do not want to do, and i don't have to anyway, and therefore my house gets cluttered with mess, and i remain unshaven for days, and i wear worn out clothes (i am bothered to wash them when they all run out) and i just couldn't give a damn about anything really.

i am always in my own private reverie of thought, and i do not bother to attend to real things that become urgent.

my car is filthy and the wipers are shot. every time it rains and i switch on the wipers, they leave streaks on the windscreen and they have bits of rubber that have torn off that also leave trails.
i can easily just pop into the local auto mechanic and have them renewed for about $40, but i never get around to it because i can not be bothered.

he does not see a problem with that but i do.
i should be more engaged in the real world where there are things to be done that i must do like mow the lawns etc, but since none of it will kill me, i never do it.

bad stuff.

i would not try speed again, because when i was in my 20's and tried it (not the ice variety), i spent ages cleaning small parts of my walls with a toothbrush, and combing my carpet pile back up with a comb and it was such a waste of time.

i also freaked out about my pulse rate and other things.
at my age now, i would not think of amphetamines because i my heart is too old.

whatever.

One of the favorite sayings my friends and I had in the military was "I am neither for nor against apathy".

If you are so apathetic that you won't do the things you functionally need to do, then that is bad

But some drugs are called mood stabilizer for bipolar and schizophrenia.

So, a stable mood is could be a good or bad thing

I feel like I just read about myself!

Yes.

Sometimes I am too apathetic. Sometimes I am too emotional.

There ain't no "happy medium". Only in "A Wrinkle in Time".

The key, maybe, is to be emotional enough, but not too emotional. That way you are passionate, but not completely controlled by emotion

I'm. In ways more than one.

I'm not only just apathetic at matters at hand, I'm also mostly just too lax to care that things barely surprises me. Hence boredom somewhat drives me, or made me stuck at certain things.


Sometimes I like to think that there's this steep slope between anxiety and apathy. At the center of it, at the top of the slope, is a kind of 'drive' that can be achieved -- by balancing tension to add the drive to act, and relaxation to avoid panic and losing control by trying too hard.
Plenty are stuck at one side, then there are those on the other, and there are those who kept being driven onto other and cannot stay on the near top of the slope. Then there are those who could remain and manage to stay at the near top of the steep slope. Yet I'm sure, said slopes could be more or less steep than another...

I'm not as negative in some ways (I like people... at a distance), but I have seen life as an endurance test since I can remember and I just don't care about anything I'm told I'm supposed to care about, up to and including maintenance stuff (where it's an annoyance every time I use something, but somehow not enough of an annoyance to do anything about it). Not sure if that's quite where you're at, but I'm thinking it's in the ballpark.



Never got bullied and a lot of people liked me. Frankly, I think part of the reason I didn't get bullied is the fact that I really didn't care if people liked me. I know some people on the spectrum really want friends, but I never cared that much. Since I was never trying to make friends, I was perceived as more of a cryptic cool person who makes random remarks than as someone who is trying to butt in where they're not wanted or something. So I didn't have any close friends but a lot of people were fine with hanging out with me at school or whatnot.

I didn't understand why people liked me, either. I'm female, and I don't understand why my husband puts up with me, because I by no means do all the stuff loving wives are supposed to do. All I can figure is that being undemanding and non-judgmental is a real selling point with some people. I think I am pretty judgmental about some things -- I used to challenge bullies sometimes, and then it would be all awkward because the person being bullied thought I wanted to be friends with them, when I didn't -- but I don't often bother to bring it up.



I go on crusades and hate injustice and am passionate in that sense sometimes, but most of my life has been a battle to care about much of anything, ever. Sometimes I think it does slide into outright depression -- "I could get out of bed, but what's the point?" -- but most of the time it's more like "there is no meaning to this activity" or "what little meaning I can attach to this activity does not justify the effort of the activity." Being able to do the few things that do matter to me -- writing or research on issues that interest me, no matter how obscure, mostly -- helps a lot.

I think it's less that life has no meaning to me, and more than what gives life it's meaning for me are things everyone else thinks a waste of time. Most people get meaning out of socializing, for instance, and i don't, really. Certain relationships do matter to me, but even the ones that matter to me don't necessarily motivate me to do things that maintain them or things that other people would do if the relationship mattered to them that strongly. My husband says he's never doubted my love for him, but I think that's because he's wired a little oddly as well -- he doesn't doubt my love because he knows I've made the choice to love him and won't change my mind, where most people would need me to perform little acts of service or give them gifts or otherwise demonstrate that love on a regular basis to feel loved.

I am intellectually aware that community is important and friendships are important and yadda yadda, but doing the work to maintain these things still seems meaningless to me. Ditto more concrete maintenance kinda stuff -- of course I prefer to live somewhere clean and where repairs are made regularly, but I just don't care enough to do much about it. And so on. I do -- or did, back when I was going to school and/or working -- a lot of little daily things because it's been pounded into me that I must, wearing clean clothes and whatnot, and some of it I do because it's a habit or a ritual and I feel funny not doing it, not because I really care one way or another.

For me, apathy is not a problem so long as I can do the few things I care about often enough to avoid depression. Depression is definitely a problem, when it takes over. I kind of need to escape myself -- escape into fiction or into ideas, where I'm unaware of myself as a self -- a lot, and if I don't have the energy to do that, it's a problem, and, past a certain point, depression can make that kind of escape difficult. At the best of times, I have a bit of satisfaction that I've gotten this or that writing done, but I still don't really care about much.

As others have said, this can be a good or bad thing. Personally, I'd rather be apathetic than massively depressed and passive at one end, or anxious and angry and driven at the other, and those seem to be the only options.

I would go as far as to say that I suffer from apathy.

It's rather ironic since I am seen as a positive, enthusiastic person by almost everyone but I have become quite apathetic. Between losing two babies, getting screwed over in court twice and over a decade at the same boring job at the same salary I feel like all the hard work I put in taking courses and doing community service has been for nothing. Meanwhile there is a guy at work who is completely incompetent, gets contractors to do almost all his work and still gets ahead at every opportunity. I honestly never thought my life would have turned out this day: to be frank, if there was a "most likely to be a millionaire" question in my High School yearbook, I probably would have cracked the top 5.

So, in other words I am both highly emotional AND highly apathetic at the same time.

Aren't the people for whom this applies most, also the least likely to respond?

Being exhausted, overwhelmed, depressed; all these things can lead to apathy. It's worth trying to get assistance with, unless you truly don't want to feel like doing anything. This state of mind is boring and frustrating IME.