I read this article from @adamgrant, one of the world’s top psychologists, & NYT bestselling author of THINK AGAIN, about 2 days ago.
How’d I find out about the article? YOU! I’m not exaggerating, between texts, emails, DMs on these social channels, over 100 of you shared this article w me. The general message looked like this: this is the stuff you post about, daily…it’s nice to see that a well-known psychologist is bringing this concept to the forefront.
This one msg in particular from a follower – a school professional in Colorado, really hammered home the commonality: “Eric, did you read this NY Times article from Adam Grant? Wow. Wow. This IS mental health on a continuum. This is what you share with the Scale. This gives a name to what others feel with respect to their mental health when it wouldn’t be considered a DSM5 diagnosis. This shows mental health is something we all deal with. Keep sharing. Keep educating. A big article is great, but we need people like you and Same Here in the schools and offices advocating this type messages, daily.”
Humbling for sure…but validating seeing it being written about by Adam. This is directly from his article: “Languishing is the neglected middle child of mental health. It’s the void between depression and flourishing — the absence of well-being.”
We may call it something different. Adam refers to it as languishing. He refers to the ends of the spectrum as depression and flourishing. Instead our scale has 6 spots: thriving, gliding, surviving, fluctuating, struggling, sinking. But the general concept is the same. You aren’t “sick or healthy.” You fluctuate – we ALL fluctuate, disorder or not, when it comes to our MH.
Also love how Adam talks about how the pleasantry of “How you doing?” often leads to push off answers. We need to normalize more detailed responses & help ppl w those responses. This article was great. And it validates what we all talk about & feel.
