107. How to get out of a rut

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Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. Thank you for joining us. Before we get into it, I have a really special, amazing announcement something that has been in the works for some time. We have officially launched a Patreon for the Psychology of Your Twenties. If you want some bonus content, if you want to see behind the scenes, if you want the episode transcripts, access to the studies that I use for these episodes, video content, and so much more, it would be amazing if you would join our Patreon and follow along for the ride. A lot of work and a lot of energy goes into this podcast. 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But back to what we are here for today, what we're talking about on today's episode, we're going to discuss how to get ourselves out of a rut, that kind of terrible pit we all find ourselves in from time to time at various points in our lives. We're officially just over halfway through the year, and maybe, like me, your New Year's resolutions have kind of faded into the background and you're just going through the motions of living watching the same TV shows thinking the same thoughts, seeing the same two people, and feeling maybe a bit uninspired. Time is kind of passing around us, and we may not particularly feel like we're taking in of it. I've been there. In fact, I think that I am there right now, and that's quite unusual for me. These past few weeks, I've been sleeping in, I've been struggling to really articulate my thoughts. The world has just felt really really bland and tired and cold. And I have this massive cry to my mom about this the other day, and I just felt so guilty that despite all the freedom that my job permits and the fact that I genuinely get to do what I love every day, I couldn't kind of shake the feeling of feeling really stagnant. And that feeling is so uncomfortable for me. Normally, I'm not someone who can sit still or likes to be inactive or passive in my life. And ironically, I think thinking about that pattern that I've gotten into really pushed me to write this episode and actually kind of pulled me back into myself a little bit. A rut is by no means a scientific tour, but it's a pretty common phrase to describe, I think a universal experience. It's essentially a period of life where we feel frozen in the motions of everyday living. Everything feels exactly the same, life feels rather bland. Maybe you're struggling to feel creative or to feel fulfilled. For me, a big sign that I'm in a rut is when I can't really think of anything interesting in my life, either about the world around me or even myself. You can be in a general rut, which is kind of like an overarching sense that all areas of your life feel kind of bland, but also specifically with a romantic partner, academically, with your career, or even around your hobbies or creative pursuits. In psychology, we tend to have a different name for it. It's called dysthemia, which is essentially a milder form of depression, also known as person assistant depressive disorder. There's Symptoms of this disorder typically come and go for a number of years, and they're a lot less severe than a major depressive disorder, but they share a lot of commonalities to our colloquial understanding of what a rut is emptiness, loss of interest, tiredness, like the color has somewhat been like drained out of the world. It's a really hard place to be in. But the good news is that if you're feeling a bit stuck at the moment, we are going to break down exactly why that may be, and more importantly, how to break the cycle. None of us like feeling disappointed in our lives or unhappy, and I think when we get into this state, our sense of starkness becomes very cyclical and difficult to break out of. So we're going to dive into six tips backed by some of my favorite psychology and theories, as to how we can get back to our wonderful, lively, happy selves and kind of take action on where we want to go. We're also going to discuss some of the research behind our shift to full time work can really trigger a rut, some of the origins and causes, and of course, as always, the significance for our twenties. I feel like this episode is very important. It taught me a lot. I'm definitely in this stage, as I'm sure many of us are, so. Without further ado, let's get into all the science and the psychology about how you can get out of a rut. Okay, so we already broke down some of the science that you may be in a rut, but I want to discuss more of what this term actually means for our psychology and our overall mental health and emotional wellbeing. From a clinical perspective, a rout is essentially a mental downward spiral caused by either an environmental or an internal shift or event where we encounter these increasingly negative thoughts about ourselves, about our potential, our future, and that leads to an avoidance of the behaviors and actions that we know will actually make us feel better. It's not so much self sabotage, but almost this unconscious blindness to the way forward or a sense of very deep apathy around our lives. Part of us acknowledges that we aren't particularly happy, that's why you're listening to this episode, but the other part of our minds is kind of still a bit lost in this mental maze around what to actually do. Here's what that mat look like in our lives. So, for example, maybe not being able to remember the last time you were truly excited about something, Feeling like the days or the months kind of blur together. Getting to the end of the day or the end of the week, and having no energy to socialize or to do something fun, just wanting to stay in bed, feeling an urge to break away from your life, maybe fantasizing about moving cities, about dropping everything and creating an entirely new identity and life. I think deeper than that is this urge to drastically change something in your life. This is so strange and random, but last week, when I was really in this phase, I was convinced that I should shave all my hair off. I was like, yeah, I'm going to do it. And that makes a lot of psychological sense, because when we feel stuff or we don't feel in control, we want to counteract that by doing something that proves that we are, that we do have agency, and that kind of shocks the system in a way. And one of the final signs, real life signs, is putting off things like your chores or even basic hygiene, feeling an intense fatigue or disinterest in the things that used to make you happy. And we can really see the parallels with persistent depressive disorder in some of these symptoms. It's a super unpleasant experience and often by the time that we actually recognize what's happening, or we can give a word to our experience. It's usually been simmering or going on for a few weeks or even a few months, So I kind of want to examine the origins and the causes of a rut in this next little section. I also think the main thing to really talk about here that perhaps I haven't spoken about is how common it is in our twenties, perhaps more than we maybe recognize for a number of reasons. The biggest one is this shift into adulthood and the number of whole new challenges and responsibilities and commitments that are brought on by this stage. The biggest one I've seen in my own life and the lives of those around me is work. The transition from the freedom of our teenage years or even university, when everything was really flexible and free, to full time work and structured routine is a huge adjustment that we don't speak about enough. There was this really fascinating study conducted, I think in twenty nineteen in Norway, of all places, and it found that in the three years between university and the start of our professional lives, young adults like us in early twenties experienced this increased level of psychological distress and with that poor coping skills and a greater sense of apathy towards their lives. This came down to a few factors, including long working hours resulting in reduced free time, low job control, but also an effort reward in balance, whereby we're working these long hours for these very global, depersonalized goals rather than working towards bettering ourselves through education and leisure and hobbies. It's also the existential dread of realizing that this way of living, this monotonous pattern of waking up for work, working inside an office for eight hours, and going home exhausted, only to have to do it all over again, that may in fact be our future. So we, you know, subsequently have this desire to escape, but also a bit of an emotional and cognitive shutdown that we associate with being in a rut. It also explains why I think typical rat behavior often involves watching a lot of TV endless TikTok scrolling, not because we don't have the energy to do other things, but also because of what psychologists call the anxiety distraction feedback loop. When we feel uncomfortable feelings like anxiety, but also a sense of hopelessness. We use things like TV or something that gives us an easy dopamine hit to protect us from these feelings. That distraction may be temporarily very soothing, but it often exacerbates our sense of stuckness and our lack of motivation. So if you've recently started full time work or maybe a new job, that may be an explanation and also shows that you are not alone in this experience. There are other pretty important causes or triggers as well. Firstly, experiencing a setback or a failure. Following this negative experience, our brains often respond by isolating or pulling back. Maybe a better word for it is hibernating, and we do this as a way to protect our self esteem from further damage or rejection. What this results in is less new experiences, less enjoyable behaviors, or less risk taking as well, and that subsequently actually worsens rather than improves our mental state. Our brains need new experiences and stimuli to keep it active. So there is this amazing psychologist who you may have heard about before. Her name is doctor Lori Santos. She teaches the course The Psychology of a Good Life at Yale, and she found that there is a connection between novelty, newness, and motivation. Novelty and newness in our world in our experiences are incredibly rewarding. But when our ego is injured, when we have experienced a setback, not only do we see a downturn in our overall mood and self confidence, but also in our receptiveness to new experiences, to seeing friends, to going out, to finding vibrancy in life, and the result of that is getting stuck in this rat like state. We're going to kind of talk about that neurological relationship a bit more later on, because the same reasons we find ourselves in this cycle can kind of also be leveraged to get us out of it. There's another important role that our neurons play in this as well, routine. So routines are often really lauded as this like amazing concept, an amazing way to structure our lives, and I think they can be really comforting and safe, but when they become too stiff and too inflexible, they can become quite boring and stifling. Because our brains repeatedly use the exact same neural pathways and they're not being challenged. So this creates what we call a mental pattern, and that means that we no longer really have to focus on our lives because we're using the same neural pathways day in and day out. You know, have you ever had those moments where you're driving home from work and then suddenly you're like at your front door and you have absolutely no recollection of your drive home. It's like someone else kind of took over the wheel. That experience is due to this mental pattern, and when we fail to challenge that pattern, we become more and more stuck, and our brains are less likely to seek new experiences, Hence this rut like feeling. Hence this sense of feeling very numb to the world because you're not actually giving your brain anything new to be excited about. Psychologically, chronic stress is also a massive contributor. I think we need to be especially gentle with ourselves at the moment. The last four years have been a bit of a dumpster fire, and for those of us in our twenties, that like dumpster fire was some of the first years of our adult lives. You know, a global pandemic, a forthcoming recession, war, and political and social chaos, and combined with that, we've each gone through the motions of our own lives. We have faced setbacks, we have faced major life transitions, and these global and individual events have what we call a humulative effect, and we can eventually face all of the psychological consequences of those events at once. Our brain and body will literally shut us down to protect us. And although it's trying to help, it's trying to do it's right, we get this feeling of stagnation. It can even increase, you know, our likelihood of developing depression, which we know has a lot of links with this kind of rut like state, with being in a rut. I think the worst thing that we can do in these moments is nothing, and yet that's all we really want to do. That's the catch twenty two of this situation. But if we have been, you know, kind of self soothing with low effort activities, if we've been allowing failure to isolate us and leave us uninspired, if we got stuck in the momentum of doing nothing, we're actually just going to exacerbate all of the negativity associated with this state. So what I really want to discuss is the tangible actions that we can take to break the cycle. If you were to look this up online, I think a lot of articles will tell you to meditate, they would tell you to engage in self care. But I want to offer something a bit more specific and psychological, but also some things that have really worked in my own experience. I think by listening to this episode, you're kind of already one step closer, So I really want to give you some further kind of strategies and advice and some of the research around what we can do to break out of this state. So all of that and more in just a second. To break out of this cycle, you're going to need to take action. The truth is, I think as we mature, we realize that you're kind of the only one who can really help yourself. That's not to say reject the health of family and friends, but recognize that at the center of any change you want to make in your life is you. So we're going to talk through six steps that you can personally instigate to break out of your rut. Whether that takes a few days or a few weeks, it's definitely not forever. And I think enlisting a good number of strategies and having a sense of the path forward is super helpful. So my first tip is to break up the every day with the new. We discuss this before, but neurologically, when we fall into a routine, this can both enable our life and create structure. But if those habits are too constraining, it can really be quite suffocating, and it can suffocate our space for impulsivity, which at its core is the need for new experiences. Countless study to have shown this, including one in which they found that when people displayed greater exploration or what they called roaming behavior, when they allowed themselves time to be spontaneous to visit new places, they felt happier, They felt more motivated. The experience of novelty or going to places you haven't been before, actually seemed to have quite a large association in this study with someone's overall sense of satisfaction. And it's not just our happiness, it's not just our life satisfaction, but also our resilience and even our perception of time. One of those big indicators of being in a rut is that time just seems to pass by quite quickly and you have no real memory of what you did during those hours or those days. So this neuroscientist, his name is I think doctor David to David Egleman, and he's focused much of his research on time perception, and he found that novel experiences they make time pass more slowly, so in effect, this actually makes your life feel longer. I think that's something that we all kind of want. We all want more time. So what I want you to do is to make space in your life two nights a week to do something impulsive and spontaneous. And also, I think a caveat here is not something in front of a screen, and preferably not something involving alcohol, because we know that alcohol not only dims our emotions, but also impacts how we consolidate memories. So preferably do something childish, Do something silly and fun and new. Me and my house may actually have this list called the antidepression fun List, and we add like all of these random activities to it and pick something from the to do like once a week or once a fortnight. Here, I'm gonna look at the list. Here are some of the ideas that we had. So mini golf we actually did that the other day. It sounds kind of stupid, but it's actually so much fun. You can go ice skating, go and do a pottery class, a pilates class, go speed dating, go to a destruction room. Basically anything that you would do at like a twelve year old's birthday party, except for the speed dating that would be weird. You should try and do on like a random Wednesday night. Not only does it kind of I think, encourage you to play, which is just a fantastic thing to practice in itself, but these events are like a circuit breaker for your daily routine, and it also activates parts of your brain that may have been kind of numbed by daily repetitive activities. This links really nicely to my next tip, which is to utilize the healing power of nature. We have been talking about this a lot on the podcast recently, but I stand by it so so firmly that being outdoors, even just getting thirty minutes of sun or feeling the rain on your face, it offers like a factory reset for your brain and your body when you're in a rut. The science also backs this up. Being in nature increases dopamine and serotonin in our brains chemicals that are associated with an improved sense of satisfaction and motivation. And that motivation is critical because it's something that we're often missing when we're in a rut. Like I said, it's that cycle of knowing that you need to make a change, but having very little energy or inspiration to actually do it. But we can use nature as a way to provide that energy externally. From an evolutionary perspective, our brains have developed to explore our surroundings and to receive various stimuli from our environment. We were meant to be strategic, we were meant to problem solve, and also just simply to be outdoors. But in a modern, industrialized, fast paced society, we have become more and more detached from that innate need, and that level of detachment really disrupts our ability to connect with ourselves. Think about the last time you are actually out in nature, experiencing or enjoying the simple sounds of birds and running water and the wind in the trees, all those beautiful things. If you can't remember the last time you did that, it may be worth contemplating whether you need to reprioritize what's going on in your life to really ground yourself. Grounding is actually also a really valuable exercise now that I think about it. In psychology, grounding is this therapeutic technique I guess, maybe a practice where you place your bare feet on the earth and you use the natural electrical charge from the ground to kind of stabilize you and bring you back to the present moment. This may sound weird if you've only, you know, kind of been exposed to Western science and psychology, but many, many countless indigenous societies across the world have historically used a similar practice to grounding to really treat various ailments, including mental health and mental ailments as well. I would say, just give it a go. It can't hurt, and then you can kind of tick two of these practices off your list. In one trying something new and getting out in nature. The next two strategies I would say is somewhat linked, but they kind of differ in their timelines. Number three is to create one weekly challenge for yourself, and number four is to set up small goals and intentions. Let's talk about tip three first. We know that when we're in a rut, it's hard to feel excited about anything. You kind of fantasize about the future without actually doing anything about it. You don't really have a sense of purpose As a result, I think we don't feel any need to push ourselves beyond our comfort zone or to really do anything at all in our lives. That is the trap set by being in a rut. Once you fall into it, it's hard to escape because the very things that you could be doing to make yourself feel better are the very things that you feel removed from. This is why the weekly challenge comes in. It doesn't have to be massive, it can be super small, tiny. Just focus on one tangible thing that you can do to make your life better each week, like leaving the house once a day, walking to work, journaling each night, or reading a chapter of a book each night before bed instead of watching TV. These things are manageable, they are small, they're easy to implement. But by setting a weekly challenge and fulfilling it and keeping your commitment to yourself, we really build confidence in our own abilities, but also this sense of progress that we may be lacking. It also kind of breaks us away from our normal behavior, that thing that we can become very quickly stuck in and gives us a sense of change gives us a sense that our lives are not concrete. They're flowing, they're changing, they're different week by week. This also brings me to the next tip, which is to set up small goals and intentions for yourself that give you something to look forward to, but also to strive towards. The weekly challenge is obviously going to change each week, but the short term goals are going to require a bit more effort, but I think with that comes a bit more reward. Often one of the reasons we find ourselves stuck in a rut is because of all or nothing thinking around what we want to achieve and the direction of our lives, particularly in our twenties. We talk about the quarter life crisis quite a bit on this show, but really our twenties are such as season of feeling lost and stuck, and I think the only thing worse than doing something and maybe failing, is doing nothing at all. We also have this tendency, I think, like I said, to engage in all or nothing thinking, where we think the only option is success or failure, and we create these huge, lofty ambitions and when we face zetbacks, when we face struggles, we kind of give up because we're thinking looking only about the end goal. And we also know from earlier research that failure increases these rut like feelings as well. So by breaking things down into smaller goals rather than these huge, lofty ambitions that are a lot easier to fail at, we're better able to be consistent but also stay motivated. And that also helps in getting us out of this place of stagnation because we provide ourselves with the external motivation of something to focus on, which takes us out of our minds and out of our self pity into a space where we feel ready to take action. You don't need to run a marathon tomorrow, but maybe sign up for a five k in three months. That gives you enough time looking forward to something, giving you a sense of the future, giving you a sense of purpose. Those things are all really valuable in counter our doing this negative loop. Let's also talk about setting intentions. I started setting monthly intentions I think like a few months back, maybe six months ago. And it doesn't mean that I don't still experience temporary low moments and starkness, but when I am in those moments, it does give me something to kind of center myself. It's really simple. It's super simple. It's like a list like process. What I want to ask you is, what are four things that you can do in the next month that you'll be proud you did in four weeks time? How do you want your life to move forward in the next month? And write them down somewhere permanent. I like to put them above my desk so that I get that reminder. You can also put it as an alert on your phone. You can set them as your alarm text. In the words of this really amazing mindfulness coach in NSIE, setting is empowering because instead of feeling like a victim of circumstance, you become the conscious creator of your life. And that's something we often feel separated from. The thoughts you have become your actions, and the thoughts you have about your life become your life. So starting internally with that mindset shift, even the simple action of just writing down four things that you can do is super powerful. My next tip is definitely a personal favorite, and it's one that not many people I've seen have spoken about. It has to do with creativity. You need to do something creative, even if you're terrible at it. Even if you suck. Just make something anything. And here's why that's important when you're stuck in a rut, and why it's made it onto this list. Creating something gives us purpose because it feels productive and tangible, which in turn kind of inviews our life with a sense of meaning. So many of our ideas and our visions for life, our plans are very intangible and internal. But when we create something we can hold in touch and produce, this shows us that there is actually something in the world that we have agency over. There is something that we can create. We can put good things into this planet, into this world, into the people around us. Scientifically and psychologically. There's also this idea called the theory of cognition, which essentially tells us that being creative is one of the basis of human life. Everything rests on our ability to create, and beyond that, it also increases happiness, It creates a flow like meditative state. Creativity reduces dementia and improves mental health, mainly by helping us to manage our negative emotions in a productive way. That is really the crux of this. All of these benefits act as protective factors against falling into a rut. Also, I think when we're in this state, it almost physically feels like our brains are just a lot slower and somewhat incapable of thinking smart or interesting things. So when we take time to actually be creative and to tap into that area of our brain that has kind of been left dormant, we do see a huge difference. You know, make terrible doodles, make a chunky scarf and ugly painting, whatever you need to do. I think creativity really unlocks different neural pathways. It unlocks different ways of seeing the world. It breaks us out of the very kind of stale existence that often accompanies full time work and full time study and daily routines. Finally, tip number six, hold yourself accountable for the changes you want to make in your life. I say this all the time, but the easiest thing to do is what is most convenient, and that urge to do nothing, to keep spending our days in bed or watching television is particularly pronounced when we're in a rut, and sometimes we cannot be the only person in our lives trying to hold ourselves accountable for change. I would really encourage you to tell your friends or your family people who are around you. Often, I think any problem spoken out loud is immediately halved, and chances are they're probably going to say something like yeah, hey, me too, or like I've been there before. But also, you can kind of use your friends to help you achieve things like your week challenges or your fun nights out. Get them involved, bring them over for an art night, ask them to start running with you, whatever it is that's going to break this cycle when you feel like you're not alone, but also when you feel like you'll disappoint someone else. If you don't commit or follow through, most of the time, you're more likely to succeed. It's such a strange conundrum like this really strange like human idiosyncrasy that we are more concerned about letting others down than letting ourselves down. But we can leverage that instinct to kind of get moving and to do things. And also telling friends means that they'll be more inclined to check in and see how you're going and provide you with that encouragement, which I think every human really needs. Any emotional state that's distressing or negative, even just feeling like you're in a bit of a rut, I really honestly do believe that when other people know, when you invite them into your struggles, it becomes a lot easier to manage. Enlisting those six strategies, I think we'll get you back to a place where you're feeling more like yourself. I don't think I can promise an overnight shift, but in a few weeks it will be hard not to see a change, not just in your motivation and your happiness, but your overall mindset. I feel a lot of empathy for those of us really, you know, grinding it out at UNI or at work and just feeling really devoid of a sense of self. But I also don't think that that experience is uncommon. I think it's very natural to go through periods where we lose a bit of our spark, we lose a bit of our sense of self. Like I said, but what I always think is that if you don't change something now, it's going to be a lot harder to change it in five or ten years. So I'm sending you a lot of love and strength. It's not forever. You've got the strategies, and I do just really hope that this episode has helped you out. Also, you know around happiness and things like that. I think we really are in control of our own happiness, and sometimes we don't realize that even small things that feel like a lot of effort and feel like a lot of energy make a sizeable difference. Five minutes setting your intentions, five minutes doing something impulsive, five minutes doing a little doodle talking to a friend. Sometimes we don't think that that will help, but it really does. So it's not to say you need to make huge changes in your life. I just think that small daily practices, daily things, daily intentions really do bring us back to who we are and who we want to be and allow us to kind of break out of this cycle. So I really do hope that this episode helped you out. You're not alone in your rut. I'm there with you right now. And if you have a friend who maybe needs to hear this episode, as always, I would really appreciate it if you shared it along, maybe it will help them out and you'll be able to recognize that there are other people going through this as well. As always, if you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening right now. It helps the show to grow and reach new people. And again, if you like this content, if you want more content like this, if you want bonus content, unreleased episodes, episode transcripts, studies, newsletters, all that good stuff, please check out my Patreon. I will leave a link in the description of this episode. It really does support me as someone who is doing this very independently and doing this very much on my own. It's great to see the community grow and hopefully you'll go check it out. If you have an episode suggestion, follow me at that psychology podcast. I read them all. They are so amazing. I often integrate what you're going through into my episodes, so I really do love to hear from other people in their twenties or of any age who have an experience that they want to understand the psychology. So thank you again for listening along, and we will be back next week with another episode.