“I’m so bored!”  That seems to be a common echo in this time of lockdown and the sameness of every day, when there is nowhere to go and seemingly nothing to do.  But while boredom seems to be about nothingness, in psychological worlds, boredom is becoming an increasingly interesting topic with there being more to boredom than one would assume.  The fact is, that underneath its banal surface, when you are bored, there is actually a lot going on!  Understanding your ennui may be a tool to better coping.

The very idea of boredom is a modern concept, ironically arising as the amount of stimulation has increased exponentially.  As Luke Fernandez and Susan Matt examine boredom, the word did not appear in the lexicon until the mid 19th century.  “Before that, tedium was an expected part of life.”  It is only with the rise of consumer culture, they surmise, that people were promised constant excitement.  So when you don’t feel stimulated, you feel something is wrong or that you’re missing out.  It leaves you in a restless state of desire to do something or experience something more.

Really, though, the problem is not with the boredom, but what we do with it.  Often people seek immediate relief through quick fixes, such as drinking or calling an ex rather than be left with their own thoughts.  When we’re bored, we’re more likely to become internally focused in a negative, ruminative cycle.  People will go to pretty extreme lengths to avoid these feelings.  Consider this.  In one experiment, researchers asked a group of people to spend just 15 minutes in a room and instructed them to entertain themselves with their own thoughts.  They were also given an opportunity to self-administer a negative stimulus in the form of a small electric shock.  Amazingly, 67% of men and 25% of women found being alone with their own thoughts so unpleasant that they chose physical discomfort over emotional discomfort!  

Often in therapy, when someone is bored, we might look for how they are pulling back from some unpleasant thoughts, feelings, or memories.  When we therapists find ourselves bored in a session with a client, we use this inner feeling as a tool to tell us that someone is distancing from their own inner experience.  In this way, boredom can be a useful experience to tell us where our healing needs to be directed.  

Now apply this to the pandemic.  Cooped up in our homes, we’ve been stripped of our everyday structures and routines.  Many of the activities we engaged in that brought us meaning are taken away.  We’re left with more time to think and more awareness of our own inner experience.  Couple this with the worry, sadness, and anger that we may feel given the circumstances of so much death, loss, economic hardship and political conflict and no wonder we do not want to be left alone with our thoughts!  We feel bored and cranky, looking for some kind of relief.

Rather than fighting boredom with a rapid need to run away and preoccupy ourselves with anything (like eating or watching the latest 100 tik tok videos), try to use the sense of boredom as a messenger.  We may be needing some support or help in finding peace within ourselves.  Researchers suggest that when we feel bored, it’s helpful to  try to find a more meaningful way to engage with the world.  For example, while not being able to do anything may be unpleasant, reminding yourself that we are all doing this to save lives and be healthy will help you tolerate your feelings.  Meaning seems to be the healthy antidote to boredom.  Look to activities that give you a sense of purpose, such as calling someone you care about, sorting through old pictures, or even directing your thoughts to creative thinking or happy memories.  Create a path to re-engage with the world that feels positive.  

Mindfulness is a great tool to learn to calm your inner mind and find a way to be at peace with your thoughts and feelings. There are great Apps such as Insight Timer and Calm that you can get for free that can help guide you through the process of using mindfulness tools to tolerate inner thoughts and therefore avoid running from them.  Rather than an unpleasant feeling, boredom can become an invitation to engage more deeply with yourself and the world.  With so much to stress about and more time to do it in, we have to watch for the ways we might be harming ourselves through distraction without even realizing it. It may not be an electric shock, but shopping online for another not really needed kitchen gadget may just be my own cry for help!