Learning To Be Bored in Anxiety Recovery (Episode 81)
Disordered: Anxiety Help
Josh Fletcher and Drew Linsalata
4.9 • 665 Ratings
🗓️ 11 October 2024
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Anxious people in recovery from chronic or disordered anxiety can find themselves bored ... and this is often a problem. This week on Disordered we're talking about learning to be bored. Yes, we have to learn how to be bored, which can be challenging if anxiety is a problem for you, but this is a skill well worth learning and practicing.
Allowing yourself to sit quietly or to engage in random activities that may or may not have any purpose at all is a real thing. Not everything needs to be analyzed and evaluated in the context of anxiety recovery. Its perfectly OK to "not recover" for a while and to allow yourself to be bored, or idle. Might you experience thoughts or even sensations that you still fear a little? Yes! But this is normal. Bring those things with you into your boredom. Don't be tricked into thinking that idle time or boredom are dangerous or damaging in some way.
Of note in this episode is a discussion of how reclaiming boredom and idle time without engaging in constant movement, distraction, or consumption of content is a good idea for ALL humans, not just anxious people.
If you're finding yourself bored, or with idle time on your hands, this can be a good sign in your recovery. But if you find this disturbing - if boredom is itself anxiety producing - this episode may prove helpful. Give it a listen.
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https://bit.ly/worryrumination
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you catch yourself daydreaming and bored and you're clicking your fingers and you're just a bit bored, that's a good thing. But for a lot of people, they either struggle with it or they've got to the point where they're being bored. And they're like, oh, what do I do now? There must be something else to do. No, I invite you to learn to be bored. Left to our own devices, we've talked about |
| 0:22.2 | this before, the brain will default, they call it the default mode network, to thinking about |
| 0:26.0 | ourselves. It's self-referential. When bored, that mode kicks in and then it gets carried |
| 0:31.3 | away. How come on board? What do I have to do? What do I do now? It becomes an urgent thing. |
| 0:36.3 | This is where the phrase sit with it does apply. Yeah, learning to do. What do I do now? Like it becomes an urgent thing. This is where the phrase sit with it |
| 0:37.7 | does apply. Yeah, learning to do these like low level, low intensity existing. That needs to go |
| 0:45.1 | on a t-shirt or a mug. I'm practicing low intensity existence. Welcome to Disorder. This is |
| 0:54.1 | episode 81 of the podcast. Today we're talking about learning to be bored. I am Drew Lin Salata. I am a therapist practicing under supervision in the state of New York, specializing the treatment of anxiety and anxiety disorders. I am a three-time author on this topic. I am a past sufferer. I am clearly a podcaster because I'm here |
| 1:11.3 | today, an advocate, social media dude, all around goofball, and yeah, happy to be here for episode |
| 1:17.5 | 81. And with me as always is, I'm Joshua Fletcher, also known as Anxiety Josh. I'm a psychotherapist |
| 1:23.7 | who specializes in anxiety and anxiety disorders. I'm a previous sufferer, podcast, |
| 1:29.4 | host, content creator, and author of several self-help books. And good books they are too. |
| 1:37.4 | Thank you. Thank you very much. Oh, you may me feel bad because today's episode is about |
| 1:42.0 | learning to be bored and my first piece of advice was to be I learned to be |
| 1:46.2 | bored by tuning into the anxious truth podcast but now because you've been nice that's I just |
| 1:52.4 | okay so there's a plug then if you're new to disorder what Josh is talking about is the anxious |
| 1:57.6 | truth which is the podcast I do on my own and have been for 10 years. |
| 2:00.9 | So go check that out. Anyway, today we're going to talk about, I slipped that in. I'm getting |
| 2:06.0 | better. I'm learning. |
| 2:06.9 | No, you yell. Yeah, you're shameless plug. I'm learning. It's fun. Being bored, I think one of the |
| 2:11.8 | hardest things that people in the recovery process have to learn how to do is sit and do nothing. |
| 2:18.8 | Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was in response to a question we got sent in. So, yeah, |
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