It’s late in the day on a Saturday. Time slows down. Nothing seems interesting on TV, just reruns of Criminal Minds, another PGA tournament with a splash of MMA Kickboxing. There is a feeling of yearning, but for what? This is boredom. We tell ourselves that we are bored! But what exactly does this mean to us?
One meaning we give to our boredom is that the TV show we are watching is not interesting. Another meaning might be that the classes we are taking are not teaching what we need to know. Or we wish we lived in a condo instead of this house in the suburbs that needs the lawn to be mowed. In other words, we look to something external to blame. Sound familiar? Boredom is not trivial. It is out of boredom that some people turn to drugs, gambling, over-eating, sex and alcohol abuse.
Boredom, when chronic, is very stressful and has serious consequences for an addict. For example, we might be waiting for a response from a job interview. The time it takes seems eternally long. Feelings of irritability and anxiety set in. This is where we start to feel stressed. It seems as though the solution is to blame the HR department of this company (that we are very interested in working for), for their ineptitude. Is anger and resentment lurking around the corner?
Another example might be that boredom would cause someone to lose interest while driving and getting injured because of the lack of attention. How many times have you been driving, become bored with the road and switch into some sort of fantasy, losing your focus on the road and bang! The car in front of you is at a dead stop. My guess is that a good number of traffic accidents are caused this way.
We are blaming the boredom on something external, like the TV, the HR department or the jerk in the car in front of you. Perhaps it is not. Perhaps boredom is internal in nature. Psychological scientist John Eastwood of York University (Ontario, Canada) and colleagues at the University of Guelph and the University of Waterloo wanted to create a precise definition of boredom, one that can be applied across a variety of theoretical frameworks. Their article, was published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, and the website, ScienceDaily, quotes from the article:
“Drawing from research across many areas of psychological science and neuroscience, John Eastwood and his colleague[s] define boredom as an aversive state of wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activity.”
This wanting has a dangerous similarity to the craving of substances experienced by addicts during the withdrawal stage. In other words, if a recovering addict finds themselves bored, they are on the very slippery slope of wanting. Here are some additional analogies:
- Addicts have difficulty paying attention to their internal thoughts and feelings. They have difficulty focusing on the external or environmental information required for participating in a satisfying activity. Eastman uses these characteristics to define boredom
- Some addicts are aware of the fact that they have difficulty paying attention. Yes, this is another characteristic of boredom.
- Addicts tend to blame and/or believe that the environment is responsible for their aversive state. Again, this is a characteristic of a person entrenched in boredom.
The point is that research indicates that there is a relationship between boredom and lack of attention to what is happening inside and outside of ourselves. But, there is no concrete research linking boredom to addiction or relapse. However, it may be worthwhile to refocus our attention to what we are thinking, feeling and/or to the stimuli in the environment instead of simply chalking it up to being bored. Maybe we can focus by completing 90 meetings in 90 days.
There is also the concept of embracing boredom. As the Buddhists put it; boredom is a form of impatience. Therefore patience is an antidote. There is nothing that is intrinsically boring. There are examples of prisoners of war, sitting in complete isolation, who are able to focus their minds and find interesting things to prevent boredom. Does this sound like Step Eleven?
And then we can think about what they say about the weather in Minneapolis:
Wait, in five minutes things will change.
