The Therapy Edit - On why we like to be busy

Episode Date: April 27, 2020

We live to the buzz of constant noise, both Inside and outside of our minds. Here's a different insight into boredom as an antidote to stress and overwhelm.

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I'll be bringing you weekly 10 minute episodes to encourage and support your emotional well-being. Hello and welcome to episode 6 of the Therapy Edit. I'm going to be talking on embracing healthy boredom. Now, I've been thinking a lot about boredom recently. Not that I have had a huge amount of time to be bored, but definitely. life has been a lot more stripped back recently. So I'm just going to share some thoughts with you about being bored and how positive it can be for our mental health. I, like many of you

listening, have used busyness as a coping mechanism for so much of my adult life. I'm quite a high functioning individual. I do a lot of things. I do a lot of things fast. And I am one of these people that lives life at 100 miles an hour and then crashes into what is normally quite a messy, emotional, tired heap. And that might happen once a week, once a month, depending on how far I'm pushing my own resources. Before we were all put into a state of isolation, I've written so much about overwhelm and the burnout cycle. And now, you know, now we're being challenged with something quite different, aren't we? Normally, productivity and our culture is applauded and we spend a lot of time kind of thinking about ways to get more done quicker, to be more productive. We buy gadgets, we

download apps, you know, anything just to allow us to kind of squish more into life, kind of shoehorn more productivity into the time that we do have. And I remember sitting on a train when I was going to go and do a live podcast with Clemy Telford about overwhelm. And I had this kind of image. Do you ever get that when you just kind of get these images in your mind? And I had this image of a glass jar. And imagine having a massive kind of big old sweet shop kind of glass jar and filling it with huge pebbles. So you're not going to be able to fit that many in there. And around those pebbles are space. You know, there's just air and space. And I think, you know, back in the day, beyond the days of technology and everything that we have at our fingertips now, you know,

those pebbles were the big things like friends, family, work, you know, all of the, the big chunks in life that we, that we fit in. And then around those pebbles, there was air, you know, there was space, space to think, to dream, to process, to get creative, to be bored. In boredom, we process feelings, space to feel. And I think what's happened is, you know, in our very fast living digital age where we cram everything in is that we've just poured sand into all of those spaces around those pebbles. So there was no space. There was no space to process thoughts. Often, you know, we sleep less because we're more awake with our minds kind of trying to process the stuff that it doesn't get space to do in the day. You know,

on the way to London, last one went into London, I looked around me and literally, every single person was on their phone. Apart from one guy, I remember looking around and peering around and there was a guy and he wasn't on his phone and I realised that he was asleep. And I really challenged myself to put my phone down and look out the window. And I thought, wow, how little do we allow time for that? So much gets fitted in, you know, even in those kind of those times of commuting of moving between one place and another.

And can you remember on planes where you might take a bit of? book. But once you'd finish your book, you'd be, you know, you'd be grabbing the menu to read the menu and it's just as purely as something to do just to fill time. And we don't really get that opportunity anymore. You know, we've constantly got things to reach for, to scroll through, to listen to, to read, to answer, things beeping, things grabbing for our attention that causes those little beeps, you know, they cause micro-stresses. Every time we see our phone flash or we know that something is calling for our attention, our attention kind of switches over to it for a second, even if we don't grab the phone and act on it. So we're constantly in demand. We're constantly

feeling like we need to be interacting. And there's something very challenging about boredom, and I'm going to say that, you know, I think we need a little bit more of it. We need that space. We need to bring some of that space in. And I think even in these days where our diaries are clearer, it can be so challenging card tip because often as soon as we slow down and as soon as we stop all of those thoughts and feelings that have been just kind of fighting for attention you know all of those things that we've just kind of shoved right over that dam because often feelings are not convenient it isn't convenient to process things it isn't it's you know we're kind of hardwired to avoid the thoughts that maybe feel sad or hard.

or difficult and often for so many of us who have got so much of our self-worth if we're honest and so much of our identity out of doing doing doing so much of us who our understanding of love and what it is to love someone is to give to give to give and to what it is to be a good friend our understanding of that is to constantly be available and constantly be giving you know, to have this space, I guess, you know, clear a diary in our lives that can feel a real challenge. I feel that I find it challenging, you know, who am I if I'm not running around 100 miles an hour? Who am I if I'm not helping all my, you know, all my friends at every given opportunity, if I'm not ticking off so many things on my list every day, if I don't even

have a to-do list, you know, that, that shortened to-do list at the moment is it is, is quite a challenge for me. It's not comfortable because I think it's at times like this we begin to realize quite how much we get from being busy. I think suddenly now we're in this state of less hurry. It's really okay for us to find that a challenge. It's really okay for us to find it a challenge because for so many of us the busy life has been serving purposes in, I'd know, a way of dealing with difficult emotion or a way of making us. feel like we're worth something. So it's going to take something to, you know, start appreciating and start making friends, I guess, with our stripped back self and starting to really realize,

you know, we are all worth the same as each other, regardless of whether you manage to fit a hundred things into your day or whether you lie on the sofa in a wansy from dawn until dusk. You are not what you do you've never been the sum of what you do you've never been the sum of how many things you can tick off a list or how productive you can be or how much you can give of yourself or how much is left of yourself at the end of it we've never been those things and now is the time to really i guess see that and come to terms with that and it's uncomfortable because once you might not feel like you're doing a whole lot you're actually doing a lot because coping through change and navigating changes actually, you know, it's a massive, it takes a massive amount of emotional and psychological

resource. I think many of us might feel like we're trees that have just been completely pruned back. Like, you know, when you look at a rose bush that has been pruned and you're like, wow, I don't think that's going to quite come back into the state it was before. But really, when that rose bush is pruned properly, you know, it's, it looks like it's had everything stripped away but actually it's such an opportunity for it to come back even stronger so I want to encourage you and I'm going to encourage myself and challenge myself to do this as well you know take those opportunities to have the bath without the phone you know take those opportunities to just sit and look out the window instead of sitting and looking at a screen you know take those opportunities to

play take those opportunities to allow yourself to think to daydry And maybe, maybe, maybe if we can start making friends with boredom a little more, then maybe we'll sleep better. Maybe those feelings and those sorts won't be fighting for recognition in the middle of the night when the world is quieter. You know, maybe when we go back to some kind of familiarity, we won't be so driven to jump back on that treadmill in order to feel worth something. Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Therapy Edit.

If you enjoyed it, please do share, subscribe and review. You can find more from me on Instagram, Anna Martha. You might like to check out my two books called Mind Over Mother and Know Your Worth. I'm also the founder of the Mother Mind Way, a platform full of guides, resources and a community with the sole focus on supporting mother's mental and emotional well-being. It's been lovely chatting with you. Speak soon.