Keeping Yourself Stimulated

Dealing With Feelings Of Boredom

Boredom is one of the most horrendous feelings: it drives you crazy, makes you feel worthless and can even contribute to depressive symptoms if experienced for long enough. Keeping yourself stimulated on a daily basis is very important in order to avoid boredom. But many struggle with self-stimulation.

Self-stimulation are the key words because it means that you derive pleasure from your own doing; relying on others is not an option. When you learn how to stimulate yourself with various activities, you are taking responsibility for your state of mind: you are avoiding boredom and remaining mentally engaged with life.

But when you rely on your environment to become stimulated, that can be hit or miss, especially when relying on others. People who are dependent struggle with this a lot: they experience a low self-esteem and rely on others to feel stimulated, important and worthy. If you are suffering from dependent personality disorder, then something such as attending a support group at a community-based organization can prove to be helpful.

It’s very easy to fall into the trap of boredom; we all experience it at some point through out the week, even if it’s for brief moments. In a way, boredom is a natural feeling because we are not robots that are assigned endless tasks on end; just the act of taking breaks from what we do can lead us to feel bored and unsure with ourselves.

But the difference is not allowing boredom to linger any longer than it has to; terminating it as soon as you detect it is key. And you can do this by keeping a mental list of positive activities that you can attend to when the situation permissibly arises. By knowing ahead of time which activities you can become engaged with, you can easily avoid and/or put an end to boredom.

What are your thoughts on boredom? Feel free to share your experiences and advice with The DSM Ready community, so that we can all learn from each other on how to better improve our lives together!