Boredom Stress!!!!

[Desprate Dan]

Hi All,

I have recently being doing CBT and i am trying to work out were my Anxiety and Depression has come from and what triggers it..

I have a very boring job i sit on my own for 9hrs a day watching a stupid machine and pressing the odd button from time to time.
I thought i had the least stressed job in the world, but my CBT therapist made me see it in another light, i thought stress was running around like a headless chicken trying to meet deadlines etc, which i do agree would be very stressful.

But has anyone heard of boredom stress?

I am on my own in a noisey hot and dusty atmosphere with no one for company but a machine, i started to feel trapped and panicky, i would pace back and forth, i would sit down and the get back up and start pacing the floor again..

Its a bit like this imagine you all alone sat on a chair in the middle of a room no windows or pictures just white walls, for the first hour you are fine, thinking of things you need to do and whats you are going to do, maybe planning a holiday etc (Nice Happy Thoughts) keeping your mind occupied, after 3-4 hours you find you have nothing left to think about, so becasue the mind needs to be active it starts to wander this is fine but its when it starts to wander into the wrong places...:scared15: :scared15:
Then i suddenly feel trapped like i cant escape a bit like a tiger in a small cage it gets stressed, when you cant escape you think to yourself you are going mad..:wacko:
Just like a parrot in a cage it might start to pick out its own feathers through shear boredom, well just like the parrot i started to think bad and start being very self critical.. So this inturn causes "STRESS".....

Who would of thought it, and i thought i had the least stressful job in the world but now i can see it in a diffrent light.. I Believe this aswell as other matters have greatly contributed to my Depression and Anxiety..

Anyone else feel the same??

DAN

[Veronica H]

:bighug1: Crikey! When you put it like that Dan...too much thinking time. I hope your recovery is going well and that you feel well enough to change jobs soon.

Veronica

[Desprate Dan]

Thanks Veronica,

In the current economic climate, its not so easy to change jobs "I wish it was" i have been looking.. My Boss knows thats there is few jobs about and is pileing ever increasing pressure for us to work more overtime..
And his words "There is 2.5 million unemployed who would love to be in your position".......AAAAHHHHHHH :mad: :weep: :weep:

I know i have to work mon-fri but i cant face spending 6 or 7 days with out contact with the outside world...Thhis is driving me crazy or should i say crazier......:wacko: :wacko:

Danny

[MOJO]

Hi Dan!
What you say makes so much sense. I always led a very busy life, working and bringing up my family. I stopped work a couple of years ago and my family are all grown up. The first year I loved being able to do what I wanted etc. 2nd year was spent arranging my daughters wedding and my elderly mum had a bad fall so my time was taken up with all of these things. It was in November when everything settled down and I had loads of time on my hands that the awful anxiety, panic etc. hit me big time. Definately too much time to think and think and think!!:blush:
I can only suggest that you keep looking for a new job and tell yourself that something will come up eventually and that the job you are in doesn't have to be forever. Good luck with finding something in the near future.
Judy.x:hugs:

[Veronica H]

:) best position from which to look for a job is when you already have one though Dan, so no harm in looking.:bighug1:


Veronica

[Anxious_gal]

what about a mp3 player such as the Zen, you can listen to music/radio and if you dont mind the small screen watch movies, tv series.
or how about a small laptop, or even a radio?
i dont know how much attention you need to pay to the machine.
you could even try dancing if your on your own.
can you hang any pictures up? or posters? if you take them home with you?

[Joellie]

Omg boredom is the worst trigger for me possible. I have to be almost constantly busy or occupied or i just sit and think about the anxiety and the depression and then it starts all up again. Although i would liek to be at home not doing anything, i often feel more depressed at home

[Alicat]

Yes! I'm exactly the same! I'm ok, most of the time when I'm busy and occupied but as soon as I have nothing I have to do, I get really anxious and depressed. Thinking time for me is horrendous and very scary! Music definitely helps me...and imagery, daydreaming. I really hope you start to find some coping skills soon.

[GingGangGoolie]

I can really relate to boredom stress/anxiety. When I'm working my stress and anxiety levels can be quite low, but come evenings/weekends/unemployment and my brain can't cope with all the "free time" to think and dwell on things.

[Bill]

Boredom stress and parrot in a cage are 2 subjects I've often written about on here. I know this is rather long but I've copied 2 of my old threads here in case they're of any help to you.

I only touch on boredom in these particular threads but boredom causes stress because we don't have enough to occupy our minds. Boredom causes us to think too much but because of anxiety we then focus on worries which causes stress that makes us turn in on ourselves often causing health worries so we end up feeling trapped like a parrot in a cage because we feel there's no escape from our "emotional stress". (Another subject you'll find I've often talked about on here). These 2 threads talk about some aspects....

Hope they're of help to you.:shrug:

The effects of Stress

I am not “cured” but I have learnt to cope with anxiety. I’ve suffered anxiety in many different forms including “general”, OCD, health, phobias, panic attacks etc and I’ve also self harmed and taken od’s. I’ve also tried most medications and various therapies such as counselling and CBT but I found the most useful method to learn to cope with my anxiety was by helping myself based on the advice I’d been given and the knowledge I had learnt, so these are Just my views.

Sorry this is long but it covers many variations and anxiety symptoms. I'm hoping it'll just make people aware of why they "may" be feeling as they are and explain possible ways to cope with those feelings. Anyway, I'll leave you to decide for yourselves what you think.

Anxiety causes are far too complex to generalise as we are all individuals who have experienced different stressful events. However, we often have a sensitive nature but we can also be intense which makes us conscientious wanting to get things right; so much so that we attempt to achieve perfection in everything we do. Our perfectionism though, can produce stress which can then lead to anxiety conditions such as OCD.

Our sensitivity makes us more vulnerable to outside influences that shape our lives but I think though, that it is our intensity that makes us more liable to suffering stress related symptoms.

Stress can be brought on by many causes and often we’re unaware of them because we are sidetracked by our symptoms that make us feel “ill” that have been caused by our minds which have become overloaded by too much stress.

Our sensitivity makes it difficult for us to cope with bad events. These bad events can cause us stress and over a long period of time the effects can build up until suddenly we feel “ill” with anxiety. That’s why people often say their anxiety began at a certain time because it was the point in time when things became too much to cope with. However, sudden events can also cause huge stress such as a traumatic event and it can take a long time to come to terms with the effects they have on us before we feel able to move forward again.

I should think that the most common triggers of stress that tip the balance are caused by our situation at home or at work, or both. Also though, these can be “the last straw” after years of absorbing stressful events such as mistreatment, neglect, abandonment, lack of attention etc.

When our minds have become overloaded, the stress we experience preys on our intensive nature and so triggers us to worry more because of our negative thought patterns. We then start noticing things more such as palpitations and other health related matters. Our intensity then makes us focus on these health concerns making us worry that there is something seriously wrong with us when it is actually the stress that we’re experiencing that has triggered our negative thoughts into looking for something to worry about which normally wouldn’t bother us.

However, health anxiety can also be caused by an upsetting event in the past which has also caused us stress so we begin to look for the same health condition in ourselves because it’s been imprinted in our minds due to our sensitivity and then become a phobia as the event frightened us so much. This is why I say it’s difficult to generalise because there are so many variations which cause the same stresses.

Have you heard of parrots in cages that pull their feathers out? Perhaps boredom plays a part but I think the main cause of their behaviour is because they feel stressed because they feel “trapped”. When things become too much for us, we become stressed and so we often also feel trapped.

We like routine in our lives to feel “safe”. Change adds to our feelings of insecurity. Our fears cause us to worry how we’d cope if we changed jobs, how we’d cope alone and also if we tried confronting worrying thoughts that prevent us from doing the every day things we’d like to.

We feel stressed but also trapped by fear of change so our fears then control our lives in every aspect because we feel unable to change the things that cause our stress. This trapped feeling will lead to us experiencing panic attacks. Panic attacks are not always caused by the actual situation in which they occur but because we have a general feeling of being trapped by our fears and stresses in our life at that current time. However, panic attacks can also occur due to a previous bad experience from which a phobia has resulted.

This feeling of being trapped leads to a depressed state making us feel incapable. If we also already have low self esteem from past bad experiences, our negative thought patterns take over making us feel bad, guilty, weak, worthless etc because stress has caused us to turn in on ourselves.

When things have become too much for us to cope with, we start looking for a “magic cure” to stop our anxiety symptoms so we’re often prescribed anti-depressants. As the title suggests, they lift our mood by counteracting our negativity that causes us to worry thus enabling us to feel “happier” about ourselves and to help prevent us focussing on irrational negative thoughts about our general health.

However, in the long term we can then often become dependent on anti-depressants because they’re helping us to cope with the stresses in our lives and there’s really nothing wrong with that providing we’re happy as a result. Sometimes also there can be underlying depression so anti-depressants can be of great benefit. However, underlying depression shouldn’t be confused with a depressed state caused by anxiety because in this case, if the anxieties are treated, the depressed state will also lift.

Ant-depressants can be very useful when we have reached a point where we can’t see a way out of our trap. However, while they are providing a lift to our mood, it is then possible to learn to cope without medication IF later a person feels ready to be able to confront the underlying causes that have created the stress and anxiety symptoms.

For instance, a psychologist can help us to see what is causing our stress and provide us with a clearer picture to help us decide for ourselves how best to alleviate the stresses in our lives. A therapist can help us to confront our fears that are causing us to feel stressed and trapped, and a counsellor can explore our past history to provide an understanding as to the origin of our anxieties and help us to come to terms with our past bad experiences to enable us to move forward.

Some causes of stress can be easier to treat than others. If we feel too stressed in our workplace, we should consider a new job where we know we’d be under less stress and have more job satisfaction. If the stress is caused by home life, we should consider making changes in the home. When we feel happier in our lives and as a result feel less stressed, so our fears and anxieties will feel less frightening and we’re better able to learn to cope with our fears.

Sometimes though our trap feels impossible to change because our fears feel too great and then we have to turn to professional support to enable us to feel stronger and more capable in ourselves. We ALL have strength but often our fears and negative thinking prevent us from seeing and realising it so we continue to live a life of suffering.

There is no “magic cure” and it’s impossible to generalise to say one treatment will “cure” all because anxiety is far too complex as it takes many forms because we’re All individuals suffering anxieties caused by many varied experiences.

However, once we feel able to make changes by challenging our stresses and learn a new way of thinking, whether by helping ourselves or with the “right” professional support, it is possible to free ourselves from our cages and live a happier, more relaxed contented life without living with too much debilitating stress.

Parrot in a cage

Have you ever felt like a parrot in a cage?

Some birds pull their feathers out until they're bald and they say it's because they're stressed because they feel "trapped in their cage".

Isn't that what we do to ourselves by beating ourselves up for feeling so weak and unable to fly from our cage of fear? When we're stressed, we always turn in on ourselves looking for health worries, telling ourselves we don't deserve happiness, we're pathetic etc etc.

So how did we end up in our cage and how do we open the cage door to fly again?

We're often born insecure, sensitive, intense, a worrier and deep thinking etc. As a result as we grow older we lack confidence in our own abilities, always analysing ourselves, questioning whether we're making the right decisions, always doubting ourselves and feeling guilt, trying to please others to protect ourselves from more hurt etc.

We're also knocked back each time we have a bad experience which further knocks what little confidence we had. We absorb every hurt, every pain like a sponge until we can absorb no more.

The anxiety these events cause are then played out in our fears which make us feel trapped. This trapped feeling causes stress so we develop ways to combat this stress through perhaps OCD (actual or just thinking). We turn in on ourselves. We feel "no good" which can lead to self harming and a sense of hoplessness leading to perhaps overdoses.

We can't see any escape. We become that parrot in a cage, frightened to open the cage door but feeling so low and panicky in the small safe world we live in.

We can ease those feelings through medication but they can't cure our past or our fears. They can help us open the cage door and even ease our weight enough to help us to fly but without them we'd crash because the causes are still there untreated.

The other choices are to confront our fears, come to terms with our past or change the way we think. It just depends on the causes.

There are different ways to open a cage door depending on what has created the lock but I always believe that when we feel ready, there is a key to every lock and once opened, we can fly and be free once more.

[looking4answers]

Ok ok ok.... Im not sure anyone mentioned this but... I have faced and do face this all the time. Years ago I worked in a booth monitoring audio in a television station. You had to right down the time the commericals ran and do live tags for audio about once a half hour and then you would operate audio mikes when they had a newscast about once a shift. I would sometimes work 18 hours shifts.. I nearly went out of my mind. I resorted to reading and even watching other channels other than the one I was monitoring. I listen to music and slept sometimes.. But my point is.

Im in a rural area.. and there is much to do.. tons of it. I haven't been able to motivate myself very much outside and suffer from extreme boredom to the point of laying down and going to sleep early ."not like me at all" but then I decided to learn another language. One that is dominate here in this hole they call the Valley..I got the Rosetta stone software and also some begining language books and workbooks for the language im studying and im learning so much im starting to almost think in the other language.

Also I was going to recommend doing geneology or history of your family and researching it.. There are so many free sites and also free software where you can chart your family history and it can be interesting to find out who you are related to and also some obscure facts about your ancestry..

Anyway just some ideals.. but something to think about and as far as changing jobs.. You have a job that most people would kill for.. I would take advantage of it ,go back to school and use that time to study.

Get you a game system and small tv and play video games.. there is so much to do when you have so much time to fill and a place that you get paid to do what you want.. Good luck

[Desprate Dan]

Thanks for your reply's and yes i can realate to many things you say, and Bill thanks again for going to the time and effort to write all that infomation down "and sorry i pinched the parrot in the cage thing from you" but it fits me so well and probably many others too....

We have a very strict boss, who walks around from time to time but you never know when and cant see him coming because of the area we work, if we get caught with our eyes shut, listening to music or even reading a book we will be warned..

I have tried looking for another job, but with my lack of confidence and my fear of change and also very little in the way of jobs at moment, i havent found one, so like my boss said i should be grateful to be in work as there is 2.5 million unemployed who would love my job..

I am a very passive person and would let people bully me and put on me, but with the help of CBT i am now learning to be more assertive.. After all i have the right to say "NO" to working 7 days a week when my contract is Mon-Fri, I have a right to express my opinion, i have the right to think about me and my needs, these are all things i have never done before, now i am starting to think hey if i say "NO" yes the boss might not be happy but that doesnt make me a bad person.. I have needs too... And whats the worst case scenario, sometime you just need to put yourself first and i must keep telling myself this in order to believe it...

Desprate Dan