what is boredom

Boredom is a flight from what is important. Like workaholism and perfectionism, it is a way of distracting yourself from inner experiences. Workaholsim and perfectionism divert awareness from emotions by focusing it outward on activities. Workaholics and perfectionists distract themselves from what they are feeling by absorbing themselves in their external circumstances. They are always thinking of repairs to the house, a project that is due, an exam coming up, and so on. By focusing on activity, their energy system goes unobserved.

Boredom is the failure to find activity or circumstances interesting enough to divert your awareness from what you are feeling. It occurs when you look outward and do not find anything to engage your attention. Instead of feeling your emotions - becoming aware of the functioning of your energy system - you become bored. The experience of boredom is resistance to become aware of what you are feeling. It is a fertile experience because it occurs only when your search for external ways to distract yourself has failed. Boredom is a defense against emotional awareness for workaholics and perfectionists. Workaholics and perfectionists absorb themselves in external activites in order to avoid experiencing their emotions. Eventually, those activities become exhausting. More and more remains to be accomplished or put into perfect order, but they do not have the energy to continue. That is burnout. After a vacation they begin again, and then again, until they continue no longer. Their flight from emotions that are too painful to approach, or too shameful to acknowledge, eventually fails. Instead of turning inward to explore those emotions, they become bored.Boredom is failure of the search for external fulfillment and refusal to look at what drove the search.

Boredom is deeprooted resistance to experiencing emotions after all efforts to distract attention from them have been inefective.