{"id":35026,"date":"2017-06-20T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T13:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/?p=35026"},"modified":"2017-06-15T14:04:12","modified_gmt":"2017-06-15T21:04:12","slug":"bored-with-therapy-unmasking-the-real-feelings-behind-boredom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/bored-with-therapy-unmasking-real-feelings-behind-boredom-0620174","title":{"rendered":"Bored with Therapy: Unmasking the Real Feelings Behind \u2018Boredom\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bored-lookingHas it happened to you? A few months into therapy<\/a> and you\u2019re scratching your head wondering what you\u2019re still doing here. Things started off so strong. You were exploring your relationships<\/a> or talking about work issues<\/a>, maybe even venturing into a little family history. Maybe things have been a little better since you started. Maybe things haven\u2019t changed much. Perhaps they even seem a bit worse since you\u2019ve been talking about all these difficult things you\u2019d rather not think about.<\/p>\n

But you\u2019ve gone over all that material and you\u2019re still coming in each week. You\u2019re still paying hard-earned money. And you\u2019re still not being told what you should do differently.<\/p>\n

You spend the whole time traveling to your appointment trying to come up with something<\/em> to talk about, some problem in your life, some point of conversation that will take you through 45 minutes before you return to work or head home.<\/p>\n

\n\t

Find a Therapist<\/a><\/h2>\n\t
\n\n\t\t\t\n\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\tAdvanced Search<\/a>\n\t<\/form>\n<\/div>\n

And you\u2019ve come up with nothing.<\/p>\n

And now you\u2019re in a staring contest with your therapist, who doesn\u2019t seem to be coming up with anything, either.<\/p>\n

And you think to yourself, I\u2019m bored<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So you skip an appointment and \u201ctake the week off.\u201d<\/p>\n

You may consider this boring feeling a signal you should move on.<\/p>\n

You might text or email your therapist and say you\u2019re done. You\u2019ll call in a few weeks if you need anything.<\/p>\n

When reflecting on this, you\u2019ll say to someone, \u201cYou know, therapy just didn\u2019t work for me.\u201d There\u2019s no hard feelings, just \u2026 it\u2019s not for you.<\/p>\n

As both a therapist and a person who has been in therapy, I can empathize. I\u2019ve felt all of these things at one time or another. But I\u2019ve come to understand something about \u201cboredom\u201d: I\u2019m not convinced it really exists.<\/p>\n

I like to talk about anger<\/a> as often being a secondary emotion. It can be used, often unconsciously, to protect us from feeling (or showing) some of our more vulnerable emotions, such as fear<\/a>, insecurity<\/a>, and sadness<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But anger can be just pure anger<\/em>. I\u2019m not convinced boredom is, in and of itself, its own thing.<\/p>\n

When I notice I\u2019m feeling bored, I tend to get curious. What else is in there? What am I avoiding? What is the \u201cboredom\u201d protecting me from?<\/span><\/p>\n

When I notice I\u2019m feeling bored, I tend to get curious. What else is in there? What am I avoiding? What is the \u201cboredom\u201d protecting me from?<\/p>\n

Back in my performing years, when I\u2019d spend evenings in rehearsals for off-off-Broadway productions that didn\u2019t pay and days in corporate offices as a temp, I remember spending hours doing mindless data entry. I became \u201cbored\u201d pretty quickly. But as I later came to realize, what I really felt was anger that I had to be there at all as opposed to making a living doing what I wanted to do.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve even been to parties where I felt bored, but, upon further digging, I was feeling kind of insecure. Likewise, I have days when I\u2019m at home and think I\u2019m bored, but what I really want in those moments is to hang out with others. That is, I\u2019m actually feeling lonely<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Boredom covers for all of these feelings. Because who wants to be angry at work, self-conscious at a party, or lonely at home?<\/p>\n

When a person in therapy starts to talk about feeling \u201cbored\u201d in therapy, especially around the three-month mark, I\u2019m psyched. I\u2019m psyched because they said it and didn\u2019t just fade away, as many do. They are creating an opportunity with their therapist to process the feelings beneath their \u201cboredom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some are upset because they\u2019ve been coming week after week, spending a lot of money, and they want results<\/em>! They want me to tell them what to do or what not to do. They want to know if there is going to be relief.<\/p>\n

I may not have the answers to these questions. I may not be able to put their mind at ease with a timeline or guarantee, but I will provide the space for them to express what they usually squelch and speak about some new ways to handle it all. I\u2019ll provide a space to let out the anger, the frustration, the sadness, the hopelessness, the whatever<\/em>, and see that it\u2019s not going to push me away. That it\u2019s not going to destroy them.<\/p>\n

Once the real feeling is expressed, therapy gets real. And it\u2019s anything but boring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When therapy gets \u201cboring,\u201d it\u2019s worth considering whether the sense of boredom is covering for deeper, more complex feelings. Now therapy can get real.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2883,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[542,628],"tags":[779,49],"class_list":["post-35026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-articles","category-general","tag-boredom","tag-considering-psychotherapy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2883"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35026\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}