Mike Teacher
06-06-2003, 08:27 AM
I found this in the NY Times; seems a LOT of it is ringing true for me, either from personal experience, or from my observations of those around me...anyone else? [the 'flow' part sounds like BS to me; I don't get it...]
Bored with Drugs, Sex and Rock (climbing)? Try 'Flow'
The New York Times
June 3 2003
By Richard Friedman, MD
We humans take our feelings very seriously. How else to explain the theatrical dread most of us have of boredom? After all, who among us hasn't threatened to die of it at some time or another?
Recently faced with a long trans-Atlantic flight, I na‹vely assumed I could trot out an assortment of diversions to beat the tedium of cramped confinement, airplane food and wailing infants.
Shortly after takeoff, I pulled out a stack of magazines and books, feeling impervious to the ennui that would soon overtake my fellow passengers. Dead wrong.
Within three hours, I had succumbed to boredom. Well, if you can't beat it, I told myself, at least you can write about it.
Boredom has long been the province of psychologists: some view it as a kind of mental smoke screen that obscures and protects us against even more negative emotions like anger and anxiety. Well, with defenses like that we hardly need enemies.
Not be to outdone, the philosophers have weighed in, mainly from the existential camp, claiming boredom is just the human response to the meaninglessness of life.
More recently, neuroscientists have taken a crack at boredom by studying the brain's arousal and reward systems.
Everyone, of course, knows what it's like to be bored. Normally, boredom arises in response to monotonous and dull situations, and it evaporates the moment the environment changes.
But some people have pathological boredom, which is a pervasive and painful mental state that seems to have a life of its own. They are chronically bored, and can get relief only from intense excitement.
As a psychiatrist, I frequently ask patients what they do for fun. This is, of course, a sneaky way to find out, among other things, how prone to boredom they are.
One patient, in response to this question, said that even when she was not feeling depressed, she often felt bored and empty. Nothing, including people, held her interest for more than a few hours, so she would flit from one friend or activity to another. Her greatest satisfaction, fleeting as it was, came from bungee jumping off bridges. To escape boredom and anxiety, she would also abuse opiates and engage in unsafe sex.
Like others with borderline personality disorder, she had intense and unstable relationships with people that veered from adoration to intense hatred and jealousy the moment she felt the merest slight.
Everyone has an optimal level of arousal, from the couch potato who breaks a sweat just thinking of something as normally unrisky as bicycling to the daredevil who doesn't feel alive unless he's risking his life, say, climbing icy sheer cliffs, on a routine basis.
What's intriguing is that there are fundamental biological differences between people who seek sensation and novelty and those who avoid it. Neuroscientists have known for years that high-sensation seekers show augmented brain electrical responses on EEG's in response to increasing visual or acoustic stimuli. Low sensation seekers, in contrast, show diminished EEG responses as the stimulus intensity rises.
This suggests that high sensation seekers experience a lower base line level of brain arousal, which may explain their constant need for stimulation and intolerance of monotony.
A further clue into the neurobiology of boredom comes from the observation that thrill seekers self-medicate with a variety of recreational drugs to stave off boredom. Favored drugs, like cocaine, Ecstasy, opiates and alcohol, all activate the brain's reward system, despite their diverse pharmacology. And they all produce a sudden increase in the reward circuit's main neurotransmitter, dopamine.
The curious thing is that there are drugs that can simulate all kinds of emotional states
Bored with Drugs, Sex and Rock (climbing)? Try 'Flow'
The New York Times
June 3 2003
By Richard Friedman, MD
We humans take our feelings very seriously. How else to explain the theatrical dread most of us have of boredom? After all, who among us hasn't threatened to die of it at some time or another?
Recently faced with a long trans-Atlantic flight, I na‹vely assumed I could trot out an assortment of diversions to beat the tedium of cramped confinement, airplane food and wailing infants.
Shortly after takeoff, I pulled out a stack of magazines and books, feeling impervious to the ennui that would soon overtake my fellow passengers. Dead wrong.
Within three hours, I had succumbed to boredom. Well, if you can't beat it, I told myself, at least you can write about it.
Boredom has long been the province of psychologists: some view it as a kind of mental smoke screen that obscures and protects us against even more negative emotions like anger and anxiety. Well, with defenses like that we hardly need enemies.
Not be to outdone, the philosophers have weighed in, mainly from the existential camp, claiming boredom is just the human response to the meaninglessness of life.
More recently, neuroscientists have taken a crack at boredom by studying the brain's arousal and reward systems.
Everyone, of course, knows what it's like to be bored. Normally, boredom arises in response to monotonous and dull situations, and it evaporates the moment the environment changes.
But some people have pathological boredom, which is a pervasive and painful mental state that seems to have a life of its own. They are chronically bored, and can get relief only from intense excitement.
As a psychiatrist, I frequently ask patients what they do for fun. This is, of course, a sneaky way to find out, among other things, how prone to boredom they are.
One patient, in response to this question, said that even when she was not feeling depressed, she often felt bored and empty. Nothing, including people, held her interest for more than a few hours, so she would flit from one friend or activity to another. Her greatest satisfaction, fleeting as it was, came from bungee jumping off bridges. To escape boredom and anxiety, she would also abuse opiates and engage in unsafe sex.
Like others with borderline personality disorder, she had intense and unstable relationships with people that veered from adoration to intense hatred and jealousy the moment she felt the merest slight.
Everyone has an optimal level of arousal, from the couch potato who breaks a sweat just thinking of something as normally unrisky as bicycling to the daredevil who doesn't feel alive unless he's risking his life, say, climbing icy sheer cliffs, on a routine basis.
What's intriguing is that there are fundamental biological differences between people who seek sensation and novelty and those who avoid it. Neuroscientists have known for years that high-sensation seekers show augmented brain electrical responses on EEG's in response to increasing visual or acoustic stimuli. Low sensation seekers, in contrast, show diminished EEG responses as the stimulus intensity rises.
This suggests that high sensation seekers experience a lower base line level of brain arousal, which may explain their constant need for stimulation and intolerance of monotony.
A further clue into the neurobiology of boredom comes from the observation that thrill seekers self-medicate with a variety of recreational drugs to stave off boredom. Favored drugs, like cocaine, Ecstasy, opiates and alcohol, all activate the brain's reward system, despite their diverse pharmacology. And they all produce a sudden increase in the reward circuit's main neurotransmitter, dopamine.
The curious thing is that there are drugs that can simulate all kinds of emotional states