Boredom Can Be Dangerous For Mental Illness

While I always recommend making time for relaxation, there’s one facet to having time on your hands that I must caution about. All too often people with mental illness are left with idle time, myself included, which can lead to trouble. Spare time means more opportunity to worry and overanalyze things that happen. This is common among anxiety sufferers, but it can be even more of a problem for people in my situation, namely people who are living with schizophrenia. Sometimes, when we have too much time on our hands, our minds go to places that are intense and scary. Troubling ideas can manifest themselves in any number of ways. Whether it’s paranoia or delusions, depression or hallucinations, our minds are all too susceptible to spiraling out of control. That’s why I think it’s important that we have something to do. I’ve talked about creative flow before. You find your flow when you engage in a creative activity that’s so engrossing you lose track of time. Creative hobbies are important because they keep us occupied and focused on something other than our worries. It can be drawing, painting, woodcarving, writing, working at an easy job or really anything that allows you to flow. For me, writing is where I find my flow. If not there, then in photography and walking or hiking. These seemingly nominal tasks are incredibly important for maintaining my stability and, while I don’t do them as often as I should, I’m well aware of what can happen when I have too much free time.