Doing Nothing Is Scary — It’s Also Important

Does going on vacation stress you out? You are not alone. I have a number of patients who have difficulty winding down. As one patient explained, “the more I try not to think about work, the more I think about work.” Another patient dreads the downtime: “I miss the high energy of being at the office.” A third patient rejects the notion of being told what to do: “I told my wife, I cannot be told to relax on command.”

Downtime is challenging, not because they are workaholics but because they are used to having their minds occupied all the time. They never take any time to pause, to reflect, or to just think. Life is nonstop. Even when they are not busy their minds are occupied. They listen to a podcast on the way to work. They listen to the news while in the shower. They listen to music while jogging through the park. They watch TV before bed. Every free moment is filled. Their mobile device is a go-to time filler. Waiting on line at the office cafeteria, in between conversations at a cocktail party, before a meeting begins, sitting in a taxi on the way to the airport, along with every other “in between” moment, are now occasions to lose themselves in their phones.

Those with high-powered jobs aren’t the only ones. I know children who do not know what to do with themselves when they have free time. Not having something to do makes them anxious.

Having time to just sit and think can be uncomfortable, if not unnerving. Indeed, being alone with one’s thoughts can be downright scary. I can relate. A few years ago, I stepped on board an eight-hour day flight and almost had a panic attack when I realized I had left my book in the terminal. Filling the time was not easy. I was in a middle seat, flanked by two lucky souls absorbed in apparently un-put-downable books. Did I forget to mention that the movie system was down? It felt like a conspiracy. After reading the airline magazine six times, I finally gave up. For the next six hours it was just me and my thoughts.

Years later, I read a study about people who were asked to sit alone in a windowless room without any distractions for 15 minutes. No magazines. No cellphones. Nothing. According to the findings, participants found being alone without any distraction so challenging that many resorted to giving themselves unpleasant electric shocks to interrupt the boredom. While I cannot say I would have self-administered a painful shock to escape myself during that long flight, I can understand the temptation.

The truth is I learned a lot during those eight hours. Being alone with myself wasn’t so bad after all. I thought a great deal about my personal life and my professional life. I considered what was going well and what I could do better. I pondered the “big questions:” Who am I? What am I doing? What is it all for? It was during that flight that I made the decision to return to school to study positive psychology.

There is an advantage to being alone with one’s thoughts. Studies show that solitude is crucial for the development of the self. As highlighted in a study entitled, Solitude: An Exploration of Benefits of Being Alone, solitude is associated with freedom, creativity, intimacy, and spirituality.

“Spending time alone means growing spiritually, discovering your identity without outside distractions, having the freedom to do what you want without needing to cater to other people’s wants and thriving creatively.”

Meditation and other relaxation techniques are useful ways to make downtime more tolerable and also productive. By gaining control over one’s thoughts, the little annoyances like traffic jams and waiting rooms become less stressful and the big questions become less daunting.

These days I spend a lot of time talking to my patients about how they spend their days. I prescribe at least 15 minutes a day, every day, of doing nothing. As a result, their mind-set about free time has shifted. Instead of thinking of downtime as a source of anxiety, they now think of it as a privilege.

Best of all, they look forward to vacations.