How to Cope with Boredom

Managing emotional eating requires having an understanding of your internal emotional world. These experiences are often uncomfortable or challenging, and you may not even recognize that you are an emotional eaters if you’ve been soothing, numbing, avoiding, or suppressing your emotions with food for a long time. (You can take my quiz - Am I An Emotional Eater? here.) 

In my last blog post, I talked about the BLAST protocol as an entry point to emotional awareness. Today I’m going to talk specifically about boredom - the B of the BLAST protocol - to help break it down, cozy up to it, and offer strategies to approach boredom with curiosity versus numbing and avoidance.

Boredom craves stimulation, connection, engagement, and creativity; however, the opportunity to numb, distract, and check out has become all too easy with doom scrolling and quick and easy foods being super available—these go-to’s are often topping the list of how you might currently cope with boredom. I learned from a very early age to never claim that I felt bored; the few times I did my task list became long, arduous, and, well, in my opinion, quite boring. Cleaning is not at the top of my list of engaging, stimulating, or ways of connecting; however, it might be for you. And that is what we’re going to get curious about today, what tools and strategies work specifically for you.

In order to get in touch with any emotional experience, it is essential to practice the pause of the pause, reflect, and release protocol. During the pause, you can check inward and acknowledge that a craving may be driven by a desire to emotionally avoid or numb out. I recommend trying to practice the pause consistently, not just when noticing a craving, and to do an emotional check-in multiple times a day in order to grow emotional awareness. By doing so, you create presence and awareness of what is true right now. Without the pause, it is difficult to grow self-awareness. Ways you might practice the pause could be, prior to eating a meal and/or snack, prior to brushing your teeth, prior to opening up your phone to check social media, your email, the weather, the next video on YouTube… During the pause, you can go through the BLAST protocol (bored, lonely, angry stressed, sad, tired,) and if you indeed notice you’re bored, consider what else might give you a feeling of stimulation, connection, or engagement in your life.

Having a list of things you enjoy can be helpful. I call this the positive nourishment list. This is a list of 10-20 things you find pleasure in that are not food or tech-based that can create a connection to yourself or to others in a genuine way. First you can get curious about what your boredom really wants- and have options on your positive nourishment list that match the varying categories.

When you’re bored, doing something creative can tilt you into the eaves of your imagination. Examples for your positive nourishment list could include journaling, doodling, coloring, crafting, cooking, decorating, doing a puzzle, or reading; for you it could be cleaning if that is a creative outlet for you - really anything that is creatively engaging and enjoyable to you that can shift you into a more present moment experience.

Doing something movement-related may help to release some stagnant energy that boredom can produce as well. Examples for your positive nourishment list could include, taking a walk, doing some stretching or yoga, dancing, biking, or playing a sport. Movement can also help to get you into your body in a way that feels pleasurable and connected, and supports the process of releasing boredom.

If you notice within the boredom that you are procrastinating doing something that you don’t really want to do, maybe give yourself a time limit to do something you’d enjoy as a reward for after you complete that task for that period of time. That way, what you perceive as boring can be rewarded with something pleasurable, and the anticipation of knowing something you enjoy is on the way can create motivation.

If you notice your boredom is driven by lack of connection, some examples for your positive nourishment list could include calling a friend, going to a cafe and strike up a conversation with the barista, researching meetups or clubs in your area, or seeking volunteer opportunities in your area. If you notice that your boredom is driven by a lack of connection with yourself, examples for your positive nourishment list could include journaling, meditating, or finding a therapist or coach who can support you in getting curious about what you want and why you may be experiencing emptiness or constant boredom in your life at this time.

No matter what is driving the internal experience of boredom, it doesn’t feel good, and this is why you might find yourself numbing and avoiding things that only perpetuate feelings of emptiness, lack of connection, and lack of feeling stimulated or engaged with your life. The pause is where to begin; curiosity is part of reflecting, and the positive nourishment list is so helpful so that you can create new ways of engaging with your emotions, particularly that of boredom. The release is making the new choice, choosing another option other than numbing out with food or any other way so that you can create stimulation, connection, engagement, and fulfillment in your life today.

How to Create Emotional Awareness and Acceptance

Creating emotional awareness and acceptance builds self-trust and creates opportunities to become more emotionally regulated. This in turn creates a healthier mind and body. Emotional awareness can be very challenging, especially if you’ve spent a lot of unconscious energy suppressing your emotions.

Many of us learned early on that our emotions are a problem, a nuisance, or even that they are wrong or bad. Many people feel that they did not learn how to create emotional awareness within themselves and were even rewarded for denying their emotions. While caretakers, teachers, or other people who influence our lives from a young age may not set out to cause harm, not being able to identify, sit with, express, and release our feelings ends up causing harm in some form at some point in our lives.

If you have gotten really good at denying, avoiding, numbing, or suppressing your feelings, I want you to know that it is possible to, with time and practice, create emotional awareness and acceptance. There are many feelings wheels out there that are very helpful; however, I recommend starting with the BLAST method. (BLAST stands for Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stress, Sad, or Tired). This is a simple way to practice getting in touch with your emotions by naming your feeling first.

When practicing the BLAST method, you first need to create time and space to encourage the process of going inward. This is where it is vital to learn how to pause. Having a consistent time to practice taking a pause can be helpful to make it a part of your routine. You can check in with yourself by pausing before starting your day, before eating, before opening up your phone to scroll, before sending that email… During the pause, ask yourself, “Am I Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stressed, Sad, or Tired?” This opens you up to emotional awareness and reflection. Again, there are a ton of other emotions and feeling states that exist, however, these few tend to touch on some common uncomfortable emotions that drive behavioral denying, avoiding, numbing, or suppression of emotions.

Once you name an emotion, you can begin to tame it. Once you allow yourself to feel the feeling, you can begin to heal and release the feeling. Practicing the BLAST method is where to begin with emotional awareness. Once you bring the feeling state into your awareness, you can now practice emotional acceptance. This can get tricky depending on your personal relationship with your internal emotional world. This can be helpful to do with a therapist if you’ve experienced emotional disconnect for a long time and if you’ve had invalidating experiences that reinforced the negative messaging that your emotions are wrong, bad, inconvenient, or problematic. Emotional acceptance is about validating that your feelings are real and determining how congruent your feelings are with your present experience. You can then determine how to manage and cope as effectively as possible.

Emotional acceptance is nonjudgemental; it allows the emotion to just be, to not be labeled as good or bad, positive or negative; it just is. All emotions provide valuable messages about our internal experience. Then you can explore why it is there in the first place. Practicing the BLAST method allows you to determine in a general way what you are feeling. Once you’ve identified it, you can get curious about why it’s there. If you feel that you can name your feeling state from any of the emotions from the BLAST method, (Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stressed, Sad, or Tired) ask, “Why am I feeling this way?” When getting going with this work of emotional awareness and emotional acceptance, it can be helpful to journal - like a lot. Journaling increases your awareness, the ability to practice emotional acceptance, as well as your ability to validate your own unique emotional experiences. Journaling is a very valuable process of releasing your emotions and is a helpful way to cope.

To fully release the feeling, it’s helpful to understand why the feeling is there, then to consider what it might need. Starting with naming it, and then exploring the why behind it. With journaling, practice, and consistency, you’ll begin to create more space for emotional acceptance. When you can accept a feeling state for what it is and understand why it’s there, you can then choose how to manage this emotion. I’ll be breaking down each of the emotions from the BLAST method within the next several blogs, so stay tuned. Until then, practice naming and getting curious about why it’s there in the first place - without judgement. This is where you can lean into emotional acceptance which promotes self-acceptance, self-worth, and self-love.

Setting Intentions for the New Year

The beginning of a new year can stir up a lot of different feelings: hope, anticipation, dread, worry… Have you checked in to see how you are feeling this new year? If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed by people talking about new year’s resolutions, new year new you, and not to mention the inundation of new workouts, new diets, and new wellness routines. The thing is, you don’t need to reinvent your life or yourself—and research shows that a complete overhaul is not sustainable and leaves most people feeling like a failure when they can’t maintain an overly rigid lifestyle.

Living with intention this new year can be the antidote to the stress of trying to make big changes really fast. When you live with intention, you create a theme for how you want to approach each moment, each day, each week, and each month, which will all add up to your year ahead. Living with intention allows you to become empowered to choose how you want to feel.

Creating a daily intention-setting practice can set up your day with a theme, a hope, and an opportunity to feel in control of your life. You can begin each day asking yourself, “What is my intention for today?” “How do I want to feel today?” Once you have determined these, you can then ask yourself, “What do I need to do to feel this way and to bring this intention into each moment of my day?” Get very specific about what actions you can take to create this feeling for yourself and to bring this intention to life so that you feel empowered and connected to your true wants and needs. Repeating this process as a daily practice will help to inform the days that will make up your year.

Practicing daily intention setting may be all that you need to feel that you are creating momentum to live your intentions. However, if you are desiring to prioritize an aspect of your health this year in a more intentional way, you can consider what pillar of health that would improve the quality of your health and life the most. Then determine how you can focus in on that specific pillar as you begin and move through the new year. Here are some of the most common pillars of health and wellbeing:

Sleep

Nutrition

Movement

Connection/relationships

Intentional relaxation

If you are hoping to focus on your health, it is helpful to choose one area to invite in your life for intentional for change. Each of the above pillars can improve your mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing. Which aspect do you feel you need the most at this time? Then consider what small, actionable, and doable steps you can take daily towards your goals. This can be such an impactful way to create change in your life.

Taking pen to paper and writing down your goals that come from your intentions and how you want to feel and making them specific, doable, and desirable is the most effective place to begin. From there, you can determine the specific action steps you can take daily that will bring you closer to what you want. Checking in daily can help with follow-through and create a new habit.

This has been a daily practice of mine for a while now, and I use an old fashioned planner with pages for journaling in it; however, there are many apps out there that many people find very useful. I begin my day by writing down:

What is my intention for today?

How do I want to feel today?

What action steps do I need to take to help create that feeling (or those feelings) for myself?

My planner also has a habit tracker that I love because I see very clearly in a small space if I am following through! It’s super simple; I just write the goal I want to focus on and the action steps to take and it has a months worth of check boxes to check off if I complete it each day. Consistency is historically my downfall, and this very simple tracker has helped by offering a visual reminder that encourages me to follow through. Checking off the little box that shows how consistent I am being, provides feedback for what is best supporting my desired goals. It keeps my intentions and action steps fresh in my mindset. The data I receive from a simple check box can be used as just that, information on my consistency and follow-through, as well as how to make any shifts when needed if I am not following through for any reason. This reflection keeps me focused and accountable to my future self!

What works for me may not be the best practice for you, however, I encourage you to experiment with what does work for you. If you need support with even knowing where to start, this can be a great practice to have the support of a therapist or coach to help you get going. Change is possible, if you feel blocked towards creating change, reach out!

Finally, the process of consistent reflection is super helpful for continued growth and planning for the future. Actually, I believe continued self-reflection is essential to create any meaningful change. While all of this can be simple in concept, getting going can often be challenging. Finding one place to start, one place you can shift into hope and belief in yourself, will slowly begin to provide motivation towards consistency. Start with your intention and go from there. If you feel stuck, reach out and find support—you don’t have to do it alone if it feels hard or overwhelming. I’ll leave you with this quote I have on my desk and provides daily inspiration for me by Oprah, “The number one principle that rules my life is intention. Thought by thought, choice by choice, we are cocreating our lives based on the energy of intention.” I hope you feel inspired to create and live a life you love in 2025 and beyond!