#41: How to Be Bored in the Era of Rage Bait
One of the healthiest things you can do right now for your brain, your nervous system, and your overall well-being is to be bored.
In a modern world shaped by constant stimulation and unlimited access to information, cultivating a sense of boredom feels unfamiliar and even uncomfortable.
It’s a reflection of a lifestyle shaped by excessive busyness, mental stimulation, and a constant need to stay engaged.
Rest Is Not Passive: The Difference Between Collapse and Boredom
There is a common fear that if we stop, we will become lazy, lethargic, or unmotivated. That boredom equals collapse.
But not all boredom is the same.
There is lethargic inactivity: numbing, dissociative, empty.
And then there is active boredom: intentional, spacious, alive.
Active boredom is a boredom break that restores rather than depletes.
When external stimulation reduces, the nervous system initially protests. Leaving the phone in another room. Lying on the floor staring at the ceiling. Sitting quietly for five minutes can feel surprisingly activating.
And then something else happens.
Breath deepens. Thoughts slow. The body begins to stand down.
Rest is not passive. Rest is where integration happens.
Reducing input allows the brain to integrate not just the day, but weeks, years, and emotional patterns carried across a lifetime.
We Live in an Attention Economy
Attention is currency. Our focus, our reactions, and our emotional responses have value.
In this context, boredom becomes one of the most radical and autonomous acts available to us. Choosing boredom is a way of reclaiming ownership over your attention. It’s a quiet refusal to be constantly pulled outward by social media, YouTube videos, or the next thing competing for your focus.
Where attention goes, energy flows. And energy is vitality.
Allow the mind wander or spend time reading a book. There's a feeling for the first time in a long time that fosters a renewed sense of being.
The dopamine hit from social media no longer feels as satisfying.
Having space to think feels like gaining a key to one's own mind.
Rage Bait and a Nervous System on Alert
A powerful cultural signal of what we’re collectively living with is the fact that Oxford’s word of the year for 2025 was rage bait.
Rage bait content deliberately provokes outrage, fear, or moral superiority in order to hijack attention. It works because it activates the nervous system.
People describe scrolling through social media and feeling themselves tighten. Jaw clenching. A quickened pulse. An urge to respond, correct, defend, or argue. Even when they don’t comment, the body is already involved.
Once the nervous system is pulled into a threat response, it becomes very difficult to disengage. Over time, this pattern trains reactivity rather than regulation, urgency rather than presence.
A Brain That Rarely Gets to Rest
Modern technology, social media, and even children’s television are increasingly optimised around stimulation. They are designed to hold attention by delivering frequent dopamine rewards and minimising space for mind wandering.
The result is that the brain is rarely allowed to rest.
People often describe feeling exhausted but unable to settle. They move from one piece of content to another, from one emotional register to the next, without a pause long enough for integration to occur.
Over the long term, resilience declines. Sensitivity increases. Capacity narrows. Many notice they are more reactive than they used to be. Less patient. Less able to focus. Less able to stay with the present moment.
We are “on” all the time.
Boredom and Self-Discovery
If you are on a path of personal growth and trying to understand who you are, what you want, or what matters, your mind needs space for those answers to arise.
Many people say, “I don’t know what I want anymore,” while living in a state of near-constant stimulation.
But insight doesn’t arrive through more information.
It arrives through listening.
Going for a morning walk without headphones, sitting on the balcony watching the birds, and noticing the details of buildings while cycling home are acts of resistance against external stimulation. These acts are grounding to the context around you. It opens the door to new ideas, memories to ignite, and a coming home.
Boredom is not emptiness. It is a listening state. A place where the wandering mind can reconnect with what matters.
The Importance of Wintering
This is why wintering is so essential. Wintering is a period of recalibration and restoration that naturally precedes growth. It is how nature functions, and we are no exception.
Nothing in nature is productive all the time. There are seasons of expansion and contraction, movement and stillness. When we override these rhythms, the cost is carried by the nervous system.
People who intentionally slow down often report something counterintuitive: creativity returns. Focus sharpens. Problem-solving becomes easier. A deeper sense of meaning emerges.
Choosing Boredom Is Choosing Agency
In a world increasingly designed to provoke, stimulate, and consume our attention, choosing boredom is not disengagement. It is agency.
It is a choice to step out of the rage cycle. To allow the nervous system to settle. To notice what arises when we stop reaching for the next distraction.
Sometimes, the most healing thing we can do is stop, and let the body remember how to rest.
10 Small Ways to Let the Nervous System Settle
Leave your phone in another room for periods
Long enough to notice the urge to reach for it and what sits underneath that impulse.Allow your mind to wander without directing it
This might happen while staring out a window, lying on the floor, or sitting on public transport.Take a walk without headphones
Spending time in your environment grounds the nervous system in the present moment.Sit with a ‘boring task’ without multitasking
Washing dishes. Folding laundry. Making the bed. Resist the urge to add a podcast, video, or background noise.Create a small boredom break each day
Five minutes of doing nothing. Staring at the ceiling. Watching light move across the room. This is active boredom.Notice your relationship with stimulation
Pay attention to when boredom feels intolerable. Is it when you’re tired? Lonely? Anxious? These moments often hold important emotional information.Replace stimulation with presence, not productivity
Boredom doesn’t need to be filled with self-improvement or new skills. Often, the good thing is simply staying with what is already here.Let discomfort be part of the process
The feeling of boredom can initially feel like a bad thing (restless, edgy, even unsettling). Reading one or two pages of a book is a gateway to settling the nervous system.Notice what emerges over time
Many people report that after a while, boredom opens into something else: memories, clarity, creativity, or a deeper sense of self. These shifts happen gradually, over the long term.Allow boredom to be relational
Sitting quietly with another person. Being together without entertainment. Letting conversation ebb and flow. This kind of shared boredom can deepen connection with each other.
When Boredom Feels Hard to Access.
Silence can bring up anxiety, restlessness, or a sense of emptiness that’s difficult to sit with alone.
This is often a sign that the nervous system has been living in a state of prolonged activation for a long time.
Therapy offers a space to explore this gently and at your own pace. Not to force rest, but to understand what makes stillness feel unsafe, and how regulation, presence, and choice can gradually return.
At Hue Therapy, we work with the nervous system, supporting you to reconnect with your inner life, your body, and your capacity for rest.
If you’re finding it hard to slow down, to disengage from rage cycles, or to feel at ease in quiet moments, you don’t have to navigate that alone.
A Practical Companion for When Your Nervous System Won’t Settle
This free e-book is an invitation to explore what helps your nervous system feel a little more settled, a little more present, a little more resourced.
Understand what’s happening in your nervous system
Recognise when your system needs support
Build a personalised sensory toolbox using touch, smell, sight, sound, taste, and temperature
Shift out of activation gently and arrive home
SEE IF HUE IS RIGHT FOR YOU, Book your FREE 15 min introductory session TODAY.