Why ADHD Brains Go Over-Bored

Restlessness. Agitation. Paralysis. Misery. When a boring situation – like a mind-numbing lecture or an interminable grade-school jazz band performance – is inescapable, it can feel like an intolerable burden for ADHD brains. Or, as YouTube celebrity Penn Holderness succinctly put it in a recent ADDitude webinar on thriving with ADHD, “Boredom is torture. It’s borture.”

It comes as no surprise that kids and adults with ADHD, who crave stimulation, get bored more easily and more frequently than do their neurotypical counterparts. And the lengths to which some people will go in order to feel something, anything, is shocking.

Literally.

Researchers at the University of Virginia and Harvard University conducted a series of experiments that asked participants to sit alone in a laboratory and then fill out surveys about the experience. In one such study, researchers wanted to see if the study subjects would rather do an unpleasant activity than nothing at all. They left adult participants alone in a room with a button that would give them a mild electric shock if pressed. More than half opted to press the button rather than doing nothing for 15 minutes.¹

“What is striking,” the study authors wrote, “is that simply being alone with their own thoughts for 15 minutes was apparently so aversive that it drove many participants to self-administer an electric shock that they had earlier said they would pay to avoid.”

[Read: Escape From Boredom]

Boredom Through the Lens of Neuroscience

The association between boredom and risk-taking, from substance use to thrill-seeking activities, is not exclusive to those with ADHD. But because people with ADHD tend to experience ennui more frequently, risky exploits born of boredom are a common phenomenon among them.

“People with ADHD are used to feeling emotions at a 9 or a 10,” says Tamara Rosier, Ph.D., founder of the ADHD Center of West Michigan. “When there’s a lack of emotional intensity, they interpret this as negative and call it boredom. They either move into hypoarousal, where they numb out, or hyperarousal, where they try to push themselves out of orbit.”

Boredom has also been found to be especially stressful in individuals with ADHD traits. Matt Parker, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the University of Surrey in England, and James Clay, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at Dalhousie University and University of Victoria in Canada, were part of a team that investigated differences in responses to boredom between impulsive and non-impulsive adults.

The study initially found that people who self-reported as impulsive were more prone to boredom, confirming previous findings that people with ADHD had higher rates of task-related and chronic boredom than people without ADHD. When the team investigated further, it found that the impulsive study subjects experienced higher levels of stress while bored, evidenced by elevated levels of cortisol in their saliva.²

[Read: Impulsivity and the ADHD Brain – Neural Networks, Explained!]

It’s similar to what we see in fight-or-flight situations,” Parker says. “It suggests that the lived experience of boredom feels more intense and aversive for people who are highly impulsive, transforming into an overwhelming need to escape.”

This urge is the result of a massive feedback loop, Parker explains, in which impulsivity leads to boredom and stress… and stress and boredom lead right back to impulsivity, continuing the cycle.

To break free from boredom, ADDitude readers reported trying everything from jumping off a cliff to car racing. For some, these exploits led to regret. For others, they led to a new life.

How to Cure Boredom (Or Bear it Better)

Research is limited on how people most susceptible to boredom might better tolerate it. Once recent small study found that treating children with ADHD with methylphenidate for three months reduced proneness to boredom (and improved ADHD symptoms). When the medication was discontinued, boredom resurfaced.

Nothing can eliminate boredom, but these strategies may help people with ADHD build up tolerance.

1. Reframe the Feeling

The first step, Rosier advises, is to acknowledge the boredom without judgement. “If you’re feeling bored, that doesn’t mean you’re lazy or incapable,” she says. “Let’s not moralize it. Let’s accept it as it is.”

2. Resist the Stress Response

“Interventions designed to help people tolerate boredom without triggering a stress response could be useful,” says Parker, who suggests active forms of mindfulness, such as yoga or mindful walking.

John Eastwood, Ph.D., co-author of Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom, says that people with a low boredom tolerance tend to choose avoidance-based coping strategies, such as a long break in the bathroom during a tedious lecture. Instead, use strategies that promote engagement, such as gamifying the experience – noting whenever the teacher uses a three-syllable word, for example.

3. Identify the Cause of Boredom

“When a feeling like boredom is uncomfortable, we are sometimes unable to hear its deeper message because we just try to make the feeling go away,” Eastwood says. “But feelings point to needs, like compasses. Sadness tells us we’ve lost something of value; anger tells us we need to assert ourselves.

“Boredom points to our need to have agency, to be the captain of our own ship,” he says, adding that the struggle to be self-directed is common among people with ADHD, since, from a young age, they’re often corrected and directed by teachers, parents, and peers.”

Boredom might also mean thoughtfully reassessing your choices and considering a change in your job, vocation, or school. Alternatively, it might mean reminding yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing. To get through a tedious chemistry lecture, he says, you could remind yourself that, while you don’t care about chemistry, you care about graduating from college so you can become a nurse.

“Boredom often has a message for us,” says Eastwood. “I would encourage people to take boredom seriously, try not to be afraid or intolerant of it. There may be an opportunity to see how you can live in a way that gives fuller expression to who you are.”

Boredom and ADHD: Next Steps

• Watch: Boredom and the ADHD Brain
• Read: Livin’ on the Edge – Stories of ADHD Adrenaline Rushes
• Read: Bored at Work? Motivation to the Rescue

Nicole C. Kear is Consumer Health Editor at ADDitude.

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