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What happens when you don’t feel like doing anything? Emotional consequences of inactivity
Psychology
The psychologist Silvia González and the psychologist Jesús Matos explain why negative thoughts arise when we allow ourselves to be carried away by passivity and do not do pleasant activities
PM2:26La mind it is like a house that receives guests. Some of those guests will be unpleasant and others will be appreciated and friendly guests. But yes, they are all invited daily to come to our house. When unpleasant guests come, they are annoying, they make noise and they make us do things with more reluctance. When the nice guests enter the emotions that accompany them will be motivating and we want them to continue to appear in our lives.
When we are inactive we close the door to those nice guests who bring gifts into our house and we pay attention to those annoying and unpleasant guests. When we are active, on the contrary, the guests mingle and we can lend atención to both, and even, the excesses that the negative guests do, are overlapped by the gifts of the pleasant guests. The day has 24 hours. The more hours we spend doing pleasant and healthy things, our personal reality will be healthier and more pleasant and we will feel better.
You could say that our frame of mind it is the result of an imaginary balance, where the quantity and quality of positive and negative events are weighed. If we want to raise the mood, we must therefore increase the input of the positive.
In addition, there is a causal and direct relationship between the number of enjoyable activities we do and the quality of our mood. This relationship is so evident as to notice the effects day by day. Typically, the happiest days of the week, for most people, are those when the most pleasant activities take place: on weekends. Normally, Saturdays and Sundays are usually dedicated to sports, being with friends, reading, going to the movies, going out, and a host of activities that cause the mood to be high. This phenomenon is even more visible during vacation.
When we stop doing activities we have more time to think about what is unpleasant that we are having in mind, so the unpleasant thoughts will be enveloping all our attention.
In addition, those activities that we stop doing can become occupied by other people, so we will feel displaced and less effective. What happens when we isolate ourselves is that we stop receiving social reinforcement and the company of others.
Jesús Matos and Silvia González are part of the team of «In mental balance» (evidence-based psychology). Matos has a Master’s degree in clinical and health psychology (UCM) and in Legal and Forensic Psychology (European Foundation of Psychology). He is the author of the book “Good morning, Joy” (Zenith), director of the website enequilibriomental.net, collaborator of specialized scientific media and speaker at numerous national and international conferences.
Silvia González is a psychologist, with a master’s degree in Clinical and Health Psychology and a Master’s degree in General Health Psychology. In addition to being part of the «In mental balance» team, she has worked at the University Psychology Clinic of the UCM, where she has also been a tutor for the students of the University Master’s Degree in General Health Psychology. In the field of teaching, he has given informative workshops in numerous institutions such as “Workshop on Emotional Understanding and Regulation”, “Workshop on Improving Public Speaking Skills” or “Workshop on Exam Anxiety”.