Distraction is a concept we tend to think of as negative, associated with actions like avoidance and denial. For most of my life, the need to distract myself felt like a sign of failure: I distract myself, I thought, because I’m not strong enough to face certain things head-on.
At this point, as an anxious human, I’ve probably spent thousands of hours in buried distraction: playing word games on airplanes in moments of panic; drawing hundreds of small, consecutive squares on a sheet of paper; watching the same TV shows over and over; even heaving myself into certain relationships so I wouldn’t have to think about the things that scare me most.
These distractions are varied. Some, like my current inclination to keep my bedroom spotless, might be considered productive; in turning my attention away from what’s actually on fire, such as this global pandemic, I’m inadvertently making progress elsewhere. Others, like watching Netflix or scrolling through Instagram, are, well, not.
But in our current climate, whether you want to distract yourself “productively” or “unproductively” is somewhat irrelevant. For many of us, any distraction at all is a very legitimate way to survive. Allowing myself to be distracted—through watercolor, corny workout videos, a new flossing routine (oh, am I flossing!), and lots of Frasier—has made every other aspect of my life more breathable and approachable. So think of this as my letter of recommendation. Give it a try.
“Some people do need a mental reset,” Andrea Bonior, Ph.D., psychologist, author of newly released Detox Your Thoughts, and faculty member at Georgetown University, tells SELF. Distraction can give you some necessary time and space to escape, so you can return more prepared to face what you didn’t think you could before. But you’ve probably also dealt with distraction that felt anything but enriching, leading to this vicious cycle: You distract yourself, you feel even less able to face what you need to (your work, your health, the global pandemic), and you just want to (and usually will) distract yourself again.
So how can we know when we’re distracting ourselves in a helpful way or just numbing our emotions? How fine is that line? First, Bonior says, notice how you feel after you’ve allowed yourself to be distracted. “Distraction that gets sort of dysfunctional isn’t actually giving us rest. We feel worse afterward: Our feelings are still there, but we’re less able to face them.”
Another way Bonior recommends checking in on whether your distraction is actually helping you cope is by setting a couple of reasonable, realistic intentions or objectives for yourself daily. If you’re so distracted that you can’t accomplish what’s truly important to you—like taking a shower, being kind to your family, or sending one email—you may want to consider placing clearer boundaries on how much time you spend metaphorically twiddling your thumbs.
It can feel weird, indulgent, or lazy to distract yourself right now, especially if that involves spending several hours watching an objectively terrible show on Netflix or sleeping twice as much as you normally would. The guilt of distraction rubs differently during a global pandemic. How can we help others while also taking care of ourselves? What privileges can I put back out into the world to make it a slightly better place?
When the problem at hand is so large, so uncontained, what we could (or should) be doing feels extremely amorphous and therefore somewhat paralyzing. When you want to help the world from the confines of your home, where do you begin? It’s not like there’s one very specific thing we are avoiding. We are avoiding, well, all of it.
First of all, being in the confines of your home is saving the world. And if that’s all you have the bandwidth to do, great. If you can stay home and also check in on your elderly neighbor, or support a local business by ordering in on Thursdays—that works too. Bonior suggests navigating the intimidating void by thinking of it this way: Who do I want to have been during this time when this is all said and done? And then, what’s realistic? “The more you map it out very specifically,” she says, “the more you can give yourself permission to not get swamped down by the rest.” Distract yourself if and when it feels good, and when you want to engage with the world on fire, think of ways to do it that make sense for you. That is just as good.
And remember: Do not confuse distraction with productivity. I am encouraging you to distract yourself, not to heave yourself into the Next Great American Novel. (As soon as that King Lear tweet went viral, the world went to shit.) Distraction can be watching lots of television, it can be reading the Animorphs book series, it can be taking a nap, it can be never watching the news or reading the numbers, literally not once.
Immerse yourself in everything. Immerse yourself in nothing. (That’s a distraction too.) Clean your house. Bake some bread. People—not me—really seem to like that these days. I have taken to painting my fingernails biweekly, sometimes for an hour at a time. Your mind might love this. It might shut off and reboot, which is, ironically, productive.
If there is one thing that has shifted for me in the past month of self-isolation, it is that I have found strange beauty, peace, and solace in distraction—in doing simply what I feel like doing. We have been programmed to believe that we would be better people all around—more moral, more efficient—if we were not distracted, yet I have learned to use it and lean into it.
So find a healthy form of distraction that works for you, and then do it unapologetically; it is not mutually exclusive with you being a good person, or your best person, during this time. In fact, I think it might be the very thing we need.
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