Sitting with Your Thoughts: Baylor Study Finds Chronic Worriers Experience Greater Distress During Idleness
Research suggests “idleness distress” may be especially uncomfortable for people prone to worry
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With smartphones, streaming services and constant connectivity filling nearly every spare moment, true idleness is increasingly rare. New research by Baylor University psychology and neuroscience researchers Thomas A. Fergus, Ph.D., and Annie T. Ginty, Ph.D., suggests that people who are more prone to worry may find those quiet moments especially distressing.
The study, published in Cognitive Therapy and Research, is the first known examination of the relationship between worry and what the authors call "idleness distress." Conducted across three separate studies with more than 900 participants, the study’s findings showed that individuals with a greater tendency to worry experienced greater distress during periods of idleness, suggesting that certain people may be more vulnerable to the negative effects of downtime than others.
"People often fill those idle moments with activities like playing on their phone or looking at their computer screen to avoid idleness,” Fergus said. “They may rationalize it and say they're doing something important or they're catching up on things. Sometimes that may be true, but it's very possible the underlying motivation is avoidance of idleness itself.”
Understanding the connection between worry and idleness could have important implications for mental health, with the study’s findings helping researchers develop new approaches to understanding and addressing chronic worry.
"Worry tends to be something that's very difficult to change and alter," Fergus said. "Historically, even with intervention, it's not well managed."
Three studies, one consistent finding
The three-study design allowed the researchers to test the associations between worry and idleness from multiple angles, providing consistent evidence across all three studies that people who are more prone to worry were more likely to find periods of inactivity uncomfortable, distressing or difficult to tolerate. Ginty said she began noticing the phenomenon in her interactions with students, who want to be busy all the time.
"You're asking them to sit and think about things. And that sitting and thinking, it almost appears as if they find it distressing," Ginty said. "We wanted to know what happens if people just had to sit there and they weren't given instructions," she said. "And is it people with a certain disposition that fare worse in it? Or does everyone find it a little distressing to kind of just sit there?"
Study 1 looked at whether people who worry more report greater discomfort when idle, while Study 2 tested whether worry predicted distress during an idleness task conducted weeks later and whether this effect extended beyond participants’ initial distress levels. Study 3 compared responses to an idleness task versus a monotonous control task, predicting that worry would be linked to distress only during idleness.
The findings suggest that idleness may be particularly challenging because it directs attention inward.
"During periods of idleness, for people prone to worry, that can be potentially a period of time in which worry becomes more prominent because idleness tends to lead people to focus inward into their own thoughts," Fergus said. "When you don't have the smartphone, laptop or anything else in front of you, you do tend to become much more oriented towards your inner experience.”
Constant distractions
While the study did not directly examine smartphone use, its findings may carry broader implications in a world where many people instinctively reach for technology whenever a quiet moment appears. This and other constant distractions limit natural opportunities to experience idleness and likely develop more effective, natural ways to cope, including simply engaging with the present moment.
"The goal is not to get people to say, 'I need to sit and do nothing and be idle,'" Ginty said. "But in those moments, when the idleness naturally appears, people don't say, 'Oh, I need to fill my schedule with this, this and this, so that all I'm doing is moving to the next thing and the next thing.'"
Mental health implications
Because worry is associated with a range of mental and physical health concerns, identifying situations that trigger or maintain worry could help researchers develop new approaches to treatment. The long-term question, Fergus said, is whether people should learn to engage differently with unavoidable periods of downtime.
The findings also suggest that periods of idleness should not always be viewed negatively.
"What I found interesting was that it wasn't everyone who found it distressing; it was really driven by the worry," Ginty said. "If you polled the general public, people would probably say idleness is distressing, but it's not necessarily distressing for everyone when they're put in that moment."
Study co-authors include Baylor psychology and neuroscience graduate students Taryn E. Cook and Sarah-Beth Garner, both members of Ginty's Baylor Behavioral Medicine Lab.
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