Among the various depressive syndromes there is one that has inspired and inspires writers, poets and songwriters. “Boredom” is a normal feeling, which marks situations of exhaustion of enthusiasm or lack of stimuli.
The difference that passes between normal boredom, boredom-interval, from boredom-depressive state is the same that can pass between the tiredness that leads to rest and thus allows us to regenerate, to the tiredness that derives from the inability to rest.
Boredom and depression symptoms of bipolarism
In bipolar disorder, especially the minor one, the configuration of the brain is such that the moments of happiness tend to be particularly “slender” and to stimulate a spontaneous counter-oscillation towards states of emotional “freezing”.
Phases of euphoria, phases of depression, on a swing. The depressive phases in bipolar disorder are often not states of “exhaustion”, that is, of loss of functions, but of “magnetization” towards an opposite pole.
Just as in the euphoric phase it seems to be magnetized towards new, positive and definitive events for our realization, so in the depressive phase this magnet becomes repulsive and one feels not only discharged, but as if braked, pulled towards the bottom, rejected by a wind. which blows contrary.
This is true both for the energies perceived physically, and for the speed of thought and the ease of producing ideas, initiatives and passing from the desire to do to actual action. Precisely for this reason the central theme of the bipolar depressed person is not “being turned off”, but “not being able to find stimuli”, “not being able to realize what he could do”, which means that desires, impulses and dreams are not obscured , but caged.
The depressed bipolar slams against the walls of the cage like a fly against the glass, while in other depressions immobility, lethargy and indifference prevail.
Also bipolar “boredom” and therefore a state of “restless boredom”, of “boredom that tears”, that agitates. It is no coincidence that Renato Zero speaks of “Boredom Emergency”, meaning an agitated state of those who are prey to this feeling, and he does not limit himself to being overwhelmed but flounders trying to get out of it. Boredom in his song is described as that feeling that “every desire sweeps away”, so not simply the absence of cravings, but the abortion of cravings, like the stone of a desire thrown into a bottomless pit. Boredom eats up cravings, dreams, swallows them up in thin air, makes them die on the run.
This is an aspect that Franco Califano also highlights in a famous song, “Everything else is boredom”. This song tells about the bipolar experience of pleasure that over time becomes shorter, less satisfyingand more and more continuously with its opposite. The opposite of pleasure is not the absence of pleasure, not having enjoyed, but having lost the pleasure, a deprivation of what had filled our hearts and our brains.
Boredom is a “suck” that keeps the brain vacuum and prevents it from enjoying it. For this, love, success and any other kind of satisfaction are described as too short, until they are no longer worth the effort it takes to conquer them. In bipolar depression it is a common experience that pleasure is not always abolished and in any case, but it goes in bursts, and does not last long, as if as soon as it starts to light up it goes off immediately under the blow of a head wind. You can light a stronger flame, but it doesn’t last long anyway.
Perhaps the most complete description is given by Vasco Rossi in the song “La noia”. Boredom is a situation that peeps out at the beginning, and those who feel it want to get out of it, throwing themselves headlong into the pleasures of life, because if destiny is to end up in boredom at least we will end up after having “burned everything”. The bipolar tactic is precisely the relaunch, in the illusion of delaying definitive boredom, a run-up against boredom.
Then comes a depressive phase, facilitated by previous euphoria and comes even sooner than expected. Not only does it appear to have burned itself, but it also seems to have burned itself soon. In this spasm between the escape from boredom and the relapse into boredom there is a tension that is typical of bipolar disorder. In Vasco Rossi’s text, depression is defined as “and that the infinite is strange but for us, you know, all the infinite that ends here”. The contradiction between the prospect of infinity and an end that is already here and that typical of bipolar disorder. An infinity promised during the euphoric phases, a concrete end under the eyes in the depressive phases.
But both infinity and end are only two magnetic poles: in one case an illusory impulse, a projection that is seen in front, and which makes one feel destined for an infinite climb of satisfaction and pleasure; in the case of depression, a downward momentum that crushes against the floor and holds us crushed, frustrating our efforts to think positively or to conceive the slightest initiative.
Depressive boredom
Unlike boredom, which is overcome by waiting for it to end, or by doing something to change, depressive boredom is a “temptation” to get away from pleasure, not a simple passive waiting for something stimulating. The bored bipolar cuts himself out, avoids, closes himself in the house waiting for something to happen, while the normal bored one stands on the threshold to wait.
In normal boredom external causes matter: nothing happens, so the mood is pushed down. In bipolar boredom the mood is the fundamental engine , and the mood changes the connotations of the surrounding world, making it perceive as “boring”, empty. The pleasure that remains is out of reality, in the past, and is perceived either as lost, or as too far away, or as impossible.
For this reason, the treatment of humoral disturbance is fundamental in improving the return to a relationship of pleasure with the environment, while the idea that the environment must change to be stimulating again only creates other cycles of stimulation- depression , or makes the the idea that the pleasant part of life is over.
