Do you get Bored Easily? Would you get Bored Alone in a White Room?

[Animal]

Ah, the good old nature/nurture argument

[Animal]

i’m afraid (emotion!) of developing new relationships (environmental interaction in question!) because of the toxicity of the most recent intimate relationships i’ve given a go (past environmental interactions influencing the emotion felt!)

The fact that you see a relationship as something you've "given a go" says something about you.
The fact that you chose a particular relationship instead of another,says something about you.
You didn't just stumble into that relationship. If you feel you did, that says something about you. I sure don't see my relationships that way. And that says something about me.
People create a good portion of their circumstance.
I've been through serious chronic illness and lost everything I was before. I feel like I've completely changed as a person, but my pictures say otherwise.

[asmodeus, king of demons]

i mean
1 . it's impossible for two people to have identical environmental experiences (considering the definition for environmental i'm using here) and therefore it'd be ludicrous to assume even siblings will have the same emotional processing.
and
2 . yeah, duh, i'm not saying nature is nonexistent lol but to say that anyone experiences emotions in a way that is not directly tied to the past, present, or perceived-future environment they find themselves in i think would be demonstrably false.

[Animal]

@puffs
Yeah I agree with you. Emotion occurs the way it does based on a combination of associations based on prior experience, personal nature, current environment, perception of the future, health states and more. It's not just one thing.

[asmodeus, king of demons]

personally i'd go so far as to put it on the same level as physical touch or any of the other main senses of the human body as a direct response to environmental stimulus, but that's just me and i know i don't have the interest in or capability of defending that position so i won't push this one very hard

[Hrafn]

You do have a point here. It’s just that Fe and Fi people speak so noticeably, obviously differently about themselves. It’s usually pretty clear which side of the spectrum someone falls on based on the way they speak about, and express, emotion. Hard to explain or justify in words though but i guess that’s what vultology is for.
It probably isn’t tied to “emotion” itself, but something about how it’s being processed in the mind. If those are even separate.

I get this, and I've definitely seen it before. For instance, if I'm upset with a friend I'll usually keep it inward till I feel able to articulate it to them calmly & coherently. This strikes me as a rather light-Fe kind of approach.
Now, I do feel like there are manifestations of TiFe that are so far quite underexplored (maybe this is true of FiTe's as well, I just don't notice it acutely because it isn't about me). Like TiFe individualism, which it seems like is finally starting to get more attention. But that's a bit of a tangent.
As far as my comment about experiencing emotion, I think part of it is that emotions are clearly expressed through the eyes, not only the mouth. With the exception of the Fi-wounded expression signal, I can't think of any other vultology signals for the F-functions that deal with the eyes. And, after all, eyes are mostly associated with Perception.
Along these lines, I've noticed that certain emotional experiences, in particular, tend to make my eyebrows scowl slightly & arch upward toward the middle in a particular way that's classically Si-looking. These experiences don't cause me to show any Fe signals that I've noticed--and why would they?--I'm usually by myself when I experience them. Now, as far as I've noticed most such emotional experiences seem to be associated with memory recall, which explains why they're associated with Si signals. For instance, if I'm remembering something that that makes me feel shame, I get pretty intense Si eyebrow contractions. I haven't noticed getting this same kind of scowling during more neutral, less evocative memories. The fact that some memories cause this particular heavy-Si-eyebrow thing seems pretty directly connected to the raw, visceral quality of their emotional content.
Note that I'm only referring to one particular kind of eye/eyebrow thing--not all Si eye signals. But this is only one example of a connection I've noticed between a perception function and an emotional experience. I think there are others that I associate with Ne.

Spoiler

In fact, here's a wild hypothesis: to some extent each of the four EQs seems like it represents a different way of dealing with emotional energy. That's not to say that F-functions don't handle emotion in their own way, but I think a different attribute of the matter. F-functions analyze emotional content toward conclusion; EQs manage emotional energy. For instance, Pi-leads are phlegmatic because it seems like we do best when we're able to stay relatively calm. At the extreme end, there are PiTe's like Mark Zuckerberg who get charicatured as emotionless robots. But I'd speculate that it's really something more like Pi leads are more likely to experience emotionality as long, fluid, continuous moods rather than as intermittent bursts of electricity or something like that. Along these same lines, I experience emotions as having a visual component to them...certain colours, textures, shapes. I don't know if that's related to my type or not, but P-leads generally seem more visually oriented.

[collapse]

I realize this post has not much to do with the original topic of the thread, so if it leads to a rabbit-trail feel free to split it off or whatever.

[Faex]

@Puffs, @Hrafn, I think you guys understand emotions quite differently from me. I'd never describe boredom in terms of emotions. It's more of a sensory experience. What Hrafn says about visceral recollections (boy, don't I have them- the worse the experience, the more visceral! Lol) also seems to me like a sensation.
When I think "emotions", I'm thinking generally of things like:
Positive emotions- Love, joy, desire
Negative emotions- Hate, anger, hurt, disappointment, sadness
I'm not sure I'd describe fear as an emotion either, unless it's connected to the heart somehow. It's more of sensory reaction to a perceived threat of some kind, although I could see it as a mix of both.
I guess, for me, emotions are mostly heart matters. I'd never in a million years think of boredom as an emotion. Puff I can't help but think your non-Fness may be responsible for you thinking it's the same kind of thing as the ones I listed? Not meant as a dig, just genuinely wondering why it seems natural to you to think boredom is an emotion.
I can certainly experience emotions in response to boredom though. I can be angry, for example. Irritated. Annoyed. I can have a sense of "defeat" or sadness. But these are responses to the boredom, not the boredom itself?

[Faex]

I guess, to me, emotions are things my heart does and sensations are things my body does? Boredom in fact seems like something my mind does, so it's weirdest to me (i.e. to describe it as an emotion). Still thinking about how to describe the difference. It's definitely there, even if I can't quite articulate it . . .

[Faex]

@hrafn,

In fact, here’s a wild hypothesis: to some extent each of the four EQs seems like it represents a different way of dealing with emotional energy.

It's not wild at all, it's right on the money! Only I think it's psychic or soul energy or the life force (What Jung called libido).

That’s not to say that F-functions don’t handle emotion in their own way, but I think a different attribute of the matter. F-functions analyze emotional content toward conclusion; EQs manage emotional energy. For instance, Pi-leads are phlegmatic because it seems like we do best when we’re able to stay relatively calm. At the extreme end, there are PiTe’s like Mark Zuckerberg who get charicatured as emotionless robots. But I’d speculate that it’s really something more like Pi leads are more likely to experience emotionality as long, fluid, continuous moods rather than as intermittent bursts of electricity or something like that. Along these same lines, I experience emotions as having a visual component to them…certain colours, textures, shapes. I don’t know if that’s related to my type or not, but P-leads generally seem more visually oriented.

I agree with everything, except how you're describing this energy. It's definitely a kind of power, as is emotion, but emotions are a particular way it manifests: I wouldn't it the same as them in 1:1 way. On @alerith's thread about emotions, I noted that emotions are a motivational force/power behind the will. I don't agree with Puff that they are fundamentally environmental responses, though I see what he means (and agree to a large extent that emotions are info). They are the wind behind the sails of our will to do anything. It's very difficult to act without the motivational power of emotions. Here I'm using a broad definition of emotion that would include the more stabilized, structured form we call 'feeling'.

[Faex]

As to the OP question, I'll buck the trend here and say I do get bored. But then I'll soon get lost in my thoughts. If I have something to write on (i.e. to express my insights), then no. I'll just start thinking about stuff and record all my realizations. If I can't put it down somewhere, I get frustrated.
Now, if I'm stuck in a white room, I know exactly what I'll do: meditate. When you start to Pe your own thoughts and bodily sensations (be curious, observe, and "wonder" about them), boredom disappears. There's an entire universe inside you that most of us don't know and don't explore. 🙂 That's what meditation is to me: exploring the world within with the detached fascination of a scientist.

[Hrafn]

I agree with everything, except how you’re describing this energy. It’s definitely a kind of power, as is emotion, but emotions are a particular way it manifests: I wouldn’t it the same as them in 1:1 way. On @alerith‘s thread about emotions, I noted that emotions are a motivational force/power behind the will. I don’t agree with Puff that they are fundamentally environmental responses, though I see what he means (and agree to a large extent that emotions are info). They are the wind behind the sails of our will to do anything. It’s very difficult to act without the motivational power of emotions. Here I’m using a broad definition of emotion that would include the more stabilized, structured form we call ‘feeling’.

@faerie I'm not that well up to speed on this topic, but this all seems to make sense. I'll have to think about this s'more.

@puffs, @hrafn, I think you guys understand emotions quite differently from me. I’d never describe boredom in terms of emotions. It’s more of a sensory experience. What Hrafn says about visceral recollections (boy, don’t I have them- the worse the experience, the more visceral! Lol) also seems to me like a sensation.

I agree about boredom not being an emotion in & of itself. Yet the visceral recollections I mentioned are often recollections of the some of the very kinds of emotions you mention: joy, desire, hurt, disappointment, sadness. I used a different one--shame--as a particular example, and I certainly experience that as an emotion rather than solely as a sensation.
I, too, have a pretty clear subjective sense about what's an emotion and what's a sensation, although my own sense of it could easily be different from yours. However, I feel like there's sort of an asymmetery between sensation & emotion. While not all sensations have strong emotions associated with them, I experience all emotions as having a somatic quality. The somatic quality of emotions tends to manifest in particular parts of my body. However, I'd also say that I often experience sensory & emotional experiences that are closely interconnected, and my mind doesn't draw a hard boundary between what part is sensory and what part is emotional. To use an obtuse example, if a man walked up and punched me in the nose, I'd feel an intense stinging pain that would flow seamlessly into an intense anger. Similarly, sometimes when I've felt intense joy I won't sleep as much as I normally do and yet I'll still feel sleep-satiated. Here, the emotional experience of the joy alters the somatic experience of feeling fatigue or not.
Maybe the thing about emotions is that they presuppose latent ethical judgment. In other words, they provide content from which such judgment potentially could be drawn. For instance, in the example of visceral, shameful memory that I used earlier, such memories could easily push me toward a feeling like "I'd better not do that again!" But just because I experience shame via such a memory doesn't necessarily mean I will draw an ethical conclusion. (e.g. Perhaps my life has changed to the point where the shame-provoking situation is no longer relevant to me in the present).
Another good example of this comes in the emotions associated with nostalgia (again, nostalgia itself isn't an emotion, but it often brings up emotions). Nostalgia feelings are a particularly potent example because for me, familiar smells from the past evoke them most strongly. Out of all the senses, smell is the most directly connected to the limbic system. Now, if I smell sour aspen-leaves and this smell recalls for me my life ten years ago, I'll experience a sugar-coated kind of melancholy feeling. Again, I suppose there could be a latent ethical judgment here, e.g. "I've lost all the joy I felt in my life that fall...I need to somehow get back to where I was then!" Yet from life experience, I understand that what's lost in the past is lost and can never be recaptured. So the ethical judgment never materializes even though the emotion is there.
Even in the CT book, it mentions that the "emotional register" is a "different phenomenon" than either Fi or Fe. Yet I thought the four functions are supposed to make up the whole of consciousness. So what is the emotional register, then? I suspect it comes into consciousness through the interaction of different functions, including the perception ones.

[Faex]

Oh, I'm sorry, @hrafn, I forgot you mentioned shame. That's most def an emotion in my book! A fundamental one. I think I was more thinking of the process of recollecting it rather than the content you're recollecting. My bad. I know what you mean and I agree. I also agree with this:

I, too, have a pretty clear subjective sense about what’s an emotion and what’s a sensation, although my own sense of it could easily be different from yours. However, I feel like there’s sort of an asymmetery. While not all sensations have strong emotions associated with them, I experience all emotions as having a somatic quality. The somatic quality of emotions tends to manifest in particular parts of my body. However, I’d also say that I often experience sensory & emotional experiences that are closely interconnected, and my mind doesn’t draw a hard boundary between what part is sensory and what part is emotional. To use an obtuse example, if a man walked up and punched me in the nose, I’d feel an intense stinging pain that would flow seamlessly into an intense anger. Similarly, sometimes when I’ve felt intense joy I won’t need to sleep as much in order to feel sleep-satiated.

Absolutely. Specially the bold. Emotions are somatic yet distinct from sensations. So I guess we could say: Sensations are a broad category that includes emotions, yet not all sensations are emotions. For sure boredom is not an emotion unless we include our responses to it (like anger or sadness).

[Hrafn]

Absolutely. Specially the bold. Emotions are somatic yet distinct from sensations. So I guess we could say: Sensations are a broad category that includes emotions, yet not all sensations are emotions. For sure boredom is not an emotion unless we include our responses to it (like anger or sadness)

YES!

[Bera]

I think pain and pleasure are sensations and fear, joy, shame, anger are emotions.
In my opinion, boredom is something different from both.
I think that :
Emotions are caused by an emotionally triggering stimulus (no idea how to define it differently :)) ) and usually cause sensations that are felt in the chest/stomach area.
Sensations are caused by a physical stimulus, perceived by the senses and specifically felt in the part of the body that is getting affected/stimulated.
Boredom is caused by lack of mental stimulation and felt as being located in the mind but since it's not perceived by the senses, you can't call it a sensation...so I'd call it a state of mind.
Oh, wait, I checked and emotions are defined as mental states, so this question about boredom being an emotion is valid !
So, now I have to ask - aren't emotions the ones that give you specific sensations in your heart or stomach area?? ? Isn't this how you distinguish them from thoughts or non emotional mental states like boredom ? 🙂 I don't see this in any definition but to me this was always an obvious thing, it's strange to find out maybe I was wrong my whole life. ?

[Faex]

I agree with your own definition, @bera! (Not whoever says emotions are mental states . . .what in the world?)

I think pain and pleasure are sensations and fear, joy, shame, anger are emotions.

Agree.

In my opinion, boredom is something different from both.

It is. 🙂

I think that :
Emotions are caused by an emotionally triggering stimulus (no idea how to define it differently :)) ) and usually cause sensations that are felt in the chest/stomach area.
Sensations are caused by a physical stimulus, perceived by the senses and specifically felt in the part of the body that is getting affected/stimulated.
Boredom is caused by lack of mental stimulation and felt as being located in the mind but since it’s not perceived by the senses, you can’t call it a sensation…so I’d call it a state of mind.

I agree! Though I think boredom involves a bit of "pain" (sensations) too, as a response to the lack of mental stimulation.

Oh, wait, I checked and emotions are defined as mental states, so this question about boredom being an emotion is valid !
So, now I have to ask – aren’t emotions the ones that give you specific sensations in your heart or stomach area?? 

Ha ha! That's exactly what emotions are to me too! I feel them in my chest and stomach. 🙂
They can sort of 'spread' to the whole body or be felt everywhere (and buried in many places in the body- traumatic emotions, especially).  Still though, the centres are the heart or stomach. Incidentally, there is a kind of heart-brain and stomach brain: major nerve centres in both those areas. This is why I take the chakra systems seriously. Those guys are on to something!
I have been aware of my heart-brain (not in those terms) for years, but it's rather recent that my stomach "heart" became obvious to me too. Most people in a heartbreak experience it in either place. I never used to understand the ones who said they felt a big sinking hole in their stomach in heart-break because I always felt the heart deeply aching in my chest instead- I remember thinking, "Damn! 'heartbreak' is literal!"
But now I feel both. I think I always felt both but had mentally blocked one. (Two Fis have spoken of 'numbing' before, I think Tea and Mothgirl.) The solar plexus (stomach chakra) is associated with personal power and I feel that healing emotional traumas buried in my stomach has been helping me with agency quite a bit!

Isn’t this how you distinguish them from thoughts or non emotional mental states like boredom ?   I don’t see this in any definition but to me this was always an obvious thing, it’s strange to find out maybe I was wrong my whole life.

I think they are wrong. You really have to have a crazy broad definition of "mental" to include emotions in it. Perhaps they mean to describe how emotions are triggered by mental states. Essentially how you described them. But emotions are felt and experienced, not "thought". That definition is simply wrong. 🙂 However, many emotions are attached to certain beliefs, so they're related but distinct, IMO.

[Faex]

So, @bera, wiki says:

Emotion is a mental state variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioural responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definition. Emotion is often intertwined with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, and motivation.

I'd say they're using "mental" in a very broad sense, i.e,  "non-physical" or something like that, whereas I use it typically to refer to the thinking/perceiving/awareness aspect of our psyche.

[Keso]

I rarely feel bored because I'm always doing something. I try to stimulate myself, even when I'm  at the public transport and it's full of people I read a book, I need to move, mentally.
Yesterday I decided o shut down for once and do nothing.
So I got EXTREMELY bored. But I pushed myself to sit still, but it didn't work. I was like that for like 15 minutes and nevertheless  I was very tired by that time, continued doing my work. I prefer to die rather to feel bored.
I need to do something. I NEED to be active, mentally and physically active. My hands are itching and I feel restless and hopeless without stimulation.
 
 
 

[Rua]

As to the OP question, I’ll buck the trend here and say I do get bored. But then I’ll soon get lost in my thoughts. If I have something to write on (i.e. to express my insights), then no. I’ll just start thinking about stuff and record all my realizations. If I can’t put it down somewhere, I get frustrated.
Now, if I’m stuck in a white room, I know exactly what I’ll do: meditate. When you start to Pe your own thoughts and bodily sensations (be curious, observe, and “wonder” about them), boredom disappears. There’s an entire universe inside you that most of us don’t know and don’t explore.   That’s what meditation is to me: exploring the world within with the detached fascination of a scientist.

This is key. Meditative proficiency is a major confounding variable to the question: "Would you get bored alone in a white room?" As much as we want to increase our understanding, we must always be ready to give way to general ground and confounding variables; the alternative is an echo chamber. Our current understanding of Pe allows it to go into the mental/ somatic world and start exploring there rather than external stimuli. There is a wonderful anecdote in which a Buddhist monk is meditating on his knees while being studied by neuroscientists, and after a long time in the same position he shifts positions to remove pressure from his knees. He is asked why he shifted after hours of being on his knees, was it from pain? The monk replied that he was simply showing a kindness towards his knees. This style of thinking is quite familiar to me, I don't know if it can be universally cultivated across all types but I suspect so (hard to get perspective when you're always in your own way). I can have "dialogues" with different parts of my body and mind, sounding them out to see how they "feel" about their position and their relationship to "me". And I have gained practical insights from these dialogues that let me know the information I was tapping into was real even if the format seems patently absurd, "Hold on, I'll be there in a sec. My big toe really just needs a friend right now."

[Faex]

Awww, @rondo,

“Hold on, I’ll be there in a sec. My big toe really just needs a friend right now.”

This is the sweetest thing I've read in a while. 🙂 Lol!

[Hrafn]

Emotions are caused by an emotionally triggering stimulus (no idea how to define it differently :)) ) and usually cause sensations that are felt in the chest/stomach area.
Sensations are caused by a physical stimulus, perceived by the senses and specifically felt in the part of the body that is getting affected/stimulated.

 
I agree completely about feeling emotions mainly in the chest/belly area, and with fae about how they sometimes radiate outward from there--for me, it's especially along the spine and sometimes into my abdomen.
However, I don't agree about sensations being "usually caused by a physical stimulus"--I feel that certain sensations are this way, but not all. A lot of sensations are internal, with no short-term connection to world outside my body--things like being satiated, sleepy, vertigo, the jitters, feeling like my body is somehow off, feeling that my life-force is strong/weak. I guess a lot of these could be linked up with physical stimuli, but the connection is more long-term and indirect. To me, the way I perceive & attend to these more internal sensations feels somewhat distinct from how I perceive & attend to more "stimulus" ones like feeling water running over my hair or burning my hand on a stove. These stimulus-tactile sensations feel more like individual events to me. The internal ones feel more like long-term, continuous states with an almost sort of narrative quality.
I've been thinking some more about the question of boredom. I'm not sure if it's either an emotion or a sensation. It seems more like a state of being. I wonder if boredom is actually a state that's caused by the interaction of EQ, their different energetic trajectories and the environment. i.e. where there's an energetic will for the mind to become immersed in something or other, but no such object of attention is presenting itself. I'm not sure if that makes sense; all this EQ-will-libidinal trajectory stuff still feels a bit over my head...I haven't delved that deeply into it yet.

[Animal]

I appreciate all the answers so far.
The current understanding of Pe is that Pe is marked by being 'bored' and needing constant stimulation. There's a whole long paragraph about it in the Se article.  I really can't relate, and I find it interesting that a few other PeFi types on this thread can't relate either. I'm curious to hear from other Se types, and other people in general.
In my experience, being prone to 'boredom' is not type related. Perhaps the way we think about it, might be; but I have had a lot of introverted roommates and family members who complain about being bored, much more often than me or a few other Pe friends.  So I remain curious to see if there are any trends.  I am curious if being prone to boredom really is a Pe thing, and I'm just a random singular exception. It doesn't feel right to me though.
To be fair though, I've noticed this trend in PeTi, specifically.  My TiSe husband also gets bored easily.

[Animal]

Growing up, I didn't watch tv or play video games, even though my family had TVs in most rooms of the house, and allowed video games. I just wasn't into it. I used to read a lot, but stopped even doing that by the time I was a teenager.
I spent most of my time writing books and mastering skills in music.  Also, I pushed myself to be a good student. School was fairly easy for me, but when it wasn't, I did what it took to get good grades.
Due to practicing music constantly, I had a professional career in music by the time I was 13. I was doing very well until I got Chronic Lyme Disease at 16, and lost my voice forever. I now speak in a whisper.
Even when I couldn't walk or remember my name at times; when I had 105 fevers, etc; I still continued getting good grades through home tutors. That's the kind of person I am, determined and disciplined.
Discipline requires clearing excess out of your mind and focusing. It has never been hard for me to do that.  Apparently I was given ritalin when I was in 1st-4th grade, but I never needed it again. It seems I trained my mind, and perhaps part of the 'training' was refusing television and video games.
I taught myself to not expect immediate gratification. Unbeknownst to myself, I avoided poisoning my mind. I also trained my mind early, due to the pressing demands of my ambition around music.
And I believe this may be a bigger factor in people getting "bored" than being Pe. Most of us were raised by television and video games, which trained our minds to expect immediate gratification and stimulation. We were also raised in a generation where "every child counts" and, at least in USA, the education is too easy. We aren't challenged, aren't taught to think critically, aren't held to standards.
Maybe this is one factor contributing to why people get 'bored.'  I wonder if this state was so pervasive in previous generations, or if more people were able to concentrate.
Just a thought.
 

[Thana]

Do you get bored easily?
No, I always know how to keep myself occupied and stimulated, and I rarely need other people to keep me stimulated and entertained. I always manage to optimize my time even when I'm wasting time :P.
What does it take for you to get bored?
My threshold is high however boredom to me feels like a creeping anxiety. An anxiety that slowly follows and envelopes you until you recognize, confront, and tackle the issue. What triggers my boredom, and by consequence, anxiety, is prolonged stasis - being in the same state for a prolong period of time without progressing any further. Boredom turns into anxiety, and anxiety transforms into deep existential dread. It's like being stuck in a white room (getting a head of myself here) with no windows and doors so nothing comes in and nothing goes out. It begets questions like "how the hell did I get to this point?", "what the fuck am I doing with my life?", etc, etc. You see, I don't experience boredom as momentary ho-hum "ahh shucks I'm kinda bored." It's ennui and a general malaise about life and where I'm heading, and the intensity and endurance of that feeling differs depending where I am in life. I think the true underlying behind the boredom is both disappointment in not fulfilling my potential (slacking) and the fear of actually doing it (to take risks). This creates a rut.
What do you do about it when you’re bored?
Unfortunately it takes me a while to get mobilized because I also experience boredom as inertia. It takes me a long time to push through the initial phase. Fortunately after that initial push, I'm persistent. But before I act, I strategize. Here's my general process:

1. Ask what is making me bored.
2. Ask why that thing is making me bored
3. Why is this a problem?
4. What am I currently doing to remedy it?
5. What has helped in the past and I can incorporate it/them?
6. Where do I want to be and how can I reach that?

That's the initial phase, and my process after that varies.
Do you think if you were left alone in a white room you’d become bored and restless?  How long do you think you could tolerate this without losing your mind?
I'd probably end up hallucinating and clawing my eyes out after a while hahaha. Psychologically, I've experienced the white room and it was torturous. But at the time, my mind was a torturous place to be in so there's that. In the white room, am I allowed to have books, paper, and pens? If so, I can be occupied for a while. Hell, it might even be therapeutic for me to be isolated from the noise of the outside world. In this case, I see the white room as a place for hidden possibilities to emerge. This will disrupt my normal mode of perceiving and open me up to whole other side of reality I wouldn't have otherwise have access while being in the world. I'll turn into an opportunity to discipline the mind and body. So while the room might seem initially tortuous, if looked through a different lens, it could potentially be transformative (for better or worse).
 
 
 
 

[Animal]

@thanatesque

Do you get bored easily?
No, I always know how to keep myself occupied and stimulated, and I rarely need other people to keep me stimulated and entertained. I always manage to optimize my time even when I’m wasting time :P.

Same.
 

Ask what is making me bored.
Ask why that thing is making me bored
Why is this a problem?
What am I currently doing to remedy it?
What has helped in the past and I can incorporate it/them?
Where do I want to be and how can I reach that?

I have a very similar attitude toward it. The idea of 'boredom' strikes me as a distorted perception of reality, and I wonder why people assume that it's so natural and human. To me it's an indicator that there's a serious problem.
There's so much that I want to do and so much that I have to do - in order to achieve what I want to, and also, in order to survive.  I am not motivated to just  do 'random things' to fill the space, whatsoever; but I always have steps I can take toward actualizing the visions, dreams and goals that exist in my life. So - how would it even be possible to get bored? And if such a thing would occur, I would wonder - why? What is missing?
 

[Bera]

I lost track of this thread and remembered to get back to it.

However, I don’t agree about sensations being “usually caused by a physical stimulus”–I feel that certain sensations are this way, but not all. A lot of sensations are internal, with no short-term connection to world outside my body–things like being satiated, sleepy, vertigo, the jitters, feeling like my body is somehow off, feeling that my life-force is strong/weak. I guess a lot of these could be linked up with physical stimuli, but the connection is more long-term and indirect. To me, the way I perceive & attend to these more internal sensations feels somewhat distinct from how I perceive & attend to more “stimulus” ones like feeling water running over my hair or burning my hand on a stove. These stimulus-tactile sensations feel more like individual events to me. The internal ones feel more like long-term, continuous states with an almost sort of narrative quality.

@hrafn - this is fascinating ! I think it is because you are SiFe !  Now that you mentioned it...I do have internal sensations too...like hunger or headache, feeling tired or energized...indeed, they are internal and I didn't even think of them when I wrote about sensations. 🙂 But do you see why?? I think it's because you are more attuned to internal sensations, being Si lead ! And I am focused on the ones that are caused by external stimuli, being Se lead !

@animal - I wanted to answer your questions :
Do you get bored easily?
No, I almost never get bored !
What does it take for you to get bored?
I...don't really know. Oh, yes, I must be held hostage in a conversation I don't want to take part of. Or to be forced to do something repetitive and that engages my mind to a degree in which I could not think of something else while doing the repetitive thing.
If I am free to think about what I want, I don't get bored. But if I have to maintain a boring conversation...well, I get bored. Because I can't talk to someone and at the same time drift away in my thoughts. People notice when I do this and ask me what I am thinking about. And I can't say, oh, I'm thinking what would be the best spiritual path for an Se lead. :)) Or I am thinking whether boredom is a mental state, what do you think? :))
What do you do about it when you’re bored?
I am only bored when forced to do something boring and not able to think about what I want, so in this scenario I generally find ways to escape. At work sometimes I become restless and then I tend to go out to buy a coffee or to smoke. Oh, dear, this really doesn't help us build a better image for Se leads. :))
Another thing I do when I am working and getting bored is I start to listen to music. Music does not distract me from work but also creates the illusion that I am thinking about what I want...and maybe I am...in a way. :))
Do you think if you were left alone in a white room you’d become bored and restless?  How long do you think you could tolerate this without losing your mind? 
I think everyone would get bored and restless in this scenario. Isn't this a form of torture?
I checked and it is a form of torture 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_torture
So, yes, I would become bored and restless in a white room but this doesn't say much about Pe leads, as everyone would.

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