Therapist Shares Why It’s So Important To Have Fun As An Adult If You Had A Serious Childhood
Let go and live a little.
PeopleImages.com - Yuri A / Shutterstock Adulting isn’t easy, no matter how prepared you are for it. It often feels like being a grown-up is categorized by trying to finish a never-ending to-do list while navigating the twin minefields of stress and anxiety.
Yet there are small things we can do each day to connect us back to ourselves, release some of our tension, and enjoy our lives.
A therapist shared why it’s so important to have fun as an adult, especially if you had a serious childhood.
Ellie Rose, a registered counselor and psychotherapist, touched on the power and limitations of mindfulness, saying, “Meditation is great and all, but until you learn how to have fun on a daily basis, your nervous system is going to be missing something.”
She explained why letting ourselves have fun might feel weighted or hard to access, due to the ways we were raised.
“A lot of us growing up were shamed for being too silly, too fun, too playful, and not serious,” she said. “Or, somewhere along the way, you had to just turn into a mini-adult to cope with what was going on.”
Having fun is essential to relieving anxiety and getting in touch with our most authentic selves.
Ellie noted that not having fun as a kid leads to tension in the future, saying, “We get to adulthood as very anxious, uptight people who just don’t know how to have fun anymore."
She noted that some people are sillier than others, saying, “It can just be in your personality, but whatever your version of fun is, you need to be having it at least once a day.”
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“It’s actually something I prescribe to parents for their kids because most of the time, anxious kids that come into my therapy room are not playing or having enough fun,” she said. “Parents usually try to fight me on that and think that I’m just hippie, la-di-da-da, but there’s actual neuroscience and research behind it.”
In fact, play is so essential to children’s cognitive and emotional development that it’s been recognized by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights as a right of every child around the world. Play helps children discover their potential and tap into what makes them unique, which fosters confidence they can carry into adulthood.
Kids need play to tap into their truest selves, yet the same thing goes for adults.
While it might seem weird or uncomfortable to seek out having fun for fun’s sake as a grown-up, we can access the activities that bring us joy by finding what one mental health educator calls “An energizing hobby.”
Mental health educator and therapist Israa Nasir shared the best way to discover what your energizing hobby is, saying, “Think about what you liked to do when you were a child.”
“We’re really trying to go back to that inner child, that joyful, curious, fun experience,” she explained.
She advised people to think about what extracurricular activities they loved as kids, what kind of books they read, what sports and craft projects they liked, and even the kind of TV they watched.
“That can give you some insight into what will really nourish and feed your soul,” she added.
Nasir noted that another way to find your energizing hobby is to “Reflect on who you are right now and how you like spending time and finding activities based on that.”
By paying attention to how we feel when we’re having fun, we can locate parts of ourselves that we’ve pushed down and allow them to resurface and bloom, nourishing the adult we’ve grown into being.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers social issues, pop culture and all things to do with the entertainment industry.