How Being ‘Lazy’ May Stave Off Dementia and Depression

The most productive thing a brain can do is sometimes nothing at all.

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

​​- Blaise Pascal

I’m always saying to anyone who’ll listen that hypnosis isn’t a therapy any more than the cup that brings you water is that actual liquid refreshment.

Hypnosis is, of course, simply a delivery system, which happens to be a powerful conduit for learning. As you’ll see, hypnosis can actually tap into two essential brain modes. In fact, hypnotherapy must do that in order to be effective.

Relaxed hypnosis (not the natural kind, in which problematic emotional trance states can occur) has benefits apart from the therapy it delivers.

When we’re in that natural and highly focused state we learn in a way which is powerful and fast, which is why it’s so useful as a tool in psychotherapy. This part of the hypnotic experience is highly focused, particularly solution focused.

But there’s another critical part of the experience – the part that is free-flowing and ‘daydreamy’. And this is also important, perhaps equally so. In this ‘idling’ state, consolidation of learning and recovery of brain stress occurs.

These parts of the hypnotic experience reflect two fundamental aspects of brain function. And too much of one or the other causes us problems.

When the capsule also contains ‘medicine’

As you’ll have gleaned, when it comes to hypnosis, the container as well as the content can be great for you and your clients.

If relaxation hypnosis is the ‘capsule’ that contains the ‘medicine’, then the hypnotic capsule contains myriad and powerful benefits all of its own, regardless of the actual therapy it delivers.

But what are these benefits? The good stuff you can expect from simply enjoying hypnotic trance?

Your all-important ‘default network’ may stave off dementia

In a culture that celebrates productivity, busyness, and constant output, ‘doing nothing’ has become taboo.

Moments of idleness are often framed as wasted time, something to minimize or eliminate altogether, even a source of shame.

But neuroscience is beginning to tell a very different story. Far from being unproductive, periods of rest may play a critical role in maintaining brain health, supporting memory, and even reducing the risk of neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s disease.

At the heart of this idea is a simple but powerful insight: the brain does not switch off when we stop working. Instead, it switches modes.

You don’t switch off, you switch over.

According to neuroscientist Dr Joseph Jebelli, who’s done extensive research in this area, it is possible to lower your chances of developing neurodegenerative diseases and depression by ‘doing nothing’.¹

I don’t know about you, but I think I can commit to that particular health regime.

But… doing nothing? Really?

Doing nothing is doing something

Actually, resting and letting the brain just wander and daydream isn’t really just doing nothing, because your brain is doing some wonderful recuperative housekeeping during such times.

It seems doing this is extremely healthy for and protective of the brain. And this has to do with your ‘networks’.

Yes, you, and everyone, have ‘networks’. Bear with me.

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A whole new meaning of ‘networking’

The brain operates using two main networks. One is the ‘executive’ network (yes, it sounds like a meet-up for busy professionals). Your executive network is responsible for all your focused, task-oriented thinking:

• “I’ve got to finish that report!”
• “I’ve got to work out what time I can come over after juggling the pick-up from school and finishing those accounts.”
• “I’ve got to ignore my phone and just study.”
• “I’ve got to decide how to plan out this business proposal.”

Okay, so far, so… adult-worldish.

The other, less commonly discussed network is your ‘default’ network – a system of neurons that supports imagination and daydreaming (an activity I excelled in at school!). This is the network you’re using when your brain seems to be ‘idling’, discursive, and surfing the waves of random imagination.

The dichotomy of the executive network and the default network, as you might have noticed, mirrors the left/right hemispheric split in the brain.

This default network becomes active during moments we often mistake for laziness. But who says it’s laziness?

Actually, to assume this way of being is simply lazy is a big mistake.

Three years to get over burnout?

According to Dr Jebelli, burnout doesn’t just feel terrible, it physically changes your brain. Overwork can thin the frontal cortex, ageing it; enlarge the amygdala, making you more anxious; and shrink the hippocampus, affecting memory.

We know that the stress of depression, too, can shrink the hippocampus.²

But get this: Apparently it can take up to three years for your brain to recover from being overworked after a serious burnout!

Three years?!

Wait! What?

Chronic stress damages dendrites, the tiny branches brain cells use to communicate. Once they’re lost, recovery is slow, and over time this can lead to cognitive decline.

The scale is huge, says Jebelli: 745,000 deaths a year are linked to overwork, and many employees now report low energy and motivation.³

The problem, he says, is simple: We don’t rest enough. And when we do, we don’t value it. “Rest isn’t doing nothing – it’s essential work for your brain,” he explains. (Of course, if that’s all you do, you might not see fabulous results!)

Anyway, it seems giving people more opportunity to properly engage their default setting – which is a terribly nerdish way of saying ‘proper rest’ – improves business results, though given our frenetic ethos of ‘always being on’, I’m guessing companies (and individuals) won’t be promoting healthy reverie any time soon.

But there’s an apparent paradox in all this.

Actively rest to save your brain

‘Actively resting’ sounds like an oxymoron. But Dr Joseph Jebelli makes the point that lying on the couch watching Netflix or continually scrolling on TikTok don’t really engage your ‘default network’.

Doing this can feel like switching off – but it’s not. Perhaps because we don’t get the chance to go inward enough. Our attention is still being led externally. We can see excessive screen time – scrolling, watching TV, playing video games – as a kind of negative trance state in which we become more suggestible but ultimately are left feeling flat.

You may or may not be surprised to know that people often feel worse in mood and lower in energy after watching a screen for hours.⁴

So if gently decomposing on the couch, entranced by your phone or bingeing on yet another series, doesn’t really do it as far as your default network mode (let’s just call it DMN) is concerned… what does?

Getting your mind to idle

Staring at trees, daydreaming, and walking in nature while mindfully letting it wash over you and feeling a part of it rather than just observing it (and not just thinking about your to-do list!) will get you there. It will help your brain heal and your mind refresh for better brain health longevity.

Mindfulness meditation and hypnotic reverie, reading fiction, and simply staring into space with the mind seemingly doing nothing much at all (though we know that it is!) will also get you into your DMN.

The take-home here is that rest is not passive, and rest doesn’t have to mean physical rest as in napping. Rather, it’s a rest from the ‘executive network’ that we’re after. That might even happen during an intense physical workout such as a game of tennis if you’re ‘in the zone’ when you’re playing.

But certainly, regular deep rest – such as when deeply entranced – activates important neural processes that support long-term brain health too.

So if there are advantages to getting enough DMN time, what are the dangers of not putting the brain ‘in idle’ enough?

I hate to deploy such a grossly overused word, but I can’t help but feel there may be an epidemic of lack of mental rest – and it may be killing people.

The curse of always being ‘on’

With constant stimulation and notifications, deadlines, pressures to achieve goals both personal and professional, looming responsibilities, addicted screen scrolling, pressures to ‘get ahead’ and be the best version of you (updated like a new iPhone!), we are truly cooked!

Okay, that was hyperbolic… but the truth is, we seldom get to just, metaphorically or literally, gaze into the fire in our dark caves. We just don’t let the mind idle – and we deny it the chance to repair, to rest and reflect, to become inspired, and to make leaps of connective discovery.

For some people, the default network is hardly ever engaged. As though the superpower of the DMN were in fact a terrible weakness to be fought at all costs.

We all need to understand that it’s when we are ‘doing nothing’, when we are actually deeply focused inwardly, that memory is processed, self-reflection occurs, and experiences are properly integrated.

But it’s not that the DMN is good and the executive network bad. Far from it.

We need both modes

Of course we need our ‘executive’ network mode. Just daydreaming all the time might keep your brain in good repair… or it might not, as we are multifaceted and need challenge and stimulation to provide meaning and purpose.

But Dr Jebelli emphasizes the importance of avoiding stress damage.

Too much stress in the brain, or non-DMN time, can cause the essential connective dendrites in the brain to die, which can take years of real rest in the default setting to recover.

I mentioned this earlier, but I think it’s worth restating.

Rarely or never activating the brain’s default network, as can occur with overwork, can lead to:

• Thinning of the frontal cortex (accelerating ageing)
• Enlargement of the amygdala (increasing anxiety)
• Shrinkage of the hippocampus (impairing memory).

Over time, this may contribute to conditions such as dementia and depression. Indeed, disruptions or dysfunction in the default network are associated with Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline, and depression is fundamentally driven by stress.⁵

Let me say it again: Always being in executive-network mode and seldom in the ‘idling’ default-network mode may:

• Contribute to dementia
• Bring on depression.

No wonder those who seldom engage their default networks sometimes feel they are ‘going crazy’ or experiencing ‘burnout‘.

I would say that constantly focusing outward and missing out on inner focus will not just destroy mental and physical health but may even produce what we might call a nervous breakdown.

What does that mean? To me, a nervous breakdown is what happens when someone’s capacity to cope, or feel that they can, is exhausted. It involves a kind of personal grinding to a halt, a collapse of energy and confidence that leaves a person temporarily unable to function in day-to-day life. We may see disintegrating relationships and a loss of perspective, humour, and purpose in life.

But we never have to let things get like that.

Engage your ‘default’ network daily

Let’s put this more positively: Proper activation of our resting network may help maintain cognitive function and reduce the risk of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Rest daily by ‘doing nothing’. I’ve noticed that people who self-hypnotize or listen to a hypnosis audio daily report not just feeling happier and having more energy but being physically healthier too.

• Rest periods help the brain consolidate memories and process information gathered during active tasks. Think Archimedes in the bathtub relaxing then having his “Eureka” moment.
• The brain continues significant internal activity even when not focused on external tasks.
• Chronic busyness and lack of downtime may impair these restorative brain processes, but regular ‘trancing out’ will mend you.
• Activities that allow the mind to wander (e.g., quiet rest, reflection) are beneficial, not ‘lazy’.
• Sleep and deep rest are important for clearing waste products from the brain, which is linked to lower Alzheimer’s risk.
• Brain health and dementia risk are strongly influenced by lifestyle factors, including rest, sleep, and mental activity over time.

But since I deal so much with clinical hypnosis – both for myself and my clients – I’ll add one more aspect regarding hypnosis that many people may have missed.

Hypnotic therapy can access both modes uniquely

When we use hypnosis to help our clients overcome trauma or addiction, begin to leave depression behind, or focus on goals, we are doing something a bit different. We’re engaging the executive network mode in a very relaxed state of mind and body.

So it would be wrong to say that hypnotic work is just about engaging the DMN.

What I like to do with clients is work hypnotically with them then sit with them quietly for maybe 10 to 15 minutes. Why?

Because they get the best of both worlds this way. We work on achieving therapeutic goals and they then get to enter the DMN. In this way:

• They get the benefits of the executive function to help them overcome their problems but in an unusually relaxed state of mind and body.
• They get to spend time ‘idling’ in the default network mode with all the protective benefits that state of mind has. Therapeutically this also helps them unconsciously process and absorb the hypnotic work we’ve done together.

Often clients who’ve been in the DMN mode part of the hypnotic experience might suddenly ‘come back’ almost as though startled.

They may say things like “Wow, I was miles away!” or “Blimey Mark, I must have been asleep!” or “I don’t remember a word you said.”

But they always look incredibly refreshed, sometimes even younger.

What feels like inactivity on the surface may in fact be your brain doing some of its most important work.

Remember this!

And the next time someone nags you for kicking back, staring into space, or ‘being miles away’ when you’re still in the room, refer them to me – or better still, all the neurological research.

Working with Depression and Burnout

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About Mark Tyrrell

Psychology is my passion. I've been a psychotherapist trainer since 1998, specializing in brief, solution focused approaches. I now teach practitioners all over the world via our online courses.

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