Tolerating The Itch: 5 Ways to Get Off Your Phone in February, Week 2

Ways to handle the blank space and uncomfortable urge to avoid being alone with your own thoughts at all cost

I would love to tell you that a digital detox, digital minimalism, or “quitting social media” is a romantic and lovely “Eureka!” moment from front to end. From the many books, podcasts, and Youtube videos I’ve consumed on it, you’d think it would be. For some people, it may be, and for others it may be mildly uncomfortable just for a week, and then—BOOM!—there is no empty space left over from where their screen consumption habits used to live.

For me—and likely, dear reader, for you—this change will be less linear. One of the ways social media has malformed our imaginations is through the exact idealogy of sudden transformation often being shown in these social media detox stories. Internet culture has led us to believe that 75 days of straining, sudden effort will lead to a change in the entirety of your personhood. Internet culture offers a path lead by a burst of motivation without stating that it can often only be maintained by isolation, self-criticism, and a dogged one-sightedness.

In other words, approaching a change to screen time through this extreme makeover approach only deepens the core idea of fast culture: any good thing in life will happen immediately or not at all.

Tolerating Distress When Your Screen Can’t Numb It

I’ve found I have to slowly build up my tolerance for the distress of boredom, anxiety, or rumination that comes up when I put my phone down. This thing I want to flinch away from cannot be avoided any more—the avoiding, by peering into the screens, has become more of a problem than than the original Bad Feeling I wanted to avoid.

All of this reminds me a whole lot of what it’s like to try to build up physical strength, especially when you’re recovering from an injury. It’s not enough to say, “Okay, my back pain still twinges, but I’m deciding I’m going to run 5 miles a day and no longer stand in that certain posture that makes the pain better.” If you try that, the pain will worsen, everything will feel both dull and awful, and you’ll be back to where you started or worse. With my screen use, I have to figure out both what I am avoiding as well as what I actually want from my time online. I want to keep the good parts of virtual communities, creativity, and funny memes that are part of my internet world. What I want to change, and therefore need to build more structure and ability to tolerate, is the time when I am on screens because I am avoiding the friction or messiness of other parts of life that at first suck more than scrolling.

For now, I leave you with the question of what you want online and what you want offline. Those values are the map we are following when we zoom out to take in the larger picture. In the short term, we have to think about ways to hold our new boredom, build new places we spend our time, and tolerate the anxiety that was alleviated by overuse of screens. Here are five ways to reduce that distress other than giving up and going back to doom scrolling into infinity.

1. Note the times of day scrolling negatively is most likely, and try to build in a routine that helps prevent it.

I’ve found the getting out of the internet is the hardest part, and that by building in routines or reminders that hit me before I enter phone world, I spend much less of my time stuck in or trying to get out of screens. A few examples:

• I found I would often get home from a day of clinic and unwind by scrolling on Tik Tok. This would be totally aligned with my values if it lasted 20 minutes, but often it would last two hours, or until I was so hungry I had to pull something random together to microwave for dinner or order out. This meant I would eat late, get tired, spend unnecessary money or waste groceries, and be hitting 9/10 pm tired and with dirty dishes in the sink still. Not Ideal.

  • Switch: My first set of routine videos was the Three Things Night Routine, which started with setting a timer 5 minutes after I got home, turning on an episode of a show or listening to longer form tik tok videos while I cleaned up the kitchen, began dinner, and had a glass of water and a vegetable appetizer. I still do this (this reminds me, I should be more intentional in doing this again).

• Morning scrolling: I would, like many of us do, check my phone mindlessly over my morning coffee, ostensibly looking for something longer and inspiring to read, and barely ever finding it. I would get stuck in the search-find-search-find loop, and suddenly I was running late to get ready to work, or didn’t have the breakfast or workout I had gotten up early expressly for.

  • Phone sleeps in—I leave my phone at the charger port in my room, and I pick from a stack of books on my coffee table while I enjoy coffee. I still can have choice, but not endless, mind-consuming choice. No endless feeds in the morning.

2. Find physical sensation ways of disrupting your scrolling inertia. Ones you like will work best.

When caught in the web the endless feed, there’s an almost foggy, molasses like quality to my mind. To help my mind snap out of it, I’ve found trying to think my way out does not work, but getting my body involved does. This can be having a cup of hot tea, ice cold water, walking around the block, washing your hands, taking a few minutes to stretch, taking out your headphones and listening to a song while you dance around, a sour candy, and more. Sometimes we just need to put our eyes and our sensing abilities somewhere else for a minute to break free.

3. Get creative with the feelings you’ve been distracting yourself from.

Sometimes, we have to be willing to experience more negative sensations before we will find our lives full of more positive and more meaningful ones. This is especially true when it comes to this transition offline. If you find you’ve been scrolling because something your partner said made you angry, try taking out your journal, talking out loud to yourself, expressing your feelings with markers, or putting that energy into the dough of the bread you’re rolling out. If you find that you’ve been scrolling to avoid some grief that visits you every once in a while, maybe it’s time to do some yoga that lets you connect to sensation, or give enough time to your brain and body to actually feel the feeling and cry, and seek support. Distraction and screen use are tools in a good tool belt, but sometimes we over-distract and that begins to keep us frozen.

4. Remind yourself of your bigger stories for what you want in life, so it is easier to remember when you are really not feeling the offline life.

Presumably, you are reading this post and trying to be less online for very good reasons, not just because you think you “should” be offline. During times when you are not distressed, try to stay for a moment and expand the detail of this vision you have for yourself and of these values you hope to live by. Imagine a group of friends around you table, laughing and sitting back in their chairs, full from seconds. Imagine the feeling of the book you have written, 5 years from now, in hand, printed by yourself or your friend or a big name publisher. Add detail to the story, as this give us handles to hold onto when we are in the midst of a difficult feeling or difficult change.

5. Make the right-sized change.

You’ll notice in this challenge this year, I have not prescribed a routine or specific steps to take. This is on purpose. What I want to provide you with are starting-off points and rails to hold to as you try out being on your phone less and being aligned with your day-to-day values more. I’m not aiming to be totally offline, and I’m not even aiming for a massive change. I’m aiming simply to spend more evenings and free hours doing slower, one-minded activities, and to maintain my ability for presence.

I can’t tell you what direction to change in, and part of learning to live more offline is building an ability to feel your way into it. Part of this is to build a tolerance for taking a single step and not knowing the next one, for starting an experiment with a hypothesis, and testing and changing as you learn more.

This week, the right sized change for me is keeping my phone in a drawer in the first hour of the day and first hour after work. This may be good for you, too, or it may be too much or too little.

Before you scroll away off into your next focus, ask what small step you’d like to take this week to be 1% more in alignment with your values of balancing on/off line life. Write it down, text it to a friend, or make a small space to put your phone away in later tonight. Just take the first step, then see how it goes. You can tolerate it.

xx,

Margaret of Bad Art Every Day