Making the Internet My Accountability Partner

It is easy to think of things in a cause and effect dichotomy. However, oftentimes, cause and effect aren’t as mutually exclusive as they seem. For example, I talked in a recent post about how I noticed that when my mental health declines I will turn to screen time and stimulation as a distraction; cause – mental health, effect – screen time.

Recently I had the realization that I wasn’t in a temporary stress induced mental health slump, I was in a persistent mild depressive episode. Eventually, that realization helped me shift my thinking from just getting through the day to mental health professional who knows how to manage symptoms of depression. The very first thing I looked at was my habits. What habits were supporting the depression and what habits were supporting my wellness goals?

The obvious one that I saw was that I was using my phone a lot more than I ever wanted to and that each time I used my phone I was significantly more stressed and unhappy, even though my mind justified my screen time by telling me the social media, content consumption, and mobile games were to make me happy. In effect I realized that yes my mental health was a cause for turning to screen time but that the screen time was causing the worsening of my mental health. I had been spiraling in this cycle for weeks; despite haven taken efforts to reduce the worst of it, I still wasn’t out of the woods.

Now to begin replacing bad habits with better more supportive ones. The very first thing I did was decide to keep my phone away from me during work. I tried just having it across the room so I could only check it in between meetings. That may have been helpful to ease me into the separation but I found that if I spent too much of my between session time on my phone I was still overstimulated by the end of the day and needed significant time after work to decompress. After a few days I began leaving my phone in the other room.

I’m slowly but surely making my way out of this episode. It may be a while until I’m feeling fully ok again. As it is with everyone, my relationship with my phone is complicated. It is a necessity for staying in touch with my loved ones. It is something that can bring joy but it can also bring stress. Creating work time separation from my phone is only an initial step. I’d love to get some recommendations from you on what can help heal my screen time. It may only be a part of my mental health journey, but I’m already working with my therapist on that so on this blog we’re focusing on screen time.