Issue #16: Why Do You Scroll?

Reminder: It’s okay to feel!

🌿 Reaching for your phone to scroll? Take a moment to pause and ask yourself why. Are you using it to avoid emotion or your thoughts? Whatever comes up for you, give yourself compassion. This isn’t about self-judgment, it’s about understanding what is going on for us more.

✒️ "Emotions are continually affecting our thought processes and decisions, below the level of our awareness. And the most common emotion of them all is the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain." — Robert Green

💡Your brain hides your nose. Your nose is actually always visual to you, but your brain ignores it through what is called Unconscious Selective Attention. Pretty much, your brain knows it’s there, but it decides it’s better not to focus on it and focus on other tasks that are more important. This can be a good reminder to us, just because we’re not focusing on something, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

🍵 I’m drinking a fairly bland Green Tea in a café while I wait for my mom to finish her massage. (My parents are visiting!!) It’s sort of weird typing this up somewhere that isn’t my living room or out on the front porch listening to birds. But I do enjoy watching the locals come in for the morning coffee and gossip.

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Wild roses poke through a hedge on a country lane near the house.

Do You Connect with Your Emotions? 

I personally find it quite difficult to allow my emotions. I find this especially true when they’re not “positive” emotions: anger, sadness, fear… (I put positive in quotation marks because I believe emotions shouldn’t be classified as positive or negative. They just are.) My go-to is to close myself off from them and push those emotions aside. I have realized over the years that this often creates issues with apathy, stress and anxiety, not to mention physical tension and dis-ease. Over the years I have worked on better allowing myself to connect with and allow my emotions, but I’ll be honest, it’s still very difficult for me. 

I know I’m not the only one who struggles with this. Much of our society, for one reason or another, has been trained to disconnect from emotion. We might be taught that we need to be strong and being strong means not showing emotion. Or we might be taught that showing emotion proves we cannot be trusted in positions of power because it somehow shows we cannot lead with a clear head. 

Last week, in response to everything going on in the world and the turmoil of my own feelings towards what is happening, I recorded a short reel about the importance of allowing emotion. The reminder was as much for me as it was to send it out to the social media-verse.

tessjewelllarsen

A post shared by @tessjewelllarsen

Allowing emotion doesn’t mean that we need to let it consume us or get stuck in vicious cycles. It means noticing we have the emotion, sit with it for as long as it is comfortable, and then let it go. I don’t mean let it go as in push it away, white-wash it, or deny that it was there, but allow that emotion to flow through to the point where we can then respond rather than react. 

That time of awareness and reflection is really beneficial in guiding us to actions that best support us in the moment. Because more often than not when we just push emotions away, we turn to other things that distract us from feeling. 

Distraction isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes we need that distraction to help us cope with what we are going through. It’s a natural response our body does to protect itself. That being said, in general, pushing our emotions away isn’t usually beneficial. 

There are a lot of ways we can distract ourselves, some perhaps healthier than others. Some responses  may seem so benign that many of us don't even realize we’re doing them. When we start to pay attention to these distraction habits, we’re better able to observe what we might be avoiding. Distraction habit example? Scrolling social media.

Scrolling social media doesn’t necessarily mean you’re using it as a distraction technique, you very well might just be interested in learning what is going on in the world and lives around you. But the next time you pick up your phone to scroll, I wonder what you might observe if you were to pause a moment and ask yourself, “Why am I scrolling?”

I have noticed I often pick up my phone when I’m feeling nervous, anxious or overwhelmed about something. So much so that now, more often than not, when I reach for my phone I take that as a reminder to check in with myself. 

Check In, Allow and Support

I ask myself, how am I feeling physically? Noticing if there is any tightness or heaviness in the body, how I’m breathing, and my energy levels.

I ask myself, how am I feeling intellectually? Noticing if there’s stagnation or stimulation.

I ask myself, how am I feeling emotionally? Noticing what emotions come up and allowing them. 

I might even observe if any physical sensations are connected to those thoughts or emotions coming up and then move into those physical sensations and then out of them and see if that makes any difference.

I also ask myself, if I am feeling connected or disconnected? To myself, to others, to the world around me?

From what I observe, I use this  information to better support myself at that moment. And I ask myself, what is one thing I can do to support myself right now?

In the case of scrolling. If I notice there is tension in my shoulders or maybe a tightening in my abdomen, and perhaps a shallowness in my breath, this is often an indicator that I’m turning to my phone to scroll because I’m trying to avoid something that’s making me feel uncomfortable. From there, I can use that information to decide if it would be more helpful to just take a break from what I was doing and go for a walk or make myself a tea to give myself a little space, or maybe just allow and feel so I can then release and better respond to whatever it is.

I invite you to take your own moments this week to check in when you pick up your phone to scroll. Ask yourself, how am I feeling? Allow whatever comes up with compassion. Use that information to do something that supports you. 

And if that something is just allowing emotion, whatever it might be, then allow. It’s okay to feel. It’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay to feel angry. It’s okay to feel rage. It’s okay to feel happy. It’s okay to feel lighthearted. It’s okay to feel sad. It’s okay. 

It’s also okay to reach out for support when you need it. If it’s too uncomfortable to allow your emotions on your own, reach out for support from friends, family, or a professional. It doesn’t make you any less worthy or strong or lovable.  It just means that you could use a little more support.

Individualized Support

If you’ve been feeling like you would benefit from more personalized support, please don’t hesitate to reach out! You can book a free 15-min call with me and we’ll look at the best ways to get you feeling more balanced and at ease even when life gets chaotic and stressful. Click here to book your free call.