Self-care PraCtices
unplugging
The Little Things | Longer Term Practices | Self-Compassion & Inner Critic | Unplugging | Anxiety | Emotions | Health & Nutrition
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‘We look down at our phones instead of into eyes. We text instead of call. We build walls when we should be building bridges. We are so guarded and then we wonder why we don’t feel love and connection.
Lift your eyes, open your heart and lean into your discomfort. Great relationships happen by choice not by chance.’
Mark Groves
In ‘Stolen Focus’, Johann Hari argues that social media significantly affects our focus and presence - qualities crucial for actors! Everything we do and see on social media, apps, and private messages undergoes scrutiny by algorithms, which in turn shapes the content we see, in order to keep us scrolling.
Each scroll triggers a small novelty induced dopamine hit - our brains love novelty, and they love dopamine hits, so we keep scrolling.
If putting our phones down feels challenging, it's not our fault; they're engineered to keep us on them! This can lead to exhaustion, emotional fatigue, and a sense of never truly being off. For actors, especially those feeling the need to maintain a constant online presence, this challenge can become even more pronounced.
See if you can set yourself limits for your social media/online use. If you are waiting to hear back about a job, can you set specific times to check your phone, rather than checking every minute?
If you feel anxious without your phone, this may suggest that you have an unhealthy relationship to it. If we look at what makes healthy relationships in life, a big part is boundaries. If you have no boundaries with your phone use it’s possibly an unhealthy relationship.
Check in with how your phone makes you feel? If you’ve whiled away an hour on TikTok, how do you feel afterwards? If you feel happy and relaxed, great. If you feel tired and depressed or numbed out, maybe that’s not so good.
Are you using your phone to distract from feeling?
Can you be on a train, bus, eating out, and be comfortable in your own presence, without the need to check your phone?
Can you allow yourself time of an evening without your phone? Getting a phone ‘lock box’ may seem extreme, but can help!
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