Why I Had To Get Off My Phone

Written By Stacy Carleton

I walk my kids to school most mornings—rain or shine, frost or fog.

The trip is about a mile long, which usually takes us 15-20 minutes (depending on how late we leave the house).

It’s a time when my kids share their worries or excitement about the day ahead.

It’s a time when we greet neighbors walking their dogs or other school families making the morning trek.

And it’s become a sacred time of noticing, something my kids do without even thinking about it. 

We notice how deep the puddles are or how many worms find themselves stranded on the sidewalk after a rainstorm.

We notice paper-thin sheets of ice around the edges of the many potholes along our route, which the kids love smashing with sticks.

Each day, we notice something different: the temperature of the air, the speed of the wind, the vibrant green of the moss, the rustling of squirrels, or the cawing of crows as they fight over stray food scraps accidentally spilled on the street by the city compost collection service.

We practice being present and alive in our immediate surroundings, something that has become harder and harder to do in an era of information overload and pervasive (some would say oppressive) screens and devices.

Moments after dropping my kids off, I used to whip out my phone for my solo walk home. I urgently read and answered texts, checked emails, added tasks to my calendar, and watched YouTube videos (ironically, about healing). By the time I got home, my body was often trembling with adrenaline, my brain was buzzing with anxiety, and I was overwhelmed by the prospect of my day ahead.

And unlike the walk on the way to school, I did not notice a single thing around me.

I was completely checked out of my own environment, checked out of my own body. I could have been anywhere. I realized I was experiencing a kind of displacement, an untethering from my neighborhood, my community, and myself. This sensation was directly connected to anxiety and overwhelm, along with disorientation and confusion.

Yet I couldn’t stop checking my phone and checking out.

My attention had been hijacked, which just meant that all the phone and app designers had been successful in their mission. I was not unique. This is exactly what phones and apps are designed to do.

My 15 years of experience in recovery from alcohol, drugs, eating behaviors, overworking, and people-pleasing (among other compulsions) was not helping me break this debilitating habit.

Then I found the work of Catherine Price, author of How To Break Up With Your Phone and The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again.

Price discusses her framework for bringing mindfulness to our phone use on Kate Bowler’s podcast:

“I think it’s interesting to kind of reflect on why we reach for our phones.

So I came up with this exercise that helps me, and might help other people, called ‘WWW’ and it’s short for What? For Why Now? And What Else? And so the idea is that if you notice that you’re reaching for your phone…you ask yourself…’What for? What was the purpose?’

So did you actually have a real purpose? Were you specifically looking for something or trying to communicate with someone? Most of the time there probably won’t really be one. 

And then you ask yourself, ‘Well, why now?’ And so maybe there is like a time-sensitive reason, but most often it’s an emotional reason…So it’s like, okay, well, am I feeling kind of lonely?...I may feel a little anxious. Like, for example, are you at a conference or a festival where there’s all these people and you don’t know what to say and so you just reach for your phone almost as a security blanket or like a worry stone kind of thing.

…There’s normally an emotional component to that. Then the next step is to ask yourself, like, ‘What else?’ So what for, why now, what else? Like what else could you do either to get that same reward, so is there another way you could have self-soothed?

…Or, you know, could you have actually done nothing? So I’ve actually had a number of times where I’ve been in like a rideshare or whatever, and I’m looking out the window. This has happened twice and the person’s actually asked me if I’m okay because I’m just looking out the window. They’re like, ‘Are you all right?’

…I was like, ‘No, I’m fine, I’m just looking at a cloud.’

…And then you might, you know, at the end of that process, I always say you might also decide you actually do want to be looking at your phone in that moment, and that’s fine. So like, you don’t want to beat yourself up over that. Yeah, it’s just making sure that it’s intentional.

So but I do think that that process is a way to kind of make sure that you’re not just getting sucked into your phone and then not either appreciating what’s around you or dealing with what’s around you or what’s happening, because…I think we do use our phones as drugs.

If you think about like what a drug is for, it’s often to alleviate suffering in some way or to take away pain. And we do that all the time with our phones.”

Yep, this is my current wallpaper: One of Catherine Price’s tools from How to Break Up With Your Phone

Catherine Price validated the addictive cycle of my phone behavior: I unconsciously reached for my phone in moments of discomfort, found some temporary relief, then felt more discomfort as I got sucked into the vortex of overstimulation but still went back to my phone again in search of more relief.

I was engaging in a type of displacement that occurred throughout my day, often all day: I just wanted to check the time, so I looked at my phone. I would immediately get distracted by messages and news alerts, spend at least 5, 10, or even 45 minutes responding and falling down related rabbit holes, then emerge in a daze and return to my original task. Repeat.

This kept me in a perpetual state of dissociation, fragmentation, and false urgency, which contributed to physical symptoms, including headaches, dizziness, jaw and neck tension, eye fatigue, and random pain spiking in various places throughout my body.

I had become a twitchy and miserable Pavlovian dog. I couldn’t keep living like this. In some ways, the depths of this compulsion felt worse than all of the other behaviors I had already addressed in recovery.

Fortunately, Price inspired me to try a few things to help reset my relationship to my phone and reclaim my attention.

I bought a cheap wristwatch, turned off all push notifications and sound alerts, and deleted news apps and YouTube from my phone. 

My old-school watch allows me to check the time without opening any portals to overwhelm. (It instead opens up more play time with my cat Marshmello!)

I also started experimenting with digital mini-sabbaths throughout my day: I purposely put physical distance between me and my phone when I walked the kids to school (and back), when I sat outside to eat lunch, and when I charged my phone in the kitchen at the end of the day and throughout the night. 

It was embarrassingly difficult at first, and even emotionally and physically painful at times. I initially felt even more anxiety, as my familiar state of hypervigilance searched for stimuli to maintain its biochemical homeostasis. I felt guilty for withdrawing my energy from tragedies happening halfway around the world, for not following the play-by-play struggles of people I would never meet. 

Then, after some more time, my system started to recalibrate. (Thank you, neuroplasticity!)

It was like I could feel myself slowly returning to my factory settings, to my innate ability to notice and appreciate the world around me, to the life right in front of me, to the animal body I inhabit. The energy I used to spend on tracking remote news developments, reacting to the endless cycle of collective hysteria, and posting/reposting as a form of “activism” has been repurposed.

I now bring embodied attention to my life and community as much as I can, meeting with people in person and looking them in the eye as we talk about our concerns and visions. 

I read the Sunday paper with my kids. We hold and look at the pages together, instead of them looking at me as I scroll through news on my phone.

I breathe more deeply, experiencing a fuller aliveness as I walk back from school in the mornings, noticing the angle of the sunlight and the new growth on Old Shaggy, one of my favorite neighborhood trees I have nicknamed.

Roseway Neighborhood Elder, aka Old Shaggy

I am starting to feel like a full person again instead of a digital zombie.


If you are feeling tyrannized by devices and media, if you are feeling disconnected from others, the world around you, and even yourself, I invite you to join me for my upcoming sessions as we take a digital break and explore what makes us feel alive and fully human.

And in the likely event that you are reading this on your phone, I gently nudge you to put it away now and go do something else for a few minutes while you let this message sink in ;)

UPCOMING SESSIONS:

As always, please contact me with any questions, suggestions, or ideas.

I hope to connect with you soon!

When we rest together, we heal and we thrive,

Stacy

Stacy Carleton
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