30 Day Media Detox, Week 3
Last week there was something I needed to do but I couldn't force myself to do it, because I was consumed by worry. So made a bargain with myself. I would do the thing if I could watch In Treatment as I did it.
In Treatment is a TV show about a therapist and his patients. I find it fascinating.
Watching it got the job done, and I don't regret it. I think that in some cases, controlled doses of entertainment should be allowed if it helps move things forward. After all, I'm doing a media detox to get rid of the harmful effects of media, not the beneficial ones.
After that I made a mistake. Maybe In Treatment was too interesting a show to pick to watch, because after I got the job done, I couldn't stop watching. I was so invested and interested in the characters and storylines. Since I'm hoping to work as a therapist myself, it felt like I was learning a lot about the work from the show.
Which is also fine. Learning is good. I think that there are very beneficial media resources that can help us immensely with learning.
Unfortunately though, I was using learning as an excuse to justify that I was escaping and avoiding the issues that made me consumed with worry. After getting that job done and maybe also learning a little bit, I should have turned the TV off and gone back to what am I going to do about my real life problems then.
I didn't. All the worry proved to be too painful. I didn't have the energy to deal with it. So I kept watching In Treatment up to the point where it wasn't educational anymore but just a coping mechanism that made me gradually feel worse and worse and worse.
I realized what was going on on the fifth day of watching. I was feeling so rotten and suddenly I just thought, wait a minute. I keep thinking that this is helping me, but it's making things worse, isn't it? And I stopped watching.
It was like a huge sigh of relief.
And when I went back to my list of worries (yes, I'd made an actual list), I realized that there was one worry that was much bigger than the others. I realized that if I focused on solving that one, it would make life bearable again.
When it comes to my media addiction, bottom line is, life is painful. There are conflicts, disappointments, struggles, difficult emotions. And I go online, or escape into books and movies because I can't handle it. It becomes too much.
When I started my detox, I was forced to look at my actual life. The life outside the internet, the social media, the smart phone. I was faced with my actual life situations: the state of my relationships, how things are at "work", how my health is doing, whether I'm really satisfied and happy (I'm not).
At first it felt empowering. Finally I can take my life back into my own hands and make some changes!
Very quickly, I started feeling burdened, incapable, crushed. The changes that I started making didn't bring immediate results. More like the changes made things worse. I failed in many ways. I was very disappointed and sad.
It's not working, I thought. I can't do this. This is too hard.
For example, I was faced with the truth that I don't like the apartment where we're living and I really want to move. I want to live in a tiny house and have a garden. So we started looking into that and I was really excited!
After a while though, the excitement started fading away as we were faced with different challenges. For one, we haven't found a plot that would be even remotely satisfactory. I had imagined this beautiful calm place that was within a manageable distance of my partner's work as well as affordable and fit for a tiny house.
What I was faced with was a ton of restrictions, regulations and issues. The house has to look a certain way. You need to build a road first in order to even get to the plot. There's no running water. There's no privacy. There are some sort of demonic energies and a place called Black Hill where goats were sacrificed in questionable rituals. You name it.
Also apparently it's not as simple as buying a plot and the house and that's it. I mean it can be, but in most cases it's not. Even if you don't have to build a road, you almost always have to build a foundation for the house and sometimes there's no running water or electricity which means you have to either build that or go self-sufficient (which is much more expensive than it sounds).
And this is only one problem. As I quit media, I was faced with like five of these big ones (and several minor ones). All seemingly needing immediate action. All resulting in major disappointment. Making me understand deeply why I was so media addicted in the first place. I mean, life is just ridiculous! Who can live it? Have you seen modern life? It's completely impossible to live in a healthy, happy way.
I know it's not impossible. Just extremely difficult.
Of course, I might already be living my life in a healthy, happy way if I didn't escape it into media addiction in the first place. But I did and now I'm faced with all the damage.
Or what if my media addiction was never an escape? What if the addiction is actually what's kept me in pain?
This week I had a breakthrough. I realized that my media addiction is basically the result of not being able to solve any of my life's problems. (Had a déjà vu here. I remember already writing about this topic a few years ago.) So what I really need is to learn to problem-solve, embrace the fear of change and give myself permission to let go of pain. Also, embrace action. Easier said than done, khrm.
Unfortunately due to life, I didn't take notes from media detox, week 4. This is it!
Earlier posts about media detox:
30 Day Media Detox, Week 1
30 Day Media Detox, Week 2
In Treatment is a TV show about a therapist and his patients. I find it fascinating.
Watching it got the job done, and I don't regret it. I think that in some cases, controlled doses of entertainment should be allowed if it helps move things forward. After all, I'm doing a media detox to get rid of the harmful effects of media, not the beneficial ones.
After that I made a mistake. Maybe In Treatment was too interesting a show to pick to watch, because after I got the job done, I couldn't stop watching. I was so invested and interested in the characters and storylines. Since I'm hoping to work as a therapist myself, it felt like I was learning a lot about the work from the show.
Which is also fine. Learning is good. I think that there are very beneficial media resources that can help us immensely with learning.
Unfortunately though, I was using learning as an excuse to justify that I was escaping and avoiding the issues that made me consumed with worry. After getting that job done and maybe also learning a little bit, I should have turned the TV off and gone back to what am I going to do about my real life problems then.
I didn't. All the worry proved to be too painful. I didn't have the energy to deal with it. So I kept watching In Treatment up to the point where it wasn't educational anymore but just a coping mechanism that made me gradually feel worse and worse and worse.
 |
| Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash |
I realized what was going on on the fifth day of watching. I was feeling so rotten and suddenly I just thought, wait a minute. I keep thinking that this is helping me, but it's making things worse, isn't it? And I stopped watching.
It was like a huge sigh of relief.
And when I went back to my list of worries (yes, I'd made an actual list), I realized that there was one worry that was much bigger than the others. I realized that if I focused on solving that one, it would make life bearable again.
When it comes to my media addiction, bottom line is, life is painful. There are conflicts, disappointments, struggles, difficult emotions. And I go online, or escape into books and movies because I can't handle it. It becomes too much.
When I started my detox, I was forced to look at my actual life. The life outside the internet, the social media, the smart phone. I was faced with my actual life situations: the state of my relationships, how things are at "work", how my health is doing, whether I'm really satisfied and happy (I'm not).
At first it felt empowering. Finally I can take my life back into my own hands and make some changes!
Very quickly, I started feeling burdened, incapable, crushed. The changes that I started making didn't bring immediate results. More like the changes made things worse. I failed in many ways. I was very disappointed and sad.
It's not working, I thought. I can't do this. This is too hard.
For example, I was faced with the truth that I don't like the apartment where we're living and I really want to move. I want to live in a tiny house and have a garden. So we started looking into that and I was really excited!
After a while though, the excitement started fading away as we were faced with different challenges. For one, we haven't found a plot that would be even remotely satisfactory. I had imagined this beautiful calm place that was within a manageable distance of my partner's work as well as affordable and fit for a tiny house.
What I was faced with was a ton of restrictions, regulations and issues. The house has to look a certain way. You need to build a road first in order to even get to the plot. There's no running water. There's no privacy. There are some sort of demonic energies and a place called Black Hill where goats were sacrificed in questionable rituals. You name it.
Also apparently it's not as simple as buying a plot and the house and that's it. I mean it can be, but in most cases it's not. Even if you don't have to build a road, you almost always have to build a foundation for the house and sometimes there's no running water or electricity which means you have to either build that or go self-sufficient (which is much more expensive than it sounds).
And this is only one problem. As I quit media, I was faced with like five of these big ones (and several minor ones). All seemingly needing immediate action. All resulting in major disappointment. Making me understand deeply why I was so media addicted in the first place. I mean, life is just ridiculous! Who can live it? Have you seen modern life? It's completely impossible to live in a healthy, happy way.
I know it's not impossible. Just extremely difficult.
Of course, I might already be living my life in a healthy, happy way if I didn't escape it into media addiction in the first place. But I did and now I'm faced with all the damage.
Or what if my media addiction was never an escape? What if the addiction is actually what's kept me in pain?
This week I had a breakthrough. I realized that my media addiction is basically the result of not being able to solve any of my life's problems. (Had a déjà vu here. I remember already writing about this topic a few years ago.) So what I really need is to learn to problem-solve, embrace the fear of change and give myself permission to let go of pain. Also, embrace action. Easier said than done, khrm.
Unfortunately due to life, I didn't take notes from media detox, week 4. This is it!
 |
| Photo by Ava Sol on Unsplash |
Earlier posts about media detox:
30 Day Media Detox, Week 1
30 Day Media Detox, Week 2
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