What in the what am I thinking?? Social Media Detox for Lent

I decided about a month ago that I was going to finally take the plunge. No, I am not going to go ice hiking with Hof and dunk my body into an ice vat. Yes, I am taking a detox from social media... my new chocolate ... my new addiction.

I realized that over the last year the amount of time I was spending opening up Facebook and Instagram on my phone was growing exponentially. It's natural because as we make friends, we want to connect. When we connect, we get that big jolt to our reward center. As a fourth generation alcoholic, that's not something that works for me in the healthiest way. My drinking was big in my youth, and I left it behind. However as my need for social media was growing, my need for just a little bit of cider, or whiskey, or rum was also growing. It was apparently clear to me that this addiction to social media was a gateway drug.

So I started prepping. I do business online, which means I wanted to create and schedule content for my followers. As well, I also wanted to prepare myself with an agenda of "things to do". About a week before Lent (which starts tomorrow) I decided to just go ahead and take the apps off my phone. I felt like someone had cut my arm off. It was an awful wake up to how dependent on that fix I had become.

I started trying to tune into what my body was feeling, and I also may have carb loaded through some of the emotions I was going through. It's not unusual for an addict to replace their drug of choice with sugar. This is why the focus for recovery is a healthier way of eating. Sugar is also a gateway drug.

I will keep you all updated as I go through this journey, but so far I am talking in a more complex and concrete manner with my friends. I am learning to ask for what I need, and share how I am feeling without gifs. I am going to be doing a meditation a day, and trying to add a short yoga sequence into my workout program (which has been put off for a week because I had hormones injected into my right butt cheek... more on that to come soon). It will be interesting to see how much I downsize my social media interactions when I return. At this point I may not want to put the apps back on my phone because I am starting to feel the release.

I will say that today as I was waiting for a video to finish encoding for a new project I am working on, I opened a new tab and clicked on Facebook. I immediately closed it and was in shock and awe that I had created this programming of not being able to have the patience to even sit with my feelings for a minute or two. This has come up a lot in my life recently, this idea of understanding that timing is what it is, and patience is part of that program. You may feel like you are already there, and rush into something rather than taking the time to process how you feel and make your choices worth it. This is another lesson that I will have a lot of gratitude for as this detox completes.

So I will be finished on April 9th, and until then from time to time I will update on how I am. Wish me luck, and learning, because it is time to transform this programming into something more aligned with my holistic desires.