Logging out of Instagram, Logging in to Life
A few months ago, I was feeling incredibly unsatisfied with my perfectly good life. I was at the point of bouts of depressive episodes, imagining death situations, and generally feeling an incapability to show up to my daily life.
So, I went to therapy. Again.
I know it’s time to go back when functioning on a day to day basis feels overwhelming, and frankly, unnecessary. With a two-year-old in tow, this is not an ideal place to find yourself in. Giving up on life was not an option this time.
Ah, sweet freedom. I’ve left the little one at home and I get to drive peacefully to therapy. I get to order a takeaway coffee, while scrolling Instagram, and I get to wait in the waiting room in silence, wondering if I should post a story with my coffee, and say that I’m going to therapy. I decide not to, I think. Maybe I’ll do it after as a pat on my own back for indulging in self-care. Let’s see.
In the first session it becomes evident how much of my life is centered around Instagram. Though I kept reiterating what love and light I’ve found on this platform, it was also clear to both me and my therapist that the space and my addictive affinity towards it was not doing me as much good as I’d like to believe.
Part of the break that I needed was to remind myself that I am not, that I cannot be, and that I do not have to be a perfect mother. I had always thought that because I was following positive accounts and people, that it couldn’t have a negative effect on me. It turns out that an overload of positive messaging can completely make you feel like you’ll never live up to the high standards being set by a collective on social media.
The end result is that together, we decided I should log out for a while to catch my breath. To see how life feels, you know…out in the real world. How motherhood feels when I step away from the collective of shoulds. How the world looks to me beyond the aesthetics of a good filter and square frame.
I do post a story after all, elusive as such, saying “taking a break”.
I’m well aware that I have no self-control when it comes to Instagram, as time has proven, and so I deactivate my account to assure I take the break.
Let me tell you this, withdrawal is real. The first few days without Instagram feltl empty, numbing and mind bogglingly boring. Even in the moments that I’m not consciously thinking of it, my fingers find their own way to my phone and next thing I know I’ve opened the app. I find myself with all this time suddenly, and I can’t imagine that I used to spend this same amount of time on Instagram. Any moment that I’m not doing something, I feel incapable of settling into nothingness. Incapable of just being. Incapable of simply witnessing the life in front of me.
It takes a few days to move through the intensity of this, and then I start seeking alternatives. Before I know it, I’m jumping from Pinterest to YouTube, almost unknowingly, looking for busyness to occupy my eyes and my mind.
We’re a few weeks in and though I haven’t entirely made peace with doing nothing and simply witnessing my life, I do feel a lightness. I feel satisfied again. I’m not imagining death situations. And slowly but surely, I feel capable again of showing up in my daily functioning.
I wish the story ended here and that I lived happily ever after without Instagram.
It does not.
As far as the addictive nature goes for me, once life felt better, I thought it a good time to dive back in again and reactivate my account. I can handle it, I think.
Ah the high of endless scrolling is just like no other. Especially after such a long time away. There’s so much to catch up on, so much to see, so much music and delight and unsolicited advice to drown in. I do it all. Every day and every night. And for weeks it feels so good, it hits the sweet spot, even though I know I’m overdoing it, but I just can’t stop!
Until I wake up one Tuesday morning feeling rotten. The whole day it follows me around. Fatigue, sadness, overwhelm, laziness, lifelessness.
Is it Covid, I wonder…?
And then as nighttime falls, it hits me. Here. We. Are. Again.
I’ve done it to myself again. I’ve let a virtual world take over, again. I’ve allowed my beautiful and very real life to fade away, while I was glued to my screen when I genuinely didn’t need to be. I was incapable of control, yet again. I feel awful about myself as I realize this, and I’m running through what to do next. Do I call my therapist in the morning?
I take a deep breath, and I take a moment to note how utterly awful and pathetic I have felt over the last few days. I felt insecure on the deepest level. I felt ugly. I felt unworthy. I felt lazy and bad. I was slipping away from even the easiest tasks in my day to day as they just felt all too much.
I had a deep understanding that my incapability to not unconsciously go onto Instagram a million times a day, was to blame for this.
So, what will I do with this knowledge, and how will it be different?
Ready for a cliché?
That night I go to bed, and am faced with the first opportunity to replace scrolling with something else. I meditate.
The next morning, I am faced with another opportunity to replace scrolling with something else. I meditate.
Don’t worry, I don’t meditate every single time, but I do take a moment to be mindful as soon as the impulse to scroll arises, and I urge myself to fall back in love with the sweetness of doing nothing, of simply being, of simply witnessing. And possibly most of all, I remind myself how much it sucks to feel hate towards myself, and why would I continue to interact with something in a way that makes me feel so low, so lifeless?
It’s been a good few days that I have mindfully turned away from scrolling. I think I can find some control this time. The app is right there, on my phone, and my fingers haven’t found their way there yet. Instead I’m busy finding pockets of light in my real life, filling scrolling time with dancing in the kitchen (undocumented), watching my daughter play (undocumented), reading and writing, thinking and dreaming, breathing and being, and finding my way back to love with myself.
Back to love, back to myself.
Afterword:
I wrote this piece to share my personal experience of feeling addicted to Instagram, and witnessing how it has affected my mental health in a very real way, in the hopes that anyone else feeling this way may consider their relationship with the platform as well. This experience is certainly not true for everyone, many people have no addictive tendencies toward the platform, but if you do and it is negatively affecting you, it’s okay to seek help and take a step back.
Photo credits: Sophie Smith Photography
Gente Portman