Mainlining Self-Help

I’m strung out from trying to solve the self with online content.

Each evening, after dinner and before crawling into bed, I do a gentle yoga practice followed by seated meditation. In my darkened room, listening to wind in trees, I exhale, quiet my senses, settle.

The frenetic, too-fast hum of body, mind, and emotions doesn’t turn off like a light switch. I arrive at a meditative state gradually, moving through layers. First, I ask myself how I’m feeling now that I’ve stepped away from work and distraction. I trace the texture of that feeling. I ask what’s underneath. Curious, I follow along until I arrive at the heart of it. What felt like anger turns out to be fear. What felt like fear turns out to be sadness. 

Next, I review the day’s words, thoughts, energetics, and actions. Taking personal inventory, I ask: What was I up to when I said or did this thing or that? What was my conscious but especially subconscious agenda? Where was I careless rather than careful? Where was I reactive instead of responsive? How could I show up differently? These questions help me answer the biggest question of all: How could I live more beautifully?

Only after locating the feeling beneath the feeling and the energetics beneath any words, thoughts, or deeds can I truly exhale. From there, my mind and heart open and expand. From there emerge unexpected memories and new revelations. From there, without fail, I feel love, compassion, forgiveness, serenity. 

Resting into this place, I connect with self but am no longer subsumed by self. My heart extends outwards—to others from my present and past, to beings known and unknown, to the vast sea of spirit surrounding us. 

I don’t know who I’d be without this practice. It teaches, guides, and transforms me. It’s the most tuned-in, intuitive time of my day.

And lately, it feels under threat.

Mostly, I’m a minimalist. I own few material possessions, prefer close friendships over anything resembling a social life, wear the same clothes and eat the same foods day in and day out. I love silence. And empty rooms. And solitude. All this brings me lightness and spaciousness. All this creates space for feeling, knowing, receiving, creating.

And yet, when it comes to online consumption, the situation gets complicated. 

On one hand, I’m a minimalist in digital realms too. I keep my phone on airplane mode except to make calls. I keep my laptop folders organized and updated. I’ve either quit or never joined the major social media platforms. I don’t use streaming services or watch television or videos. I curate what I consume online with a close eye on its impact. 

That curation includes content that makes my life richer and better: essays on sobriety and recovery, think pieces that challenge either/or narratives, and newsletter after newsletter by writers who help me see, feel, and experience things in new ways and expand my perspective. I love that. I crave that. And…

Lately, even that feels like too much. How do I know? As with everything else in my life, nightly meditation is a faithful barometer. 

These days, moving through the layers to reach a meditative, spacious, receptive state requires more focus and takes much longer. I might be seated and still, but my body-mind-spirit is buzzing. Bouncing from one self-help message and practice to the next. Cycling through the teachings I’ve consumed and all the things I should work on. Cycling through other peoples and places and crises and causes. And don’t forget celebrities, skincare, and snark.

It’s all in there. The scroll doesn’t stop when we close down our screens. 

And while I consider the vast majority of what I consume online to be supportive, important, and valuable, too much consumption is still too much, whatever the content. It leaves no room. Not for receiving, processing, and integrating. Not for synthesizing, alchemizing, and creating. Not for spirit. Even small doses of constant noise, consumption, and striving leave no room for spirit. That takes a toll.

And hey, I’m a participant on both ends of this. I create content for others to consume as part of my livelihood. Sharing that content brings me joy and helps give my life meaning.

But the crux of the matter is this: Even if we consume online content with conscious consideration and care, humans can only take in, process, and utilize so much at once. What we consume has a massive impact on our health and wellbeing. But so does the quantity and velocity of that consumption.

Image of me by Bobbi Barbarich

We can’t solve ourselves through consumption. 

Part of this—at least for me—is tangled up in addiction. Addiction to online consumption and engagement. Addiction to the promise and pursuit of approval. Addiction to solving ourselves and others.

I’m so sorry, but we can’t. We can’t solve us. We can’t solve the self.

Sure, we can learn and grow and transform and commit to living more beautifully. Sure, online content and community can support us in this. But at the end of the day, you’re not a problem to solve. You’re a human, being and becoming. You will keep being and becoming until your last breath.

Trying to define and construct and control and compare and improve…well, it won’t work. It won’t bring us to some final conclusion. It won’t create safety or certainty. It won’t decipher what’s unknown and ineffable. And it certainly won’t let us check life, others, and self off the list. 

In the push to prove and improve, we’re moving away from ourselves, not closer. The result? We’re left feeling lacking.

This sort of existential reckoning isn’t confined to online spaces, of course. But the quantity and velocity of life in this online dimension adds unprecedented delusion and distortion. And no matter what we’re consuming—no matter how self-help-y and wholesome and pressing the content—we’re buying into a game we can’t win and the illusion of urgency. 

Urgency is a destroyer of clear thinking, wise action, serenity.

And I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to turn the scroll off. My laptop is closed but the absurd juxtaposition of content keeps churning away in my mind. How to communicate better with my partner. How to sort through and acknowledge my biases. What’s Taylor Swift up to lately? How many kids are dying in Gaza? Can you believe that guy’s comment? Should I change up my skincare routine?

Of course some of these questions are worlds more important than others. That’s part of the problem. Because the sheer quantity and speed at which they’re being raised—the fact that they’re zipping by with everything else—makes it impossible to give them the attention, weight, and care they deserve.

The scroll on my device becomes the scroll in my head, leaving me stressed out, unfocused, and scattered. If the goal is to connect with myself versus solve myself, scrolling leaves me more disconnected than ever.

Performing the self won’t solve it either. 

One reason it’s so hard to extricate ourselves from this is because, like any addiction, it’s wrapped up in identity. We’re invested in the online presence we’re continuously constructing, proclaiming, and defending. We’re performing it constantly. To others. To self.

This performance includes what we consume, what we share, and how we present. Posts. Comments. Likes. What we listen to, watch, read, and repeat. There’s no separation between creator-content-consumer. It’s a symbiotic relationship where all parts define and depend on the rest.

And so, we imagine our Brand into being. And so, we conflate that Brand with real life and the whole of us.

Trafficking in these virtual realms comes at a price, and we pay that price when we’re offline too. It takes the cult of individualism and the facade of collectivism to whole new extremes. It insists we’re the main character even when we’re performing community. 

It cuts us off from our body, our breath, our spirit and the body, breath, and spirit of others. Not fully or forever, maybe. But there’s a separation that occurs each time we enter our screens. And the more often we do it, the less capable we become of even realizing the impact on perception and senses. 

Before we know it, we’re living inside our minds and our minds have merged with the scroll. We justify it. We perpetuate it. It’s an addiction.

Step away from the scroll, make space for spirit.

So, where to from here? How do we find our way home to ourselves and make more space for spirit? To be frank, I’m not sure. I still struggle. But I have absolute faith in the power of silence and the practice of mindfulness. 

When I practice yoga. When I walk in Nature without my phone or a podcast. When I meditate in a dark, quiet room at the end of each day. That’s where I find spaciousness, expansion, connection, and insight. That’s where I get past the noise and finally settle. Not on the screen, not in the scroll.

This is perhaps why many fear and avoid silence, solitude, stillness. Beyond the noise and distraction lies reckoning.

And when I say I have faith in this—that I have faith in the practice—I mean that even just being still and quiet long enough to notice and know already changes things. It’s why I curate my online time carefully. It’s why I quit Facebook and Instagram. It’s why the ways in which I show up online and offline are changing. 

Is this process comfortable? No, not at first and not always. But by staying put and learning to breathe through that discomfort, it eases. And the serenity that emerges on the other side is wholly different from dulling and numbing the surface. 

Instead of a loss of our sensory capacity and loss of our very humanity, we find more in this place. More connection to self and others. More sensitivity, intuition, and clarity. More capacity to step out of our screens and our small little worlds. More capacity to remember a love that transcends the scroll and our stories.

Here then lies the irony: online spaces promise connection, but we often find deeper, fuller connection by stepping away from those spaces.

More and more, I’m choosing that option—the one back to what’s real and right here. Not in our devices. Not on our screens. And not in the frenetic, frantic energy that makes us lose touch with our hearts and humanity. Put simply, it feels better in this place. Noticing that, I want more of it. I want less scrolling, consumption, performance, addiction.

Image of me by Bobbi Barbarich (2017)

Are you sacrificing your soul for the scroll?

I’d love to hear your experience with all this and invite you to share in the comments: 

• How does the time you spend online impact your physical body, your mind and thoughts, and your connection to spirit? (It’s okay if you don’t know—many of us, including myself, are still learning about the true impact of being online.)

• Does the scroll actually stop when you step away from the screen? 

• What price do you pay for online consumption and performance? Is it worth it?

• How much are you willing to pay? Where does it end?

Those are suggestions. Feel free to freestyle. Just please keep your shares about you and your experience (no unsolicited advice, please).

And before you go, please tap the little ♡. It offers “social proof” and lets others know there’s something useful here. The more people become paying subscribers, the more time I can devote to Sober Soulful, which I consider my most magical, most meaningful work.