The painful reality about the seriousness of cell phone usage while going through a tough time

I want to share my realization about my own trauma. I’m a 35 F who grew up like many of us, right at the dawn of technology. I gradually had more and more technology introduced ending with the worst invention (for me personally), the smartphone. The smartphone was my demise even before my trauma happened. What a stimulating, thoughtless way to distract from all my issues. What an easy tool to use to get mass amount of attention from men when my confidence was at its lowest growing up. What a way to distract me from emotional pain. I was fortunate to have a stable upbringing and foundation for life, so scrolling was there but not something that affected my life.

Years pass and I have kids and a family and then a little over a year ago my life changed in the matter of 15 mins. Since then, I’ve been through the highs and lows and sorrow of recovery and finding myself. I’ve made progress and I’m beyond proud. But out of all the unhealthy habits I’ve created or I was numb to the one that remains is this stupid fucking phone. I break through consumerism and my hollow need to buy. I stop ordering from amazon and stop running out to shop when I’m sad. I look within myself and take accountability in life. I heal in small chunks and find myself in beautiful ways. I repair my relationship with my parents and try with intention to break generational trauma within my own parenting. I have massive meaningful moments. But guess what’s still holding onto me? This phone.

The saddest moment and how this all clicked was my daughter took a photo of me on her toy camera without me knowing. A couple weeks later I’m cleaning up and curiously look at the pictures. There I was on the couch scrolling on my phone ignoring the two babies I love the most. I had tears welled in my eyes while scrolling you can clearly see like I was being forced to scroll. I remember that moment. So many things I wanted to do. So much intention trapped in my body unable to move. I’ve scrolled and used this source of cheap dopamine since I was 14, but I could put the phone down to handle things. I might not want to but I could and it felt like free choice. Then quickly after my trauma happened the scrolling trapped my overstimulated traumatized body so many times. Im starting to realize that maybe those people sucked into their phones that everyone writes off and gets annoyed at, maybe they are like me. Maybe they are trapped and screaming inside but can’t move. I hope I can break this cycle one day, but just putting this out there to relate.