Disrupting the Distractions

I can always tell when I’m on the verge of some powerful internal shifts because my mind goes into overdrive.

The mind hates change, especially when that change has anything to do with what it has deemed unsafe. And when I hit a really juicy growth edge, my mind goes into full-on panic mode because I’m energetically on the verge of what has been deemed highly unsafe territory.

Suddenly, my mind has one mission: to distract in order to detour. Ideally in a U-turn back to safety.

During these periods, doomscrolling suddenly feels very important. I find myself on Instagram every day (even though I made a promise to myself to only log into my account on Saturdays) because I just need to [fill in the blank with lame excuse my mind has made up]. My mind knows that all I need to do is log in and distraction will follow instantaneously, so it’s fantastic at creating believable enough excuses. At any other time, I’m present enough not to fall for them, but when I’m in panic-mind mode, I have Instagram up in my phone faster than I can take my next breath.

I also find myself suddenly realizing I don’t have [fill in the blank item I don’t own and probably never needed]. The Instagram ads don’t help this. Amazon and next day shipping become hard to resist because if I don’t have this thing tomorrow the world might explode or tariffs might go into effect and if I don’t get it now I might never be able to get it!

There are probably less detectable habits too (breathing shallowly, sitting for far too long, staying inside and refusing to socialize).

What underlies all of this, though, is this electrical feeling in my mind that’s hard to discharge. Really, the moment I start to feel that and stop feeling what’s going on in the rest of my body, I could realize I’m going into panic mode and start to work on supportive measures to help get me through. But usually, it takes the external cues to realize the electrical feeling is back to recognize I need to SLOW DOWN.

What helps?

Take deep breaths. Do my stretch exercises to reactivate my vagus nerve so I can get back into my body (I like the first two stretches in that linked video). Take some time to sit with what I’m feeling so I can process it. If I’m feeling ambitious, I close my eyes for ten minutes and do a real meditation or I go out onto my patio so I can put my hand on the dirt in my garden so I can ground. Sometimes I pull out my tarot cards or a journal to help me dig into what’s going on.

In these periods, even these don’t fully take away the electrical feeling. That only passes once I’m on the other side of whatever I need to grow through. But these help me disrupt the distractions so I can be more present and hopefully get to the other side faster. Or at least more intentionally.