A couple of times a year, I drive about two hours outside of the city to take a few days for myself. I tend to have high hopes for these trips - that I'll be able to relax and focus on ME for a little while. But I've noticed that, while the time I spend away from home is usually fairly relaxing, it's not necessarily very helpful overall. And what I mean by that is - I'd like for these trips to help me really tune into what matters most to me, and I've found that I tend to spend most of the time distracting myself from my own thoughts and feelings, under the guise of relaxing.
So I decided to treat last week's trip a little bit differently. I know that one of my main methods of distraction is screen time, and I seem to always have the goal of spending less time on my phone and my laptop. But lately I haven't been able to tear myself away from my screens. I think when my anxiety flared in October, I did whatever I thought would help me to feel better, and a lot of the time that meant providing my brain with some sort of distraction. There were a few times when I let myself truly feel the feelings, but it got to be a bit overwhelming so most of the time it was about managing my anxiety as best I could.
I was going to have two full days to myself on my mini-vacation, so I decided to see how much of that time I could spend off screens. I spent most of the first day screen-free, and journaled for quite some time throughout the day. It felt so good to let whatever thoughts and feelings I was having come to the surface, although I was definitely doing more thinking than feeling, as per usual. I did have some screen time in the middle of the day - it seemed to make it easier to go without it, knowing that I'd be able to 'check in' electronically, at a pre-determined time. I also noticed that I was able to resist the temptation much more easily in the morning than in the afternoon. And the first day went more smoothly than the second day - I tried not to beat myself up too badly about that.
Overall I was happy with how the trip went - I felt like it went more like I always envisioned these trips than any other trip before it. As I was getting ready to leave, I of course thought about how I'd be able to continue to work on decreasing my screen-time once I was back to my real life. I also started to not feel well my last night out of town, which wasn't great. But I feel like it made sense - I had let a lot of emotional 'stuff' come to the surface, and my body was probably a bit overwhelmed by it all. I tried not to beat myself up too much about it, and to be honest, I let myself be distracted by my screens a bit on and off once I got home. By this past weekend I was feeling a bit better, so I stayed off my phone and laptop most of the day on Saturday and Sunday, distracting myself with TV as I laid on the couch to rest. I've got a big week coming up, so my priority is getting myself back to 100% physically.
I think the most important thing that my self-imposed silent retreat taught me is to be aware of when I'm distracting myself, and that I have a choice when it comes to whether I want to distract myself, or I want to allow my thoughts and feelings to surface. I think in this life we need both, but I definitely want to decrease the time I spend distracting myself going forward. I'm excited to figure out a way to do that that will work for me.
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