Beyond the breakup: Reflections on my time away from social media

Answering the question I get asked most often these days

Before I begin… have you checked out our program Know Yourself: Self-reflection for Wise Living yet? We’re offering it over four Sundays in June.

Listen to me read the post…

I boarded the ferry feeling a little weary, a little contented, a little worried, and a little nostalgic. I’d just dropped off my sister at the airport after her lovely four-day visit and was heading to the mainland to move my youngest daughter off-campus for the fourth and final time. I looked forward to seeing my daughter but was mildly anxious about what she’d have to process after a year of mental and physical health challenges. Plus, I miss living near my sister and was nostalgic for the grounding of her presence during these times of family transition.

Once on-board, I stood on the deck and snapped a photo of the water churning behind the boat. In that moment, a tinge of grief surfaced as I tucked the phone in my pocket instead of posting the photo on Facebook or Instagram as I would have once done.

It’s the “crowd of witnesses” that I miss most – people with whom I’m mostly in low-investment relationships, but who offer at least a common understanding of what it’s like to be a mom and sister holding these tender relationships close to her heart.

That’s where I want to start this article – to admit first that there have been some losses in my choice to break up with social media. I miss those connections. I miss our shared humanity. I miss the moral support. I miss being seen. And I miss those times when I could do the same for others.

But I don’t miss it enough. I’m not going back. There are more things that I DON’T miss and even more things that I’ve gained.

Here’s what I don’t miss:

• those niggling feelings of insecurity and heightened isolation when a post garnered little engagement,

• worrying that I might use the wrong words and be targeted by an ugly pile-on (or worse, be canceled),

• the way I sometimes felt like I needed to mold myself to fit what was most acceptable/palatable/relatable,

• the way the algorithms were increasingly shaping what could and couldn’t be seen,

• the discomfort over feeding so much of my content into the machines of Big Tech and AI,

• the pressure to be an increasingly savvy (and interesting, sparkly, witty, pithy, provocative, etc.) marketer and social media influencer, especially when trying to draw attention toward the meaningful (and deep) courses we offer at the Centre for Holding Space,

• the pressure to dumb-down the nuance of my thoughts and turn them into fast-food sound bites,

• the performance of wokeness that gets in the way of meaningful, transformative engagement,

• the mindless way I’d slide into those addictive numbed-out hours of scrolling,

• the way my nervous system hooked into the collective activation and I was almost always a little on-edge, and

• the feeling that I was getting sucked back into codependent patterning, overly attached to people’s emotional well-being and response to me and my posts.

It’s been five months now, since I broke up with social media. To be fair, I haven’t broken up completely – I spend time on Substack and YouTube, which are still social media platforms (though they feel different) – but I have been much more intentional about how I show up on the limited platforms I visit. I spend time on Substack only during “work hours” (largely Monday to Friday, 9-5), and I usually visit YouTube in the late evenings when longer-form videos with soothing content (comedy, nature, home renovations, or interesting people living alternative lifestyles) help to transition my overly active brain into sleep mode.

What have I gained? Well, it’s harder to put together a tangible bullet-pointed list on this side of the equation... and that feels like a good thing. The gains feel deeper, more nuanced, more complex, more soul-centred, less transactional, and less reactive.

I don’t know whether I know how to say this eloquently, but I’ll try anyway... One of the most profound gains is that it feels like I’ve made a deliberate movement away from an environment where my nervous system is too often activated into guiding my choices, relationships, and presence toward one where I can be guided more consistently by a calm and reflective pre-frontal cortex. To expand on that, using the language of Internal Family Systems, it feels like I’ve chosen to move out of an environment where the “Firefighters, Exiles and Managers” are constantly trying to take control, to an environment where my Core Self can be more fully online and in the driver’s seat.

Here's what feels different (in my best efforts to turn this into a bullet-pointed-list):

• I feel more connected to myself and more grounded in my own wisdom, trusting myself more and not reacting to the ever-changing moods of social media or other people’s opinions.

• My attention span is lengthening, and I am more often drawn to long-form thought pieces rather than sound bites, letting in the wisdom of reflective people more often than attention-grabbing influencers.

• I am more present and in my body when I am wandering in the woods and connecting deeply with the natural world I live in. I am getting more of my inspiration from trees and birds and less of it from the loudest voices on a social media platform. (I’m sharing some of that inspiration with our paid subscribers.)

• I often find myself deeply immersed, in a way that brings me endless joy, in the research and curiosity involved in developing new material (like the webinars in Leadership for Liminal Spaces) and I know that my mind has greater capacity for joyful, engaged focus and less tolerance for noise.

• I’m clearer about what is my unique work to do in the world and am less inclined to get mired down by comparison, jealousy, or the measurement of my worth against those with bigger platforms.

• I have far fewer moments when I notice that low hum of anxiety that lives somewhere beneath conscious awareness and has no clear cause.

• I feel more grounded and connected in my core relationships and less like I’m getting hooked into trauma-bonding, codependence, or the Drama Triangle with people who aren’t even in my inner circle.

• I feel less caught up in the swirling morass of anxiety, anger, fear, polarization and distrust that is present in the world right now (especially given the political situation in the U.S). I still feel connected to and informed about what’s happening in the world, but since I get my news largely from skilled journalists working for trusted media outlets (or, in some cases, independently on Substack), I feel better able to process it without getting entangled in it.

• And here’s a fun one… I have crocheted six blankets since I left social media. I started crocheting so that I’d have something to grab when I was tempted to pick up my phone. Judging by how productive I’ve been in my evening hours, apparently I was picking up my phone a LOT!

As I look over the list, I realize how closely connected it is to what we refer to as a Grounded Guide in our Leadership for Liminal Spaces program – a person who is emotionally and socially mature and connected, recognizes the impact of the individual on the collective and the collective on the individual, holds a long-sighted view, and is grounded in integrative systemic consciousness.

Does that mean that all of us need to remove ourselves from social media in order to be Grounded Guides? No, I’m not saying that. For one thing, I would never presume to know what each person needs to feel grounded – I’m simply speaking from my personal experience, given my own patterns, weaknesses, and traumas. For another thing, we need Grounded Guides to show up in all kinds of spaces to be able to support and influence people from their own places of grounded wisdom.

I can’t even say with 100% certainty that there is a direct correlation between each item on the list of gains and my movement away from social media. During the same period, I’ve been settling into a new (and deliberately slowed down) life on Vancouver Island and have done some new things to nurture my mental health, so there are other contributing factors. Plus, I’ve moved past my child-raising years and into post-menopause, so my circumstances, hormones, and opportunities for uninterrupted time have also changed.

With all that in context, though, I still maintain – unequivocally - that the movement away from social media has had a positive impact on my mental health, my relational health, my capacity for joy, my ability to focus, my creativity, my connection with the natural world, my grounded sense of self, and my capacity for wise reflection.

It might not be a movement away from social media that helps you to be more grounded, reflective, connected, and calm, but if you think it might help, I encourage you to try (and give it some time so that you can see the greater impact). I also encourage you to seek out greater connection (with yourself, others, Spirit, and Mother Earth) and to spend time in honest and tender self-reflection. (These are all things that we talk about in Know Yourself: Self-reflection for wise living, which we’re offering over 4 Sundays in June.)

Whatever it is you do, I hope you find ways to ground yourself in your humanity, to disentangle yourself from the unhealthiness swirling around in the world, to deepen your connections, to root yourself in the natural world, and to find joy and contentment.

The wobblier the world feels, the more we’re going to need deeply grounded people. I intend to do my best to be one of those people.

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Want to deepen your connections and learn more about what your nervous system needs? Join us for Know Yourself: Self-reflection for wise living.

Want to learn more about what it means to be a Grounded Guide? Join us for the upcoming webinars and study groups in Leadership for Liminal Spaces (and get access to the recordings of those we’ve already done).

Want to receive weekly Notes from the Path, where I share the inspiration I get from trees and birds? Sign up for a paid membership on Substack.