are you crying on the inside too?
Maybe, We’re overstimulated…
Reflecting back when my daughter was just a newborn, I remember the long days and nights as I adjusted to becoming a parent. Certain moments were sweet and wonderful as I watched her peacefully sleep and held her in my arms with smiles and cuddles. Other moments were the biggest test of patience in my life, easily knocking my husband and myself off center into a complete meltdown of despair as we tried to calm our wailing baby. One of the full-proof methods which worked like magic to calm our screaming baby was to lock ourselves in a dark closet as a form of sensory deprivation. She was overstimulated from all the action and excitement the simple experience of being alive is. I share this because not long after my daughter grew past the newborn phase and I was able to process my own experience as a new parent, and I began to realize that as adults, we too are overstimulated just like a newborn baby. With reality as it stands, none of us are likely to give ourselves a break to sit in a dark closet on an ordinary day, although maybe some of us have tried. Have you ever tested out one of those float tank experiences perhaps?
our attention is our most valuable asset
When we become overwhelmed by life and overstimulated by the constant stimulus and response we have to answer to throughout our day: emails, text messages, zoom calls, news headlines, errands, showing up for our families and friends, we too become a lesser version of ourselves, maybe even the worst version of ourselves. We may seem composed on the outside, because we’ve mastered the skill of self-regulation, but on the inside we are crying like a baby, screaming to get out of our commitments and engagements, to just simply get a break. And the reality is even if we “seem” composed, we are taking up so much mental and emotional energy to function that we forget what it means to be fully present and intentional with our life. We lose the chance of giving our best selves to the activities and people we love the most in life.
Unfortunately, the tech industry as a whole has mastered the craft of captivating and capitalizing on our attention. Netflix has excelled at creating binge-worthy tv shows to watch, Twitter maximizes on doom scrolling, the news runs sensationally terrifying breaking headlines on repeat, and Instagram and Tik Tok offer us those fun little bite-sized viral reels. More so, our work cultures capitalize on responsiveness with email, Slack messages, and being fully present for every Zoom call, making the lines of when work ends and life begins blurred. Even our smartphones have us hooked before we wake by being the easiest tool to use as an alarm clock. How simple it is to wake up by the phone charging on my nightstand, ignore saying good morning to the love of my life, and instead become glued to a screen for every waking minute of the rest of my day, every day. Sound familiar? There is endless stimulation everywhere. Yet, it is becoming harder and harder to unplug and simply just “be” for a moment. To take a mental vacation.
As humans we are constantly scanning our environment. It is a survival instinct embedded within us to sense and take in as much information as we can around us. The human mind is incredibly competent at this skill with a processing capacity of 120 bits per second. The amount of information we are taking in just by being alive and conscious is astonishing. This awareness, brings a much more concerning question I have for ourselves and for our children. Are rates of attention deficit disorder and ADHD going up because something is different in the people diagnosed or is it in the environment we’ve created? It’s no wonder that many of us are suffering with chronic anxiety and restlessness.
Fascinatingly, research shows that techniques in mindfulness and meditation can greatly benefit the symptoms of attention deficit disorders. Mindfulness is the state of being presently aware of the present moment without over-reactivity or judgement.
give yourself a chance to Be
What would it look like to compassionately and actively work against societal norms by carving out an abundance of time to just “be”? Listen to the birds, sit in stillness, meditate, day dream, notice, breathe, exist…it feels luxurious just to imagine. A tenant of happiness is having a sense of time affluence. You have to intentionally take lots of time to do nothing, not out of laziness, but out of an investment in your well-being so that you can show up to life as that happier, calmer, best version of yourself that you can be.
