Setting Smart Boundaries Around your Use of Technology
Parts of this episode contain discussion about addiction and/or substance abuse. If you or someone you know is dealing with addiction or substance abuse, there is help: Substance Abuse National Helpline 1-800-662-HELP (4357)
How’s your phone? Good? You might just have it in your hand right now, right? Well, if you’re in the camp that feels your phone behavior is getting in the way of, you know, living your life, the community comes to the rescue today.
Along the way, Pete has a bit of a rant on using the word "Addiction" when describing our use of technology. Yes, he feels strongly about it. No, he's not an Addiction expert. But he does have some people who are experts who are as frustrated as he is about the use of the word. Our collective hope today, though, is that you hear a different perspective that might give you a new lens through which to view your own use of technology without reducing your agency when it comes to getting it under control.
Special thanks to Matt Raekelboom for giving us permission to use the audio from one of his TikTok videos in this week's show. You can check out our last episode with Matt here, and if you don't have a social media issue you're trying to get under control, visit his Insta here.
Links & Notes
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Pete Wright:
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Taking Control: the ADHD Podcast on True Story FM. I'm Pete Wright and I'm here with Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, hello everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
Oh, I like to say when I see my wife holding onto her phone she's doing something, I always assume she's doing something from me.
Nikki Kinzer:
Really?
Pete Wright:
Like a text from me, and I like to say that she just can't put me down, and that makes it easier for me.
Nikki Kinzer:
When she's really just playing a game or doing something.
Pete Wright:
Who knows what she's doing?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, right.
Pete Wright:
Who knows? Yeah, so how's your phone game right now? Feel pretty good?
Nikki Kinzer:
I don't play games on my phone, but I sure do on my iPad.
Pete Wright:
Oh, yeah. Well, that's good. It's an isolated activity. It's good that it's a bespoke device for gaming. You sit on your couch. You put on your crime shows and you play some Candy Crush?
Nikki Kinzer:
I play kind of like Candy Crush, very similar, but it's called something else, and then I have this like Tetris game that I play all the time where you try to get the rows before you run out of space. It's very similar to Tetris.
Pete Wright:
Okay. All right.
Nikki Kinzer:
But I play those two things all the time.
Pete Wright:
Awesome. Well, we're going to be talking all about your problems today.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay. I'm ready for it.
Pete Wright:
No, in fact we've had a number of people chimed in in a conversation that was started by one of our members in the community about troublesome behavior around phones and social media, and so we're going to take that on. It's not the first time we've taken on something like this, but it is timely, and apparently it's on a lot of people's minds, so we're going to jump into the fray here and share some thoughts and some of your thoughts from the community in this show.
Before we get started, head over to Take Control ADHD to get to know us a little bit better. You can listen to the show right there on the website or subscribe to the mailing list and we will send you an email each time a new episode is released. You can connect with us on Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest at Take Control ADHD, but to really connect with us, join us in the ADHD Discord Community. Fantastic place and it's super easy to jump into the general community chat channel. Just visit takecontroladhd.com/discord. You will be whisked over to the general invitation and login.
And if you're really looking for a little bit more, if this show's ever connected with you and you're interested in supporting it and getting access to some other goodies along the way, you can do that. For a few bucks a month you can join the ADHD membership community right now. It's hosted on Patreon to give us listener supported podcasting. For a few dollars a month you help guarantee that we continue to grow the show, add new features, and invest more heavily in our community. Visit patreon.com/theadhdpodcast to learn more, and you know what time it is, Nikki. It's the new year.
Nikki Kinzer:
It is.
Pete Wright:
You know how excited I get about the new year, because I get to talk about my favorite invisible tool in my tool chest. That's TextExpander.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
This week's episode is brought to you by TextExpander, one of the best invisible tools in my tool chest. This tool is always there running in the background, waiting for me to type an abbreviation or a snippet, in TextExpander parlance. When TextExpander sees the snippet it goes to work, instantly expanding from just a few characters on my keyboard to words, sentences, paragraphs, calculations, entire pages of text. It's amazing. It's super easy to do. You find something that you type over and over and over again, and you add it to the TextExpander library. You save it in that library so that when you type the abbreviation for that batch of text, it will expand anywhere text is accepted on your computer. It's absolutely incredible.
You can even share it. You can get your whole team or your whole family to access the content they need to use every day. You can organize it by department or group if you're in a work setting. It's just fantastic, and I have one simple tip for all you TextExpander adopters out there this new year. 'Tis the season to use date snippets. People, if you're like me and you're left to your own devices, you're typing 2022 over and over and over again, in every email, in every meeting request. You're typing 2022 because it's in your fingers, but if you use TextExpander's handy date snippets, anywhere you insert a date into your writing, you're going to get the right date, every time.
TextExpander even handles date math for you, so you can add days, hours, minutes, everything with ease, built right into the snippet. It's really, really incredible. You'll never get caught typing the wrong year again. TextExpander is available on Mac, Windows, Chrome, iPad and iPhone and for listeners to the ADHD Podcast you can get 20% off your first year of service. Just visit takecontroladhd.com/textexpander. You'll know you're there because it says "Welcome, Taking Control listeners," and you can redeem your 20% off for the year. The way we work is changing rapidly. Make work work the way your brain works by saying more in less time with less effort using TextExpander. Our great thanks to the TextExpander team for sponsoring the ADHD Podcast.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's fantastic. I like that tip.
Pete Wright:
It's good. Yeah, it's a good tip.
Nikki Kinzer:
It's a good tip, yes.
Pete Wright:
I mean, it doesn't help your fingers. Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
No, but it does help you not do 2022 when it's really 2023.
Pete Wright:
Oh my goodness.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right?
Pete Wright:
If only.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, before we get started on the show, I just want to remind people that we have some upcoming coaching groups, and you can find those coaching groups on our website at Take Control ADHD. We have a couple of them coming up that will be open for enrollment at the end of this month and we'll be starting those groups in February, so check them out and if you have any questions let us know.
Pete Wright:
Absolutely. You can get there. All the wait lists are up on the website. You can wait list for a specific coaching group, so just go into the group coaching section and you can get on those wait lists and be notified right away, right away when they get in there. Okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
Phone, phone, where's your phone?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, so this started as a Discord member post, who posted a request for help in the ADHD support channel on Discord, which is available to patrons at the Deluxe tier and higher. And we should say we don't use anybody's names when talking about Discord or Patreon posts on the show. It is going out publicly and we always get permission from folks when we include posts that are asking for support before we even talk about the post, so this is unnamed and we have permission. So shall we just read the post and launch?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
All right.
Nikki Kinzer:
And you should be the reader, because you are so good at reading.
Pete Wright:
Oh, we have so many reading things today.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and I'll read some of it.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
I won't make you do the whole thing, Pete, because that's not nice.
Pete Wright:
Well, I guess that's really nice. Let's see here. "I think I have an addiction to social media and technology, especially with my phone. Anyone else deal with this? Have you found ways to reduce it? It's so bad that it's affecting my job and life. The problem is one, my phone has become a multi-use tool, communication with my co-workers, alarm clock, et cetera. Two, I set my boundaries but my brain always finds a loophole or does not honor them unless they are instituted and enforced by external force. I don't know what the first steps are that I can take to cut back on it." Okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
This person is the only person that I know that's dealing with this.
Pete Wright:
Yes, we've never heard of this before.
Nikki Kinzer:
We've never heard of it.
Pete Wright:
We're totally alone, which is of course a lie.
Nikki Kinzer:
Of course, because if you go to any public place, let's say a restaurant or a concert, grocery store, shopping mall, you're going to find people on their phones.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right? Everywhere you go, they're on their phones. Now whether they're looking at social media or technology I have no idea, but it is definitely, she's not alone, not alone.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, for sure, and the community jumped in.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
We have a number of folks who jumped in and said things like, "I realized this morning that I need to reinstate the no screens before 8:00 a.m. rule. I want to knit and read books in the morning at eight. When the dog nosed me for her breakfast, I hadn't knit a stitch or read a word that wasn't on a screen." Or, "I love to read, often download books from the library. However, I found that I got very distracted by everything I can access from my iPad when all I really planned to do was use the reading app."
And "I want to reiterate that you are not alone. I definitely got hooked to the iPhone games, which is my biggest time suck on my phone. There are things I'd rather do, even on the phone, but I get distracted with these or other things, and that purchases are such a problem for me. I end up doing the work around, to my work around when I'm getting in a mode." Yes, I'm not entirely sure how to fix that, but I don't think I read it entirely as it was intended. The idea is yeah, we're getting distracted by the stuff that's on our devices.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
So we'll talk about some techniques and suggestions that others have posted in a little bit. First, your take.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, like we said, it's definitely an issue. She's not alone, and I think especially with social media, ADHD already has that time blindness, right, where it's really hard to kind of gauge how much time you're taking to do something, and if you're really into it, the time's going to go by faster, and I think that that's where I see the social media getting to be such a problem, is that you go into it with the intention that you're only going to look at it for a couple of minutes. But then as you're looking at it, and then all of a sudden it's like 20 minutes later, 30 minutes later. It's really easy to let the time go by fast when you're really focused on whatever it is that you're looking at or reading. But yeah, it is an issue, for sure. It's an issue for all of my clients, most of them anyway, and it's something that we talk a lot about in coaching because it does get in the way.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, so I think the universe is conspiring against me, and I feel like I'm the last bastion of people who really want to steer away from calling this phone or social media addiction because addiction is a really specific word. And I've got more I want to talk about related to addiction, but I want to start with just the way CHADD is approaching this stuff and the way the world is kind of acknowledging it.
Nikki Kinzer:
And CHADD is? Children and Adults with ADHD. That's what CHADD stands for.
Pete Wright:
And it still just says ADD. It's not HADHD. Anyway, so what they say is you have unsuccessful attempts to quit or cut back on whatever the behavior is. There are negative consequences, jeopardizing or losing a significant relationship, job, or educational opportunity, or continuation of the behavior despite negative consequences. Do you have anything to add?
Nikki Kinzer:
No.
Pete Wright:
All right, because I have a tirade.
Nikki Kinzer:
I know, I know. I'm ready.
Pete Wright:
I'm ready to launch into my tirade momentarily.
Nikki Kinzer:
I know.
Pete Wright:
The thing that I want to add is that to me, this is the big one, and the big one for ADHD too, that you're compulsively using your devices in potentially an unconscious or subconscious effort to avoid something else. This is the major issue with ADHD, and it results in a lot of ostrich behavior. I don't want to get out of bed. I have trouble making transitions. I pick up my phone and I start scrolling. The dopamine hit gets going and suddenly I can't put it down. I have a very difficult time putting it down because I put all the stuff on the phone that attract me, and I like it, and I want to keep doing it, and also I don't want to get out of bed because what faces me when I get out of bed is hard. And I don't like to do hard things because ADHD tells me not to.
Nikki Kinzer:
I so agree with that.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, and I think that's where I want to start with this and here's why. The term addiction, well, I hate using it when it comes to this, and in a summary of research from the Journal of Behavioral Addiction, the Journal of Behavioral Addiction. Those people know a thing or two about behavioral addiction. They say, "Although the field takes the existence of smartphone addiction as granted, we did not find sufficient support from the addiction perspective to confirm the existence of smartphone addiction at this time. The behaviors observed in research could be better labeled as problematic or maladaptive smartphone use, and their consequences do not meet the severity levels of those caused by addiction."
Continued, "Addiction is a disorder with severe effects on physical and physiological health. A behavior may have a similar presentation as addiction in terms of excessive use and impulse control problems, and negative consequences, but that does not mean it should be considered an addiction. We propose moving away from the addiction framework when studying technological behaviors, and using other terms such as problematic use to describe them." Emphasis mine, "We recommend that problematic technology use is to be studied in it's sociocultural context with an increased focus on its compensatory functions, motivations, and gratifications." Exactly what we're talking about.
We use these things to compensate for other things that we're not doing well, i.e. our ADHD tendencies are causing us to struggle and we go for the social media. We go pick up the phone. We play our games. To that end, we're seeing more and more people report the specific anxiety of nomophobia, which is a fear or anxiety around being without your phone and connectivity. But that all seems to stem back to avoidant behavior, again, of something else. I am terrified of being without my device because I don't know what to do with myself. I have no coping mechanism in times of discomfort or uncertainty or boredom, whatever. The phone is a mask behind which we hide from problematic behaviors otherwise. We did a whole What's That Smell? episode on nomophobia, The Hunt for the Disconnected Soiree. I'll put the link in the show notes.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh good. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
We were talking about things I feel strongly about. This is one I feel strongly about and I'll tell you why. Because while breaking the social media habit feels hard, it's simply not comparable to the battles of drug addiction and alcohol addiction, and so on, and saying so diminishes the efforts of people who are struggling with those conditions to get and stay clean. What's more, I believe that thinking in this way can help break problematic behaviors more effectively. Calling it an addiction, it reduces your own agency in solving these problems, right?
There are people living with ADHD who really are struggling with severe addiction, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, and I would never want to diminish their experiences because addictive behaviors are so, so prevalent in ADHD. I hate that we've given up on thinking in terms of these problematic or maladaptive behaviors and we call it addiction because it takes away our control. Oh, I'm addicted. Oh my gosh. It's so hard. I'm addicted. And so what? I guess I'm just addicted. I guess it's so hard it's impossible to solve, and it's not. That's my rant. I feel really strongly about this, and I get super fired up.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, yeah. Well, I see, I can feel the fire up in you, for sure, and I agree with everything that you've said. It's interesting to me, I'm curious, and you can edit this out for the regular show, but is there something very personal to you that's wrapped around this, that makes you feel this way and that strong about it?
Pete Wright:
Sure. I've got family that died of alcohol addiction. I've got people, and we all do, it's just so prevalent, especially in the United States. It's just all over the place, so I know I'm not alone, but when you watch somebody deteriorate because they live with addiction, and you watch the physiological and genetic determinants of addiction, when I see someone who says, "You know what? I'm addicted to Facebook," I want to punch myself in the neck. That is not comparable, and I get really frustrated by it. These are behaviors that are in your control. You can do it. You can absolutely do it, and you know what? You will feel better in days, not months, years, eras. You'll feel better in days, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
What do you think about, because people have also put the addiction kind of label to gaming, for people who are gaming too much. Do you feel like that's the same thing as social media or is that different?
Pete Wright:
It's any trigger that is on a device that causes you to get a dopamine release.
Nikki Kinzer:
To avoid.
Pete Wright:
That allows you to stay here versus confronting something challenging elsewhere.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, yeah. It's the avoidance piece that you're calling out because we're doing that instead of doing something else. It's a coping mechanism of some sort.
Pete Wright:
Right, and I don't want it to sound like I'm just saying oh, your problem is not a significant problem.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
I know that it feels like a giant problem, and I don't want to diminish that, and I have a problem with devices too. I was just talking to my wife about it, that my problem is often more related to a professional FOMO that I am terrified of what is happening with my clients and work activity and demands when I'm not connected. And so mine isn't filtered into games or social media distractions. Mine is filtered toward I have to keep on my email. I have to keep on text messages. I have to keep doing these things because I'm terrified of what happens if it doesn't. That's my thing, but the thing that I deal with is not the phone or technology, right? The thing I deal with is my relationship to work.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right, right.
Pete Wright:
And I think it's more important for us to assess those relationships to other things and recognize that the dopamine push could cause you to eat, could cause you to increase lethargy. You don't want to get out of bed. It could cause a lot of things, and so putting all this weight on technology addiction is unfair to these tools that have unleashed just a gazillion wonderful new ideas and things if used correctly and healthily if you develop a smart relationship.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and what the Journal of Behavioral Addictions is saying and what you're supporting too is that it's not saying that it's not a problematic behavior or an issue. It is.
Pete Wright:
No, not at all.
Nikki Kinzer:
It is, and there are consequences. I get it, Pete. I really do. I get it. When I was reading your outline, and I could hear you speaking, and I knew that this was something you were really passionate about, and I think it's an important distinction.
Pete Wright:
I just feel so strongly that it does a disservice to people who are dealing with this stuff, and I think we should, as advocates, be very clear about not using the word addiction when it comes to technology because that's not the challenge. You can overcome the challenges that you're living with. Let's find a way to talk about it in a way that addresses behavior.
Nikki Kinzer:
And I think that's a really good point, and that's what some of the suggestions are coming from our community, too, about different ways of dealing with this, is that you are taking that power back, that I can make changes, and I think the biggest thing for everyone, ADHDers and non-ADHDers when we're dealing with the phone and games and things like that, is to try some of these strategies. If you really want to pull back your usage, we have to try them actively, and I think that if you tried it once and it didn't work, you need to keep going back and keep trying it. I don't want people to give up, the fact that again, oh, I just can't do it. We need to keep working on these strategies to get to where you want to be and be living in the boundaries that you want to live in, and using the technology the way that you want to use it.
Pete Wright:
Right, right. So, I'm exhausted from my little rant here, and I apologize.
Nikki Kinzer:
I know. It's okay. Good.
Pete Wright:
Let's dive into why these maladaptive behaviors are so problematic for ADHD.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, yes, yes. Well, there have been many studies done over the years related to internet and phone addiction. We've talked about it on the show. A large percentage relate to the relationship between internet/phone usage and ADHD. Many different factors can contribute to a conscious or unconscious desire to spend a great deal of time online. I think that's a really important point, is that sometimes we don't even notice we're doing it. It's just like I was saying before. It's so easy to get onto social media when you're in bed after your alarm went off, and think oh, I'm only going to be on here for a couple minutes, and then 15 minutes goes by.
That's 15 minutes that you could have had but now you're late, because that's the thing that we have to understand with ADHD time. Most people who are late to work or late to events, they're not really late. They're only late around five or 10 minutes, so right there we just grabbed 10 minutes back of your time. This is important to be thinking about, especially if that's an issue. But anyway, so I would say lack of stimulation. We've been talking about that. ADHD restricts the brain's neurotransmitters associated with pleasure and reward. What a great dopamine hit is to get onto social media or whatever you like. I like Clarence. He's a talking black lab dog. He's funny, and he always is talking bad about his parents and calling him mother-fluffers, and it's hilarious. It's hilarious.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Such mother-fluffers. Well, and I think that's a really important thing that I want to throw in and I don't know a better place to put it than right here. This is a great entrée, which is that most social media platforms survive based on the algorithm, right? It's the algorithm that is determining you liked this one thing. You spent more than two seconds looking at this thing. We're going to show you more of that thing, and because of those connections, because of those invisible connections to content, the stuff you look at leads to the stuff you like to look at being presented to you, they are keeping you on the platform, right? Their design is to keep you looking at the platform, to serve more ads and all of that stuff, right? We know that that's what that is.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yep.
Pete Wright:
And I am a huge advocate right now of really standing up to the algorithm. The services, the content you want, go directly to that content. If you want to see the mother-fluffing lab, go to that lab profile page and look at that. Don't go to your home page and start just scrolling, looking for things that might be interesting. That's what's going to keep you in bed.
Nikki Kinzer:
Because then I'm going to continue getting different, yeah.
Pete Wright:
Right. That's going to make you 10 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour late. Find a way to stand up, stand up to the algorithm. Don't let it determine what your brain does.
Nikki Kinzer:
Two things that you're making me think. If you haven't watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix, watch it. It's very interesting.
Pete Wright:
Super dramatic, and I love the way they humanize the algorithm, but you're so right. It makes good points.
Nikki Kinzer:
It makes really good points and it helps you understand exactly everything that Pete just said, of how they capture this, and it's so interesting because the other day I was going through my phone and I kept getting videos of Depeche Mode, because I had watched one video of a concert and then all of a sudden, a suggested post, suggested post, and it was all about Depeche Mode. I was like this is so bizarre, but it's not bizarre because this is what they're doing.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yes, absolutely.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, very interesting.
Pete Wright:
And I would say in The Social Dilemma, there's a guy in there named Tim Kendall who is profiled. He was a former director. I grew up with him. We were kids together and he's the former director of monetization of Facebook, and he made a bazillion dollars in the tech economy and went on to be CEO of Pinterest, and now he's an advocate against all of these things, against the algorithm. You see him talking about just how dangerous this stuff can be, because you know kids don't have the self-control or awareness to understand what the algorithm is doing to them.
They don't understand how the fetish-ization of physical beauty on Instagram is causing them to make changes in their lives. They don't understand the power the algorithm has over them, but those are kids. And I think that's another argument, that we are allowing the kids to distance us from our own negative behavior around this stuff, and so I think that's hugely important, is to be aware. So I use RSS, which sounds like way over technical abbreviation, but it's a very simple way to just say I like this website, and this website, and this website, and this website, and I have an app called Reeder, R-E-E-D-E-R.
And I just add the websites to that list and every morning I look at Reeder, and it gives me just the posts that I have chosen to see from the websites that I have chosen to follow, and it has nothing to do with algorithms. It's not the Apple News app that's constantly, never-ending feeding me sources. It is just what I've chosen and there's no algorithm involved. I use Mastodon instead of Twitter, which is a house on fire anyway, but Mastodon has no algorithm. I follow individual people that are important to me, and I see their posts without having to get stuck into a mire of algorithmic stuff. So anyway, that's number one, it's that stimulation, the dopamine. How can you fight being drawn by the dopamine?
Nikki Kinzer:
And the other two factors here, we've already talked about time blindness. Of course we're not recognizing how long something takes or how much time has passed, so it's very easy to get into that scrolling, hyper-focused scrolling without even knowing that 30 minutes has passed. Avoidance we've talked about, Pete. Very much this is connected to why we're using it. ADHD is often paired with depression and anxiety, so when we try to avoid these negative emotions, this can be a good alternative because it is building that dopamine and a lot of times you feel justified.
You can justify it. There's ways you can trick yourself. And the avoidance tactic is not specific to ADHD. I think that, especially in today's world, it's a scary place for a lot of people. We have this pandemic that's still going on, violence in the world, war, changes in the workplace. I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on, a lot of things that we want to somehow cope with, and it feels like this can be one of those things, but it can also be very self-destructive.
Pete Wright:
Yes, for sure, so what do you do? Well, I've already talked about my RSS trick, and fighting the algorithm.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, which is great.
Pete Wright:
I think if we have anything that we could do as ADHDers to stand up to the algorithm, that's going to be better for all of our brains. Trust me. When you get rid of the algorithm, you feel better, and so it's a big deal.
Nikki Kinzer:
It is a big deal, and I think it's good for us to also be aware of the fact that there is no clearcut trick or secret ingredient. Everybody is different. What's going to work with one person is not going to help, necessarily, with the other person. But again, going back to my point earlier, that doesn't mean you shouldn't try and we want you to keep trying, and keep trying to figure out what works best for you. All right, so we have some tips and strategies from our Discord community.
Pete Wright:
Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Here we go. Number one, "I have been playing with the app, One Sec on iOS. It forces a one second breath exercise before it opens the specified app. Then it asks you whether you really want to open it, so it gives you a minute for impulse control. I'm not sure it's entirely working, but at least some of the time I say no to the app."
Nikki Kinzer:
Hey.
Pete Wright:
I think that's great.
Nikki Kinzer:
Some of the time, great. That's a win.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
For sure.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, I think that's huge.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Let's see. "Keeping my phone in a designated location of the house, top of kitchen refrigerator, in my case, rather than with me at all times, was a useful starting point. I'm not always successful, but simply removing it from my physical person really helped me disengage from the pool." Again, if it helps some of the time, then it's a win, absolutely.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, I would just add to that. I think getting the Apple Watch for me was actually a big deal because I have set it so that the notifications that come through my Apple Watch are the most important notifications that I get, right? So, I'm not getting everything. I don't get any social media stuff on the notifications. I get stuff from my family and stuff from colleagues at work and things like that. But that means I can leave the phone docked elsewhere in my office and when I wander around the rest of the house I'm not carrying it with me.
I don't take it on walks. I don't need to do that because I have this smaller device, which feels like just another anchor to technology, but I'm telling you, it actually made a difference to me. Moving the phone, which has near limitless possibilities for distraction, and leaving it to the watch, which has very limited use for distraction. I mean, I can't get distracted by my watch. I just can't. I've tried. I've tried to play games on the watch. It's stupid. You can't do it. I can't.
Nikki Kinzer:
No. oh gosh, no.
Pete Wright:
I can't make sense of it. So that was a big deal for me.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and something else to add to that. I think there is an out of sight, out of mind factor that is in your favor there, because when the phone is not in your sight and you don't see it getting bright because of a notification, even if the sound is off, not having that to look at and just knowing it's not around you, I mean, there's something about that too, is that it's just kind of out of sight, out of mind.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, for sure. "Try removing social media apps from your phone, only accessing them through a computer, a tablet, or older phone that is used just for that purpose. It might be easier to limit usage if those apps aren't as handy but still accessible for the time you allot to them." I just want to amplify this. I think it's usually important and I think it's good to remove those from sight.
I would also say if you really have trouble with it, if it's really damaging and you feel like you're on a rollercoaster of yes, I have it in control and then oh my gosh, three days later I'm out of control again, or maybe it's a month later I'm out of control again, whatever that rollercoaster is, really evaluate the utility of those apps in your life, right? I mean, I just cannot say how vastly improved my life got when I deleted Instagram, the account.
I don't have an account. When I deleted Twitter, the account. I don't have an account on Twitter anymore. The weight that is lifted from knowing not only is it not in my presence, but I don't have an allegiance to it anymore, is huge. The only reason I have Facebook is I have clients who have Facebook pages, and I have to be able to log in and troubleshoot. I haven't logged in to my personal Facebook account in years, and I am so much better for it. People know where to find me, it turns out.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, sure.
Pete Wright:
They can find me, or the most important people that I want to talk to, they know where I am. You're not lost if you're off Facebook. It's okay. If your brain is healing and you're off that device, if you stand up to that particular algorithm, and I hear it, there are lots of reasons to be on Facebook and I just feel like the reasons not to be on these platforms are so much bigger. They're so much bigger. So that's it.
Nikki Kinzer:
I'm going to have you read the next one too.
Pete Wright:
Oh, okay. "There is a browser extension called News Feed Eradicator. It replaces your feed with an inspirational quote so you don't do scroll, because there's nothing to see. I only use it with Facebook but I can click on the bell and see what people have posted and go read those posts. I can click on my groups for individual users, but I can't just scroll through whatever the algorithm comes up with." There's a nice happy medium. You don't want to delete your account, like I'm using the nuclear option. Use that browser extension. I find that comically good technology.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Pete Wright:
I love it.
Nikki Kinzer:
All right. "I got a Kindle. Yes, my family rolled their eyes, and couldn't understand why I needed yet another device, but it works for me. I reach for it when I want to read, so I can focus on doing only that." That's great.
Pete Wright:
Outstanding, yeah. I totally, I'm an advocate of that approach. You have to retrain your brain, get your muscle memory to reach for other things you'd rather be doing instead. It's the only way good habits form, regular practice. It is so hard to start and then it's so hard to keep going. I think so too, and I want to add and advocate for again, finding a healthy use of your technology that you're reaching for instead of the social media and the news doom scrolling. Maybe get into photography.
Instead of opening Facebook or TikTok, open your photos app and take some dope photos with your camera, and enjoy editing photos on your technology. That exists right there. Make a movie. Do something exuberant. Get the Day One app and start journaling. We talk about tech for all of the bad things, but there are so many awesome things that you can do if you choose to create rather than consume. There are vastly more ways to create that are underused than consumed that we use.
Nikki Kinzer:
Really good point. Yeah, really good point. "Create a lock screen that reminds you that you have better things to do than be on social media. I think that would at least give me pause before opening my phone mindlessly to the time suck app of choice to do something else more constructive with that bit of time instead," and so we have this picture here that says think twice. Is this how you want to spend you time? And this is a strategy that I used with one of my clients, too. It wasn't exactly the same thing, but we put a little red sticker dot on the back of her phone and that was just to remind her to pause for a moment and does she really need to be on the phone? So it just gave her that little pause to think about so it sort of along the lines, the same thing.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah for sure.
Nikki Kinzer:
The other thing I would want to add to this is in the original post, they had asked or had said "I set boundaries, but my brain always finds a loophole or does not honor them unless they are instituted and enforced by external force." So one of the things I just want to say is in the conversation that we had in Discord around this, one of my ideas or thoughts too, was to not necessarily look for the negative consequence that's going to happen if you keep doing this, because there's this negative energy around it. What if we looked at it as what you're gaining from t when you're not on these devices the way that you're currently using them. So it's just a mindset and it's keeping it positive rather than staying in the negative, so I just think it's really important to think about what you're gaining and not that you have to have something really bad happen to you in order to do it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah. I can't agree with that any more. It is super important and I think that particularly around social media or the news machine, like the news rage machine, all of those things are designed to make you feel like you're missing out when you're not. It's false. The most important news of the day will find you.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
It will find you. You don't need to have those sources. You don't need to be awash in those algorithms to get there, so retrain your brain to imagine, to gameify the stuff that is going to be good for you and healthy for you and that's super powerful. Our friend, Matt Raekelboom was on the show awhile ago and he posted this to Instagram, and Melissa, a Discord mom, had shared this video for us to talk about but I'm just going to play it. I'm just going to play it. Can I do that?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. Oh, great. Please.
Pete Wright:
So let's just see what Matt has to say.
Matt:
Do you have ADHD and your addictive tendencies are kind of kicking your butt right now? Well, here's not an excuse, but here's why and a helpful tip at the end of the video. People with ADHD tend to struggle with things like anxiety, depression and overall struggling with everyday activities, which can leave us a little sad. The issue, and the reason why our addictive tendencies set in is our body's always trying to achieve a state of homeostasis, which means that when we're a little bit sad, our body tries to look for things that make us a lot more happy.
Unfortunately, this can lead us into things like masturbatory activities, drinking alcohol, smoking the devil's lettuce and more, so we need to realize that when we are sad this make our addictive tendencies tend to flare up a lot more than normal. A helpful tip, make sure to ask yourself what's known as the Hulk Technique, which is hungry, angry, lonely, tired. If you're feeling more then one of these at the moment, then make sure to take care of these before we engage in addictive activities. These are the four things that really make our brain go, "We got to change this" Think about this and change your life. You're worth it.
Pete Wright:
One of the things that he talks about in there that I think is really important, and you'll note, he talks about addictive behaviors. He does not call it addiction, because we know that there are behaviors that mimic addictive behaviors. We know that those are the same thing. It's easy to make those appearances feel like you are addicted.
But he doesn't say that, and I applaud Matt for doing that, but he does give us the big four, the halt, which is such a game changer, such a game changer. Are you hungry, angry, lonely or tired? Are you hungry, angry, lonely or tired? When you pick up your device, are you hungry and angry? Are you angry and lonely? Are you lonely and tired? Those are the things that are going to cause you to look for those dopamine boosts, just the same way it's going to cause you to pick up chocolate instead of a carrot.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
Your body gets that sugar boost and it's like oh, now I feel better. Oh, I've got dopamine. Now I feel better, so what are you going to do when you are hungry? It's like babies. If you've had a baby and they're crying, they've either pooped themselves or they're hungry, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
That's what it made me think of is like, okay, you have a baby. They can't talk to you. They can't tell you what's wrong, so you're trying to figure it out. Yeah, really.
Pete Wright:
If you get those two things, if you solve the two things around pooping and hunger, you have a baby that doesn't cry, and so it is what it is. I feel like this is, keeping the Hulk thing in the back of your mind could be a pretty big game changer around how you're handling your instincts, your baser instincts to satisfy this stuff, so thank you to Matt. It's been a long time. You should come back and hang with us again on the show.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely.
Pete Wright:
And thanks for his permission to use that in this show. What else do you got? Do you have anything else on your list?
Nikki Kinzer:
No. I think we covered a lot today.
Pete Wright:
I do too. I think I need to go take a-
Nikki Kinzer:
And it's a really important subject so I'm glad that, thank you for asking the question about where to get started in Discord, the lovely member that did that, because it did create a lot of conversation and I think we got some really great ideas and feedback from the other members too. So thank you for being a part of this community, everyone. Appreciate it so much.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, for sure. It's so rich and we so appreciate it. Now, if you are not a member, then the show's going to end, but if you were a member, you would be continuing to listen and we would continue talking as we take on questions and comments from the community in our Discord channel, so hang out with us. Become a member. It would be great. We really appreciate all of you for downloading and listening to the show. Thank you for your time and attention. If you want to become a member, head over to patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. Sign up at deluxe level or better. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I'm Pete Wright, and we'll see you right back here next week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.
