Learning to Disconnect: Is It Possible?

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People continue to push themselves continuously, hourly, daily, monthly, and yearly. We are taught that we must strive hard and that perhaps our self-worth is tied to what we do and what we achieve, including our outcomes.

It is woven into the social fabric of everything in today's world. Push, and push, and then push more. This "push-aesthetic" had a pronounced state in the '70s as work became tied heavily to identity and the modus of how hard one works being equally equated with how successful one is.

As the '80s and '90s came around, so did the internet of things and the human-technology symbiosis. Many sociologists had warned us of the day when we would suffer a "mental lag" behind the sheer velocity of such developments. Workloads increased, divorce rates were up, and "latch-key kids" were a thing. I was one of them, as parents worked even harder to establish their careers.

Today, I hear from a variety of people who can barely fit therapy into their otherwise extreme schedules. Such frenetic lifestyles have made their way into children's lives, where many are ushered into lifestyles that mimic their parent's constant connectivity.

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It's a Busy World!

It is a busy world, as we are fed even more synthetic ways to stay connected to work, friends, and life. As a therapist, I have witnessed the extreme interplay between the many ways we connect and our inability to disconnect. It has become an incessant issue in the world of mental health, where many people's daily lives are aggressively managed by the ubiquitous nature of everything from cell phones, work or school technologies, boundary-less schedules, family obligations, social media affiliations, mandatory meetings, school and its functions, kids, college prep, establishing relationships, and the daily run of so many more responsibilities.

Just how busy have we become? I have observed people attempting to simultaneously conduct meetings in airports amidst the boisterous clatter of intercom announcements and cocktail party noise, dashing onto the tarmac with luggage in tow while attempting the precarious balancing act of keeping a drink from spilling over. This kind of living impacts the body and mind and, ultimately, has its day. Emily Nagoski, Ph.D. and author of Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle (2020), provides a sobering thought regarding people's inability to disconnect from their otherwise busy lives,

You can live without adequate rest, but eventually it will come for you, as the need for rest will grab you by the shirt, slam you to the ground, put its foot on your chest, and [say] ‘I told you to lie down!'

Cognitive absorption of work, school, or both has become an unmediated form of living. Such "constant" lifestyles typically lead to maladaptive ways of functioning and, ultimately, the "dark side" of health issues. Dysregulated moodiness, being emotionally flat, less creative, and less effective are just a fraction of the problems.

The Disconnect From Ourselves

The irony is that in our need to disconnect from all the variable influences around us, somewhere in us, we have already disconnected from our basic sense of "self." Thus, what has happened is that we have gone invisible to ourselves.

And our subconscious mind contains the powerful lever that allows us to create such distance from our feelings for long extensions of time. Left unattended, the burdens of the cognitive and physical saturation of work, school, life, and more can lead to numbing behaviors, such as sleep apnea, social media scrolling, long periods of television binging, tuning out, unhealthy episodic eating, alcohol, and drug use while manifesting further symptoms, and ultimately, the rapid decline in our mortal longevity.

We continue to push ourselves beyond the limits of our bodies, we would never do this to our pets. We do [this] to ourselves every day (Nagoski & Nagoski, 2020).

Developing Your Isochronometry

They are stopping the effect.

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The inability to disconnect is habituation on autopilot. We are meant to vacillate, to balance in measure the times we work, the times we rest, and so forth. It is a form of what I call isochronometric living, or living in "measured" sprints and not lingering in just one. Thus, healthy living is about achieving "balance and harmonious living."

Humans are not built to withstand the grueling imbalances of current-day life. And it is more than how we think; it is about our actions to "reinstall" balance.

Challenging encapsulated beliefs

For people who can't disconnect, it starts with changing "encapsulated beliefs." That is, somewhere, we have taught ourselves that, for whatever reason, we cannot break from social media, miss a phone call, miss an email, or enjoy a vacation without negative implications. Changing encapsulated thinking can be tackled through cognitive restructuring (CR), which challenges such connotative beliefs.

Cognitive restructuring helps us understand that what we believe may not always be correct depictions of reality while also exploring evidence for and against the belief (Voncken et al., 2023).

You can do this by first exploring all the areas of your life that overrule your days or those things that create harsh extremes and imbalances.

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However, change is never linear, and some "defense" tendencies may arise as you begin to challenge encapsulated beliefs, such as catastrophic thinking, wherein the belief that is cemented says, "But if I am not there, bad things will happen." Your mind may present various ways to react defensively. After all, it's been operating on encapsulated beliefs for quite some time.

However, cognitive restructuring is about looking at realities rather than bargaining with the magnifications of false premises.

Applying Socratic method

Almost assuredly, as you move into the potential to rebalance your life, the nervous energy you feel about trying to change things will populate the kind of defensive thoughts described. Instead, begin applying re-direct questions like:

• What exactly am I concerned about here?
• What am I thinking is going to happen?
• Why does it matter to me?
• Where is the evidence that this thing I am feeling or thinking would happen if I took a break?
• Could there be another explanation for why this is arising in me? Is it from my childhood where maybe money was scarce? Where didn't opportunities come my way?

Evidence to the contrary is always a strong thought challenger. For instance, for workaholics, recent research about technologies improving our work life has demonstrated a strong relationship to various negative consequences, including worse career outcomes (Harris et al., 2015). As extant research now tells us, it is true that what we are promoting is inversely debilitating us.

Once you become comfortable with taking time to reexamine your relationship with how you live, you can begin to take the smaller, actionable steps towards setting boundaries like not checking email 24/7, silencing group messages or texts for a while, letting people know when you won't be available, and more.

Soon, you will learn to strike a balance in your life that will produce healthier outcomes in every way.