When Screens Take Over
Do you pick up your phone to check something and re-surface an hour later?
You have good intentions to sleep on time and scroll into the next day?
Or perhaps you are pulled deep into your screen as you sit with friends and loved ones.
All seems ok. You function as well as many others who spend their time in-screen. But you want a chunk of your life back – without having to give up screens altogether.
How do you experience this? What is going on that you lose track of time? What are the apps giving you that you want or need?
It's Not All About Screen Time
Most advice treats screen problems as a question of numbers. Cut your hours, count the time, block the apps, re-direct the dopamine. This is all true – but incomplete. Because it misses your experience.
Your screen isn’t just a habit – it’s a relationship. And like any relationship it has a character. One app is a genuine tool, while another is more like a hijacker – stealing your attention. Or perhaps the same app is both those things at different times.
And what is your relationship with the app developer? They certainly have a relationship with you – what is it?
Until you see what your screen and apps really are to you, and what they do for you – you are only scratching the surface with time-keeping and blockers.
You Might Recognise…
- Reaching for your phone before you’re properly awake
- Losing hours you meant to spend another way
- Feeling restless, unmotivated or guilty afterwards
- Being in the room with people, but not really with them
- Cutting down, managing for a while and then drifting back
How I Would Work With You
Together we will look at your unique relationship with the screen and apps. Some questions we might ask:
- When do you reach for it?
- What are you feeling when you reach for it?
- In what ways is it different to/ the same as procrastination?
- Which feelings push you towards your screen?
- When is it actually being helpful?
We want to understand what is going on for you and within you. We then look at how you spend your time, direct your attention and deal with emotions – both within screens and life more generally.
Why Work With Me?
I spent years working as a therapist in residential addiction treatment, where I saw and learnt first-hand how compulsive behaviours and habits can slowly become something more.
I have a particular interest in the role that technology plays in the world – for good and bad. It shapes our lives psychologically, in practice and culturally. This is work I think about deeply.