This might not seem witchy but part of my practice is self care and holistic healing and paying attention to how I’m feeling. Can’t do effective magic without balance.
Remember to regularly shut down your brain for a second.
I hate catching myself doomscrolling, and the fix for me is to come sit outside with the phone face down. Of course now I’m typing this after sitting for a few minutes.
Defaulting to picking up the phone in order to fill the empty space keeps us in a constant state of engagement and our nervous systems in a state of perpetual micro activation.
We’re puzzling through problems, processing injustices, coping with emotional spikes, witnessing atrocities, and mostly having to regulate ourselves through the seemingly idle process of scrolling a feed. It’s even more exhausting if you’re neurodivergent. We get squirts of happy juice sometimes, for sure, which is what keeps us engaged, but mostly we’re just wearing ourselves out for very little meaningful return.
I find that I doomscroll the most when I’m not feeling well and can’t fully engage myself with the interests that generally keep me regulated (AuDHD problem). But rarely do I feel better after doomscrolling. Never do I feel regulated. I just feel like I did a bunch of fucking brain work. Usually I’m pissy!
Saw a post not long ago though that called taking regular breaks from brain work “defragging”. The metaphor is apt! Do some defragging! I really should and have been thinking of the concept ever since reading about it. I wish I could find the original post because it so perfectly described what I’m trying to highly get across.
Okay brain off time.
