week 18: My aversion to my phone makes me a bad friend
Why can't I just text back ??
My aversion to my phone makes me a bad friend, bad business owner, bad sibling, bad granddaughter, bad girlfriend… do I need to keep going?
As an ambivert, I fluctuate between feeling overstimulated/ stretched thin and bored/ lonely at all times.
Weekends without plans excite me until Saturday afternoon comes around, and suddenly I crave someone to hang out with and search for something to do.
Living in a small town after graduation with a small population of mid-to-late twenty-somethings makes socializing a challenge.
Over-relying on the few close friends that I do have, I frequently find myself craving socialization but out of people to meet up with.
Talking to my therapist about the resulting feeling of loneliness, she asked me why I don’t pick up the phone and call a friend (knowing some of my best ones live farther away).
“I hate my phone,” I respond to her.
D- Doing
Not responding to texts, reluctantly responding to emails, and avoiding making a phone call.
And doing so with the intensity of someone afraid of the radiation from the phone being held to their ear.
It’s not that I don’t want to talk to my friends, it’s that I don’t want to talk via my phone.
This year, my aversion to my phone has gotten to an all-time high.
One manifestation of this was the multiple birthday texts I sent days late to some of my closest friends. I thought about sending these texts all day, every day, but I just never opened Messages to do so.
(I have to make a small clarification here: yes, I am mindlessly scrolling, scheduling Pilates workouts, and handling work tasks on my phone all day, every day- it is the over-the-phone communication forms, i.e., texts and phone calls, that I am avoiding.)
I- Interested in
The why… what is this aversion I am feeling?
I proposed to my therapist that it could be trauma (I say that lightly) from past phone conversations that did not leave me with a pleasant feeling about texting.
Growing up in a generation where cell phones were always a part of life, and I got my first one as a young teen, allowed for ample opportunity to experience the good, the bad, and the ugly:
Group chats that felt more like interventions
Group chats, I was intentionally left out of
Paragraph-long drama-filled texts that, unwarranted or not, were unwanted
But my therapist wasn’t happy with that answer, and honestly, neither am I.
G- Getting
The reputation of a bad friend, bad girlfriend, bad granddaughter, etc. because I can’t pick up the damn phone
To bring myself back to reality for a second, I would say it’s less so that I have a bad reputation and more so that people expect less of me when it comes to communicating via the phone, and give less in return (which is 100% their prerogative).
What it has made me realize is the toll it takes on my feeling of connectedness to people whom I love deeply but don’t live near. Therefore, making me a bad friend.
S-Suggesting
Call your friends when you are lonely, call a loved one just to say hi. Pick up the phone when there is an incoming call. Return the text, it's not that hard, and it goes a long way.
Right now, I am closing my laptop and sending the text I have been neglecting to send to my landlord. Because it is not that hard, and it's not that serious.
Spend less time on your phone, but when you are on your phone, spend it doing the things that fill your cup.