archive
4/3/26 - NO MORE RABBIT HOLES. UNLESS THEY ARE INTENTIONAL.
I’ve pretty much been off ig for the past 3 months, with the exception of checking messages, events and mutual aid posts. however it gradually crept back into my life after a series of minor stressors led me to old coping strategies of using it to manage a sense of overstimulation and overwhelm. prior to that i had been very intentional with its use, checking occasionally for messages, mutual aid posts and events. i felt largely unaffected from the pull of its dissociating algorithmic vortexes, mostly through conditioning myself to exit the app whenever reels would start playing. however with the anticipated release of this website, i entertained the idea of re-engaging with the public interfacing features, with vague thoughts of posting about it on my story. i was caught off guard at a particularly vulnerable moment spanning five minutes of use earlier this morning, as described in detail below:
* 10.54am: i am completely mesmerised by the book i am reading by elif shafak, and seek to understand her as a person outside the spellbinding stories she draws me into. i search her account on instagram and find a reel pinned on her feed, which I watch. this reel is an interview segment where she reflects on the distinction of information, knowledge and wisdom, and how the role of social media gives us access to information, but how the pace at which it is presented undermines our ability to retain it as knowledge, let alone embody it as wisdom. we think we know everything, but there’s a difference between knowing something on a cognitive level, completely removed from personal context and being able to recite it as a fact in a vacuum, compared to embodying that information through repeated application to your personal life until it becomes deeply incorporated into your perception of the world, influencing the way you see and think about things. it takes time, a lot of time, and absence of information excess, in order to truly know something. you must develop a personal relationship with information in order for it to mean anything to you, for it to be able to be applied to your life and therefore embedded into the stories you share. it also becomes a lot easier for people to understand, because if there’s limited context then that acts as a barrier for access. i feel grateful to now understand some kind of framework for understanding these distinctions, which i had previously only felt and not been able to express.
* 10.55am: i return to the home feed and see a post by alice sparkly kat. by association i recall their most newsletter where they share their plan to include a zine on ‘the anatomy of a pisces rising’ in next month’s issue. i myself am a pisces rising, and feel that this placement carries a large responsibility in why i am the way that i am, eliciting a mixture of excitement and existential anguish. i am feeling particularly hasty this morning, and perhaps a little attention seeking as well. i decide to post a story on my instagram for the first time in three or so months, putting a call out to any other pisces risings that may resonate with the pained sentiment that i expressed above.
* 10.56am: as is the way with my behavioural pattern of posting to instagram, publishing one story often tumbles into another, where i turn my gaze onto myself from the perspective of my followers. ‘what has liv been up to of late?’ i post the most recent photo in my reel, a picture of heavy cloud coverage in the north eastern quadrant of the sky, taken the previous night, with NO eclipse in sight.
* 10.57am: it then occurs to me my plans of imminently publishing my upcoming blog website. i take a screenshot of the home page and upload it as my third and final story for the day, with an accompanying caption to inform viewers of my future plans.
* 10.58am: it is upon publishing this that i start to notice an immediate sense of panic in my throat and chest. old thought obsessions for external validation and instant gratification keep me rechecking the stories for a bit, and very quickly after i experience a flurry of commentary from my old friends (self-doubt, perfectionism, shame, imposter syndrome) who arrive whenever i try to express myself publicly: “WHY ARE YOU HERE. WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY. THAT COULD POSSIBLY BE OF VALUE TO ANYONE? WHAT KIND OF PERFORMATIVE STUNT ARE YOU PLAYING? ARE YOU EVEN BEING POLITICALLY CORRECT? JUST GIVE UP”
* 10.59am: the voices are roaring and i feel completely defeated, with my thumb automatically motioning into the reels feed. the distress i was starting to experience from this tired inner dialogue is immediately overtaken by the loud commentary of an influencer and panning video shots changing every microsecond. at this point i try and exit the app, not without another bombardment of some reel i never actually remembered assaulting my tired brain. i put my phone down, feeling stunned, disoriented and destabilised.
***
It takes me the next couple of hours to unpack and recover from the abrasive vortex my nervous system just travelled through. In the aftermath of posting the story, I felt a resounding sentiment of frustration and avoidance towards instagram, in conjunction with a high degree of skepticism and judgment and loathing as to the integrity of why I am wanting to pursue this project. These feelings left me with fleeting desires to either log off from the app or abandon the project altogether. But there was a part of me that knew this may be another kind of self-sabotaging trauma response, and so I took time to understand why it was that I wanted to pursue this project in the first place.
I reflected on the courage I had slowly been building to conceptualise and follow through with this project, feeling proud of myself for the positive strides I had been making in to overcome hindering patterns of self-doubt. I remembered that beyond anything, to create this website and share my experiences was simply an exercise of learning how I can show up for myself, learning to let myself be witnessed by others, no matter how imperfect or messy or politically problematic my ideas may be, and being able to return to self-compassion and self-acceptance for however that may be expressed. Of course a part of it is curiosity of how I may be received or responded to by others, but to focus on this becomes a big slippery slope that clouds my attempts in maintaining authenticity.
I think many of us feel very complicated by our relationships to instagram, and how it skews our ideas of how to attain happiness, belonging, or connection. What starts as a dopamine hit to lift our day often ends up as a two-hour dissociative scroll leaving us feeling empty and numb. What begins as a curiosity to connect with others evolves into an obsession with our self-image and anxiety for not being able to afford a product we wouldn’t have otherwise cared about. Not to mention the heavy censorship and suppression of content/ creators attempting to organise against oppression and build community, or the way its algorithms silo us into increasing intolerance of difference.
But in saying that, I can recall many experiences of Instagram that have brought me closer to others and myself, without the excess of dysregulation that it causes to my nervous system. I don’t think that logging off is going to bring me the peace within myself I am seeking, because it’s clear that the issue relates to something deeper that the way I use it. Whatever I’m experiencing in life is just a mirror in allowing me to understand how I can be accountable to myself. Whether it be using Instagram, continuing this project or anything else, they are just vessels for me to practise showing up to myself. So in all of this, I have decided I want to keep going with this project for now. And if it gets too much and I notice that my efforts to show up are not coming from an authentic place, then I’m going to slow down and pause. Whether or not I continue will be decided in the future!
* 10.54am: i am completely mesmerised by the book i am reading by elif shafak, and seek to understand her as a person outside the spellbinding stories she draws me into. i search her account on instagram and find a reel pinned on her feed, which I watch. this reel is an interview segment where she reflects on the distinction of information, knowledge and wisdom, and how the role of social media gives us access to information, but how the pace at which it is presented undermines our ability to retain it as knowledge, let alone embody it as wisdom. we think we know everything, but there’s a difference between knowing something on a cognitive level, completely removed from personal context and being able to recite it as a fact in a vacuum, compared to embodying that information through repeated application to your personal life until it becomes deeply incorporated into your perception of the world, influencing the way you see and think about things. it takes time, a lot of time, and absence of information excess, in order to truly know something. you must develop a personal relationship with information in order for it to mean anything to you, for it to be able to be applied to your life and therefore embedded into the stories you share. it also becomes a lot easier for people to understand, because if there’s limited context then that acts as a barrier for access. i feel grateful to now understand some kind of framework for understanding these distinctions, which i had previously only felt and not been able to express.
* 10.55am: i return to the home feed and see a post by alice sparkly kat. by association i recall their most newsletter where they share their plan to include a zine on ‘the anatomy of a pisces rising’ in next month’s issue. i myself am a pisces rising, and feel that this placement carries a large responsibility in why i am the way that i am, eliciting a mixture of excitement and existential anguish. i am feeling particularly hasty this morning, and perhaps a little attention seeking as well. i decide to post a story on my instagram for the first time in three or so months, putting a call out to any other pisces risings that may resonate with the pained sentiment that i expressed above.
* 10.56am: as is the way with my behavioural pattern of posting to instagram, publishing one story often tumbles into another, where i turn my gaze onto myself from the perspective of my followers. ‘what has liv been up to of late?’ i post the most recent photo in my reel, a picture of heavy cloud coverage in the north eastern quadrant of the sky, taken the previous night, with NO eclipse in sight.
* 10.57am: it then occurs to me my plans of imminently publishing my upcoming blog website. i take a screenshot of the home page and upload it as my third and final story for the day, with an accompanying caption to inform viewers of my future plans.
* 10.58am: it is upon publishing this that i start to notice an immediate sense of panic in my throat and chest. old thought obsessions for external validation and instant gratification keep me rechecking the stories for a bit, and very quickly after i experience a flurry of commentary from my old friends (self-doubt, perfectionism, shame, imposter syndrome) who arrive whenever i try to express myself publicly: “WHY ARE YOU HERE. WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY. THAT COULD POSSIBLY BE OF VALUE TO ANYONE? WHAT KIND OF PERFORMATIVE STUNT ARE YOU PLAYING? ARE YOU EVEN BEING POLITICALLY CORRECT? JUST GIVE UP”
* 10.59am: the voices are roaring and i feel completely defeated, with my thumb automatically motioning into the reels feed. the distress i was starting to experience from this tired inner dialogue is immediately overtaken by the loud commentary of an influencer and panning video shots changing every microsecond. at this point i try and exit the app, not without another bombardment of some reel i never actually remembered assaulting my tired brain. i put my phone down, feeling stunned, disoriented and destabilised.
***
It takes me the next couple of hours to unpack and recover from the abrasive vortex my nervous system just travelled through. In the aftermath of posting the story, I felt a resounding sentiment of frustration and avoidance towards instagram, in conjunction with a high degree of skepticism and judgment and loathing as to the integrity of why I am wanting to pursue this project. These feelings left me with fleeting desires to either log off from the app or abandon the project altogether. But there was a part of me that knew this may be another kind of self-sabotaging trauma response, and so I took time to understand why it was that I wanted to pursue this project in the first place.
I reflected on the courage I had slowly been building to conceptualise and follow through with this project, feeling proud of myself for the positive strides I had been making in to overcome hindering patterns of self-doubt. I remembered that beyond anything, to create this website and share my experiences was simply an exercise of learning how I can show up for myself, learning to let myself be witnessed by others, no matter how imperfect or messy or politically problematic my ideas may be, and being able to return to self-compassion and self-acceptance for however that may be expressed. Of course a part of it is curiosity of how I may be received or responded to by others, but to focus on this becomes a big slippery slope that clouds my attempts in maintaining authenticity.
I think many of us feel very complicated by our relationships to instagram, and how it skews our ideas of how to attain happiness, belonging, or connection. What starts as a dopamine hit to lift our day often ends up as a two-hour dissociative scroll leaving us feeling empty and numb. What begins as a curiosity to connect with others evolves into an obsession with our self-image and anxiety for not being able to afford a product we wouldn’t have otherwise cared about. Not to mention the heavy censorship and suppression of content/ creators attempting to organise against oppression and build community, or the way its algorithms silo us into increasing intolerance of difference.
But in saying that, I can recall many experiences of Instagram that have brought me closer to others and myself, without the excess of dysregulation that it causes to my nervous system. I don’t think that logging off is going to bring me the peace within myself I am seeking, because it’s clear that the issue relates to something deeper that the way I use it. Whatever I’m experiencing in life is just a mirror in allowing me to understand how I can be accountable to myself. Whether it be using Instagram, continuing this project or anything else, they are just vessels for me to practise showing up to myself. So in all of this, I have decided I want to keep going with this project for now. And if it gets too much and I notice that my efforts to show up are not coming from an authentic place, then I’m going to slow down and pause. Whether or not I continue will be decided in the future!