I want to encourage you to take more frequent phone breaks, and not just for the obvious reasons.

What are the obvious reasons?  The obvious reasons are that it blocks out opportunities to interact and deepen your connection.  It takes the place of exchanges you might naturally fall into together.

As Dr. Matt Townsend recently mentioned on Instagram, (& no the irony there is not lost on me) “Stop distracting yourself to death. You are sitting on the couch next to the most important person in your life and you’re distracted by the phone or the game.”

A slightly less obvious reason is that it distracts you from feelings you need to dive into, process, learn from and express.  If you go for the immediate dopamine hit and numb your feelings on TikTok instead of sitting down with your journal and free writing:  “Why did I get so triggered and suddenly get sarcastic when he said he didn’t want to go to my parents’ for dinner?” You are denying yourself the vital messages for growth and self support that your feelings are straining and sweating to transmit to you, and the next time the trigger is applied, the sarcasm will shoot out again, possibly resulting in a relationship battering knock down drag out.

And an even less obvious and more pervasive reason is...

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Quotes from Dr. Matt Townsend and Eve Dineen, Board Certified Behavior Analyst