[00:00:00] In today's Take Out Therapy episode, you'll finally figure out why your phone is running your life and learn practical ways to take back control, reconnect with yourself, and be more present for the things that matter most.

Welcome to Take Out Therapy, a podcast helping anxious overachievers reduce stress, strengthen relationships, and reconnect with themselves using practical therapeutic tools and perspectives.

Right from the therapy office. I'm Rebecca Hunter, an experienced therapist and anxiety specialist and your biggest cheerleader. Stick around. I can help.

Well, hello there. I'm so happy that you stopped in for today's session because it's almost a new year while I'm recording this. And of course, you know, me, I'm a serious Assessing the things that I'm struggling with or I'm kind of tired of.

And so today's subject is kind of touchy. [00:01:00] It's a hard one to discuss and to get change around. And so my goal for this episode is three main things. I want to teach you why being glued to your cell phone might be harming your mental health and your relationships. Peace. And give you some practical strategies to create healthy boundaries with your device.

And then I'm going to teach you how to feel more present and engaged in your daily life without using your cell phone. Okay, so let's get into it. Here's the thing, and I think we're all kind of looking at the research and, listening to the information that's being presented to us about cell phones.

And I think that's all fine and good, but it just kind of makes us feel bad. And so it's stressful having something in our life that seems like it's. Running our life. Like, do you ever [00:02:00] feel like your phone owns you rather than the other way around? Yeah, me too. And when we have a habit like this,

It causes stress for us. It can be very distracting from the things that we actually do want to spend time doing and do care about. And frankly, those two states of being cause overwhelm that comes with too much phone use. So here's what we do in the therapy office, and I'm going to help you do this today.

When we're assessing for a problem, we want to look for what are the signs or symptoms Signals that maybe we're not in control of the thing. we want to look at what happens daily to signal that there's actually a problem. how do you even know it's a problem? Well, given that most adults age 20 to 40 in the U S spend an average [00:03:00] of three hours and 40 minutes daily on their cell phone, we can very easily start to see some linked symptoms.

So I'll give you a few. It's really hard to focus on things when you have something pulling your attention away constantly. So if you're one of these people, it's like, I am really struggling with focus. Looking at your cell phone use might really help. Okay. also, this habit of being on our cell phone for this much time every day, it raises the dopamine levels in our body.

And then like normal life just kind of seems a little meh, And what happens there in the body is that we get increased anxiety. Okay. And what I see in the therapy office is that our relationships start getting a little bit scratchy [00:04:00] around this idea of cell phone use. I cannot express to you how many people have come into my office and complained about how much their partner is on their cell phone.

It's very hurtful, right? I was in Spain, and I had this really, Interesting moment, this experience. We were staying in this condo and Like you could walk to the pool and on the way back, it was after dark. And so you could kind of see into people's condos.

And I'm not creepy or anything, but we were walking by and several times when we walked by, the gals next to us was like this huge group of 20 somethings. There was probably nine or 10 of them. It was really cute. Like sometimes they were making dinner and sometimes they were, just all hanging out talking.

And one time I walked by and I was by myself and I walked by and I noticed that there was I noticed that they were all sitting on the, in the living room and everyone was on their [00:05:00] cell phone. No one was interacting at all. And it was such a scene, like 10, you know, vibrant young people sitting around looking at a machine all in one room.

It was a very profound experience to have. It made me kind of sad. You know, most of my clients that come to see me. one of the things that they want to work on and that we vastly improve in our work together is too much cell phone use. Because the struggle is real, my friend. So if you're relating to any of this, know that like, we are all relating to this.

This is the situation we're in. My question is What if we weren't in this situation? What would life be like if we weren't always tied to our phone? And that's the important question I'm asking myself. And lucky you, you're right here along [00:06:00] for the ride. My attitude is there's nothing lonelier than being in a room with someone on their cell phone.

Would you agree? It's like you plop down on the couch to be with your person, or to chat, or to ask a question, and there's no one there, even though there is someone there. It's like this un Um, unreciprocated longing to connect because the other person is already engaged in their activity, which is that they're on their cell phone.

There's nothing lonelier in my opinion. You know, if we were on our cell phones less, we wouldn't miss these little cues. for interaction in our relationship, but because we're so busy head down in the screen, we miss these tiny little bids from our partners, from our friends, even from people out in the community, trying to engage, right?

Make eye [00:07:00] contact or whatever. I mean, I've been that person and kind of looked around and been like, man, this is sad. Like there's no one to interact with. Cause everybody has their head in their phone. So if we didn't, wouldn't that be nice? You know, we could like make eye contact and say like, how are you?

How's your day going? Which thereby would frankly improve mental health because a lot of our mental health is about connectedness. And even though it feels when we're looking at this machine that we're connected. We're not connected to our lives, right? And that disconnect, right there, creates this kind of chaotic, overwhelmed, and stressed out state of mind.

So, if we're able to kind of separate out from the cell phone a little bit, and take a step back from it, You might find that you feel a little bit more at peace, honestly, and that is the [00:08:00] impact that less and working towards less cell phone use has had in my, the lives of my clients. they're not people who spend a lot of time on social media because they understand the impact, so I want you to know here as we're discussing this, that you absolutely can take that.

Tiny little steps every day to detach from your phone and feel a lot more connected in your real life.

Quick story. I tend to work with people who are really busy, professionals, busy executives. And I had this client who's came into therapy and his wife was really pissed off because he was on his phone all the time.

All the time. He had his own business. And so he felt like he had to be, you know, like on available anytime something was going on, but she was not having it anymore. And so he showed up to work with me because [00:09:00] he had tried a lot of different stuff to reduce his cell phone use and nothing was working.

And so they kind of decided together, like, you need an expert, you need some help. So that's where I come in. Right. And when I work with somebody around this topic, which is quite a bit, we get into other topics, like, what are your values? What do you like really care about in life? how do you want your life to look?

How do you want your time allotment to be? We really dig into some of these, um, deeper things in life, deeper kind of structural things. And then we talk about things on. Emotional level, right? Because our behavior reflects how we're feeling. And oftentimes when we're feeling stressed out and chaotic, what we really want to do is just Not feel like that and sometimes the answer can be found in the magic [00:10:00] machine in the end after working with this person for a short time We realized that the behavior of using the phone all the time was completely not in alignment With his goals and his purpose and the things he wanted to be doing and prioritizing in his life So it's a much different picture now This guy's out coaching his kid's soccer team and up leveling his management style, which he'd wanted to do for a really long time, just like learn some new stuff and try some new stuff.

Instead of just scrolling, he actually read some books and took a couple classes. So it doesn't take some big sweeping movement to get the cell phone into a more aligned position in your life. It's not like you have to go buy a dumb phone. But there's certain steps that have to be taken in order to basically trick your brain into changing your behavior.

So let's get into that [00:11:00] because I want you to know what to do and how to do it if you're trying to reduce your cell phone use. The first thing you want to do is you want to gather data, my friend. And I tell people this all the time. We don't judge a situation until we have all the information. So stop being so judgmental and start tracking your screen time like a data scientist.

Identify patterns. When do I tend to use my phone? When do I tend to be off of my phone? And how is that looking for me? Challenge yourself. using small little metrics based on the data that you gather. So if you're like, holy moly, I'm on my phone for over five hours a day, then a fair thing to do would be like, let's shoot for four this time.

week and just see where we can kind of trim the fat, so to speak. You know, in order to do this, my friend, [00:12:00] you have to set boundaries. So that's the second really important actionable step that you can take is set clear boundaries. Establish times of the day where you're absolutely not going to use your phone.

If you want to show up and be in your relationship and be more present in your house, you're This set boundaries where you don't allow yourself to use this behavior because you know it's pulling from what you want to create, right? No phone zone or no phone time. I, this is so funny and I don't know many people that were actually doing this.

Successful with this, but I kept my boys from having their phones past 10 PM until they were like juniors in high school. And I'm telling you, it pissed them off. They were so mad for years. They were like, no one does this. This is nuts, but, but, but I'll tell you now as [00:13:00] adults, they have more conscientiousness about the use of their cell phones.

So when we. Our parenting, we can set boundaries for our kids. we actually need to do that because their brains won't do that for them. That is what parenting is. It's helping people learn boundaries. Our kids, right? And in so doing, we can use some boundaries too. So the other thing that I want to mention, and the third really important part here, It's that the cell phone is an activity.

It's a habit. It's frankly a hobby and if you're going to pull it, you need to replace it most likely. So if you're like, Hey, I wish I wasn't on my cell phone so damn much because I'd love to take a walk every day, then that's your replacement activity. If you're like, okay, I want to start journaling, I want to learn about something, I want to read a book, I want to start painting, I want a watercolor, or [00:14:00] whatever you want to do, I want to swim laps.

Then what you want to do is, once you set some like kind of simple little boundaries, you want to fill that time with something, like it's important to fill, to replace the habit basically.

And the reason that we do this is because it kind of messes with the mind a little bit and the mind doesn't hunt for the old activity because it's engaged in the new thing, which is the thing that you want to be doing, that you intend. To do, which is not be on your cell phone. It's something else, right?

It's engaging in your life, my friend, which I think is funny that it's like continues to be so hard for us to engage in our lives. So my fourth tip for you today is mindfulness. And I know it's like this rote phrase that we don't actually really understand or know what it means or feel like it makes anything different, [00:15:00] but it does because mindfulness is just having present moment awareness.

And it's a practice that has to get practiced so that our mind knows how to do it without mindfulness. We are mindless. And in mindlessness, we pick up the phone constantly. Sometimes it's like, I'm not going to use my phone right now. And then all of a sudden I'm like sitting somewhere else and I'm on the thing.

And I'm like, wow, how did this even happen? Right? So what you want to do is when you find that that happens, notice. And this is basic mindfulness. It's like, notice, just put it down. Take a couple deep breaths and notice like how you're feeling. How does it feel in your face? Does it feel relaxed? Is it tense?

Can you notice any areas of tension like in your [00:16:00] chest or in your arms? Are you breathing shallow? Are you breathing deep? Right? Just kind of notice the impact of it. Notice the impact of putting it down. This is just building this present moment awareness. And if you really dig into mindfulness, which feel free to come work with me because I'll teach you how to dig into it in a really fun and, um, in your life way.

But when you really dig into it, it becomes easy to pull yourself out of whatever you're in and put yourself like firmly in the present moment. And then the last thing I have for you is like, you need to create accountability. Because here's the thing, when we have something that's just between us and us, our accountability partner is a little bit of a sidekick.

So it [00:17:00] means that we don't provide ourself with enough accountability. And this is really important because like I always say, you're conducting a relationship not only with other people, but with yourself. If you were in a relationship with somebody who was like, I would really appreciate, right? If you didn't do this thing, maybe it's um, whistle, or maybe it's fart, or whatever it is, right?

It's hard to live with people and you just like ignored that person. Your relationship is not going to get easier. It's not going to get easier. There's going to be a rub there. And this happens in our relationship with ourselves because we say, I'm not going to blah, blah, blah. I'm not going to use my phone so much.

I'm not going to spend all night surfing Instagram. I'm not gonna write, keep [00:18:00] commenting on boards that I, I feel like elevate my nervous system, but then we do. And what happens right there in our relationship with ourself, there's no accountability and there's There's no consistency. There's no taking our, our word for it, we're not joining with ourselves right there.

We're separating out and we're saying what you want isn't important to me. And so, Create some sort of accountability. You definitely have a friend who's struggling with this. Call them up. Make a plan. Perhaps your partner, the person that lives in your house, is struggling with this. Or maybe a teenager that lives with you is having a tough time with this.

Those are all great accountability partners. Or maybe you start a little deal in your office. Where it's like, hey, we're, giving out awards to whoever gets under three a [00:19:00] day. It's a lot of time we spend on these things, isn't it? So what I would say is, if you're wanting to kind of get going on this plan of action, experiment with only one strategy at a time and move very, very slowly.

Have grace for yourself. Okay, there's so many benefits to curbing your Cellphone use that before long you'll start to see them I see this in my clients and it's really fun because that's kind of why people come to me sometimes is They have a lot of anxiety. And what we uncover over time is that they're on their cell phones a lot.

And that's part of the deal is like, we have to get this out of the picture and under control. And it's really fun to watch the transformation where people are like, Oh my gosh, I'm so much more focused. I don't [00:20:00] have this frenzy.

It's all kinds of interesting symptoms that just melt away. So start small and pick one thing to try today. And I promise you will thank yourself for that. later.

So just to recap for you today, we explored how constant cell phone use can take a toll on your mental health and your connections with people.

We covered a few simple, actionable ways to create healthier boundaries with your phone. And we talked about how these small changes can really help you feel more present and And connected in your everyday life. Remember, even just a little distance from your device can make a big difference. Because you deserve to feel calm, focused, and in control of your time.

Thank you so much for spending your time with me [00:21:00] today. I really appreciate you being here. I release new episodes most Fridays. But be sure to tune in. If you found this podcast helpful, share it with someone who might need it and please, please leave a review because it helps the podcast reach more people just like you.

And if you want to work directly with me to live a more peaceful existence, just reach out. Bye. Book a free discovery call and we can figure out if we're a good fit to work together. My email is info at takeouttherapy. com. I'm changing the way I work with people to create massive change in a pretty short period of time.

So if that sounds good to you, get in touch.

Thanks for listening today. While this is a great day, education resource, always get the level of support that you need for your situation. Head to takeouttherapy. com for more [00:22:00] resources and to join my community. This is better mental health delivered. I'll see you next time.