Phones & Codependence
Back when I was still on socials, 6 or 7 years ago, I made a post on Instagram about taking a walk without a phone. It was a simple experiment. What it brought up surprised me.
That post ended up being about fear and how after that walk, I realized that the device in my pocket was a purveyor of fear.
Recently, I was walking and another layer to this story came in. The idea that phones have created an exacerbation of codependence. That the phone is also a codependence device.
I once talked about the phone as a device that was mostly about other people. I mused that every time a notification came in, it was really about someone else. And there is nothing inherently wrong with that, except for the volume. It can make you really outwardly focused.
I think Terri Cole’s new definition of high functioning codependence, in her book, Too Much, lends itself to what happens with a lot of us and our phones and how we interact with them. She defines it as, “behavior that includes being overly invested in the feeling states, the decisions, the outcomes, and the circumstances of the people in your life to the detriment of your own internal peace and emotional and/or financial well being.”
Can you see/feel the connection?
How often have you waited for a text response from this type of energy?
How often have you obsessively scrolled someone’s social and become overly invested in them (whether you know them personally or not)?
How often have you used your phone or your phone has used you, in the ways that this definition describes?
Does your phone make you overly invested in things (people, themes, topics, etc.) that you might not otherwise be without it?
Perhaps this doesn’t apply to you. But to those of us that it does, yikes, it's so sneaky!
And now that I have seen this, I cannot turn away. I am, yet again, looking at my phone in a new way, a more nuanced way that is sure to reveal itself more and more as this idea gets integrated.
Codependence is rooted in fear, insecurity, and lack, just like so many of our other behavioral adaptations.
So I ask or invite the question that I always come back to when it comes to personal conscious tech use…
Is this right for me? Is this the relationship I want to have with my tech?
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