• A mild feeling of general dread
• Inability to focus on something without distracting mental chatter
• Hard to not play music in my head
• General apathy / anhedonia

Questions:

• Is it possible to get better? to be like how I was before 2013/2014?
• Did I even feel better back then?

Important to Remember:

• Get comfortable with being uncomfortable
• Growth involves suffering
• The internet is a hyperstimulatory false reality, like a drug, and leaving it will result in “withdrawal symptoms”
• There once was a time where I could live without the internet with no problem despite having unrestricted access to it.
• Not living in the false reality gives me a significant advantage
• The “withdrawal symptoms” should get better
• The “pathways” should slowly rewire

It may be possible that it’s not enough to simply unwire the bad/unwanted behaviors and their rewards but that we also must rewire to the good behaviors that were previously unwired from repeated bad behaviors. For example stopping social media and YouTube might not be enough. We probably also need to read books to actively rewire the mind for less stimulating activities. This works because reading books requires active brain use for processing and memory. Books don’t seem appealing now but with time it will get better (based on my experience in 2019). It’s like after drinking almost nothing but apple juice for months in 2013, water taster bitter, but after quitting juice and drinking only water, it quickly stopped tasting bitter.

I’m noticing that I’m trying to rationalize bad behaviors when I just stop and try to practice mindfulness. For example, trying to rationalize mindless scrolling online because I need to find “important” information even though I really already know what I need to do. It’s like a background voice that’s constantly issuing commands to try to get me to do those things.