How Digital Habits Impact Mental Health: Insights from Anxiety Specialist Jennie Ketcham Crooks

The relentless allure of digital screens throttles our creativity. It heightens our anxiety and the concept of psychological inflexibility as the cornerstone of our digital habits. In this episode, I discuss with Jennie Ketcham Crooks, clinical licensed social worker and founder of the West Coast Anxiety Clinic, how to develop more mindful behaviors around interacting with our devices. We also discuss: 

• How digital overuse affects our mental health and interpersonal relationships
• The concept of psychological flexibility and how it guides our behavior in our daily lives
• What a balanced digital life looks like
• An invitation to a 30-day challenge
• Advice for workplaces to contribute to healthier digital habits among employees

Show Guest
Jennie Ketcham Crooks is the founder of the West Coast Anxiety Clinic, a clinical licensed social worker, and an anxiety and OCD specialist. She is the author of LOOK UP: The 30-Day Path to Digital Minimalism and Real-Life Maximalism.  Before starting the West Coast Anxiety Clinic, she was the Director of Clinical Education at Seattle Anxiety Specialists and, before that, the lead medical social worker at the Polyclinic. Jennie has been involved in research at the University of Washington, a guest lecturer at Harvard University, and appeared on several popular television shows, from Headline News and The View to Oprah.

Chapters

• 0:00 Navigating Digital Consumption and Personal Transformation
• 8:27 Life Transitions and Flexibility in Careers
• 17:08 The Impact of Anxiety and Escapism
• 31:51 Mindful Phone Use and Workplace Wellness
• 38:37 Setting Clear Work Expectations and Boundaries
• 44:14 Exploring the Dangers of Overconsumption

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey friends, this is Jill Griffin and I am the host of the Career Refresh Today. I am joined by Jenny Ketchum Crooks. She is the author of Look Up the 30-Day Path to Digital Minimalism and Real-Life Maximalism. In this episode, we discuss Jenny's previous work in the porn industry and how she got sober and eventually became a licensed clinical social worker and anxiety specialist.

Speaker 1: 0:27

Jenny shares how psychological inflexibility shapes our digital habits and what we can do to develop more mindful behaviors around devices. We're in this era of constant digital consumption, and our inability to disconnect and engage affects our mental well-being as well as the quality of our relationships. Jenny shares some real-life stories of herself and others and how the constant connection to digital devices impacted relationships with everything from friends to her children. But there's hope. Jenny shares her expertise on how we can reshape our digital habits and cultivate a healthier balance in our lives. She also has a 30-day challenge for you.

Speaker 1: 1:11

And listen. It's not about letting go of your devices. It's about the micro steps that you can take along the way to create a healthier relationship with your devices. So, friends, open your notes app or, if you want to go old school, and grab a pen and paper so you can note the various tips and the salient points that Jenny is sharing. If you have questions, email me at hello at jillgriffincoachingcom, and we will get those questions answered. So, friends, dig in Until next time. Keep your career fresh by embracing possibility and be intentional. And here's Jenny. Jenny, welcome, I appreciate you being here today.

Speaker 2: 1:47

Oh, my God, I'm so excited to get to sit and chat with you, so thank you for having me on.

Speaker 1: 1:52

Yeah, and I love, love, love what you are an expert in and what you talk about. I often call it people being at capacity. They're rolling into burnout, they're rolling into overwhelm. You have a really interesting take and I'd love for you to say in your own words, like what's going on with the digital consumption and the overconsumption of everything. So tell us.

Speaker 2: 2:16

Yeah, you know we are overconsuming right, and I think of it in a similar way as like overeating and over drinking, right, and it's not necessarily indicative of something clinically wrong with us or pathological. We're just sort of on autopilot and we end up doing the most.

Speaker 1: 2:38

Really interesting. So how did you get this? How did you get into this work? One of the questions I always love people to take us through is, like what did you think you wanted to be when you grew up? And then how did you actually get into being a licensed clinical social worker?

Speaker 2: 2:52

Yeah, so. So my path was not linear. You know, when I was a little kid, one of my first jobs, one of my first money earning things that I did was I colored in a coloring book and then I walked around and I sold those pages to my neighbors. So those were the first dollars that I ever made. That's amazing. And I came back with 30 bucks and my mom was like, where did you get this money? Like I am a hustler, that's where, and so that that was sort of the the opening to making money. But my, my first job in college and in, like, adult world was in pornography. That's, that was the first thing that I did, right, so I was a little bit more about that, yeah, so.

Speaker 2: 3:37

So in the college newspaper that I went to San Diego state, they had want ads. This was in the time of want ads, right? So there were want ads in the back of the newspaper and there was some nude modeling. And I, a broke college student, needed a way to buy more pot, right, like, I couldn't buy weed with my student ID card. They didn't sell it at the store at that time, right.

Speaker 2: 3:59

Things were sort of different, and so I got into the adult business and I started doing, like, single girl, layout magazine work, and you know, if you give a moose a muffin, they probably asked for some jam. And so, naturally, my tolerance for the kind of work that I was doing in porn grew and grew and grew and I started doing more and more risque things on camera, right. And so by the end of my career, I'd won awards, I was directing, I was starring in films, I was totally immersed in this world and I thought that this was the world that I had to be immersed in, because this is the choice that I made. Right, right, this is it. Right, like, I can't pivot from here. How could I ever apply at any other job with this as my background, and so I stayed in. Okay, and how I got out was I I thought it was this brilliant marketing scheme to get cast for a reality sex rehab show. Okay, this is going to be epic.

Speaker 1: 5:10

And because I know your bio, I know where you're going, but tell our listeners.

Speaker 2: 5:15

So, to my shock and horror, they did not have cocktail hour at the rehab, which I really went in thinking, oh, this is this is going to be a cakewalk. I'm just a workaholic, right? That's where the story goes. For me, it's like, oh, she's just a workaholic, but what happened was I got sober and what happened is people started calling me Jenny instead of my porn name, and I was so disoriented by these things both sobriety and being called this name that I had no identification with and it got me thinking. You know, I've been curating this character for consumption for so long, right, like I know what the people want, I know how to deliver it up. It was so outward facing, but it didn't really nourish me.

Speaker 1: 6:04

Okay.

Speaker 2: 6:06

And there was this other identity, jenny, that I had been for a long time, that I had stopped cultivating in adulthood and I I thought, maybe I should, maybe I should attend to that. You know, the the porn identity is going to age out at some point. Yes, yes, she has a shelf life.

Speaker 1: 6:25

I think what's so interesting is, while our listeners can, can understand, right, you know, whether it's porn, whether it's modeling in some way, right, youth and looks are fleeting, called life, right, so it doesn't really matter if it's that or if it's. I started my career in the legal field and I've decided that I no longer be an attorney. So this idea of how do you transfer from one area to another, so I'm going to ask you, how did you then transfer? So you have almost your porn identity, so almost like your dead name going into going back to Jenny who she really is, the other side of Jenny name, going into going back to Jenny who she really is, the other side of Jenny.

Speaker 1: 7:08

Where did you take that?

Speaker 2: 7:08

next. It was really scary, just to sort of like have it out on the table. Making that transition was super scary and I had a lot of support in that process. I had people and not financial support, right Like but like people who believed that I could make a change and who believed in me enough that I was willing to take that risk, right. And so the first job I got out of porn was actually as a hostess at a restaurant.

Speaker 2: 7:34

Okay, I went from making a lot of money to not making much money, but what I noticed happen and this is something that every time I talk about this it's this really emotionally evocative experience, right when I started working at this restaurant and I got an employee discount on their meals and I would save up my tip money to buy this black pepper beef. It was eight bucks, the meal was eight bucks, but that black pepper beef was so good. It was so good and I had. I knew that this was something I was doing for myself, that I had worked so hard for, I had earned these $8 in tips and that $8 was on top of the money that I needed to pay my rent, top of the money that I needed to pay my rent Right. And so there was, there was this richness in, in seeing the fruits of my labor, even in this really small way.

Speaker 2: 8:31

And that black pepper beef dish, that $8 employee meal, has meant more to me than any of the meals that I ever had in porn and any of the meals that I've ever had since. It was in that moment that I sort of said like, okay, I can do something different, even if, even if it is just going to get me an eight $8 black pepper beef dish, I can make that change and I can take the risk and this can work and I can be satisfied with so much less. So there was a little bit of me letting go of this idea of what I needed and how I needed to look and who I needed to be and how I needed to get there, and there was this moment of gratitude for the things that I actually was willing to do and and the way that, um, the way that that the rewards showed up showed up in my life, yeah.

Speaker 1: 9:24

Yeah, yeah, it's a really I mean. I just I love your raw honesty on this because, again, coming from the industry that you came from, I don't know that many people honestly talk about the transition of I used to do this and now I'm doing this, and I think taking it to a level that there was a part of that work within the porn industry that worked for you until it didn't and it sounds like moving into sobriety was one of the first steps having a support community who was probably encouraging you that there's other things that are possible. And what I'm hearing you say, without you actually saying, is that the work working in a restaurant and the amount of hours you probably had to work in order to earn the living wage that you needed was different. It was a different kind of work and it opened up a shift of possibility that there can be another way of approaching the life that you want to go after now, and that's what I'm hearing you say.

Speaker 2: 10:25

Yeah, and even in the idea of what the life that I want to go after now and that's what I'm hearing you say, yeah, and even even in the idea of what the life that I want to go after. Right, like, I had this idea, this like conceptualized version of myself, and she was so crystal clear and she ate at fancy restaurants and she stayed at fancy hotels and things were just easy and money just came to her and it was this really rigid idea of who I could be in this world and how I could get there. And when that black pepper beef hit my lips, it was like I need so little to be content in my life. Right, the things that mean the most to me aren't necessarily the things that I've decided mean the most to me. Right, like there was something so potent in working so hard, in moving in that path and in taking those risks and that was really where the reward came. I think that's yeah, that's that possibility. Right, like my, my life is way more filled with possibility than I had ever thought.

Speaker 1: 11:30

Right, and it doesn't have to be the materialistic things of the dinners and I'm sure you had lots of fabulous outfits and dress and the whole lifestyle around it and if you want those things, that's amazing too. Go go get them right, but understanding you can live um differently than what you thought. I think is really powerful for people to take away. It doesn't have to be the way we start. It doesn't have to be the way we continue if it doesn't work for us anymore.

Speaker 2: 11:56

Totally. And um, just because you're making a pivot and just because I was eating that $8 black pepper beef at one point doesn't mean that I'm going to only be able to buy $8. Sure, but it's a start. She loves staying at the Fairmont. Now, right, Like that has not changed. Right, Like we love a day at the spa that has not changed. And the way that I'm getting there is different. That I'm getting there is different. And it was really finding so much gratitude in that small thing that allowed me to start to build something entirely new.

Speaker 1: 12:31

Yeah, again, I believe a lot of people, including myself, can relate to that. So when we fast forward to now, you know, being a clinical licensed social worker, what happened.

Speaker 2: 12:47

Yeah, you know. So when I left the rehab show, I did a follow-up show called Sober House, and it was on VH1, and VH1 actually paid for three months of therapy afterwards, which is nice. I mean, we did open a like can of worms, so to speak, and so it was nice that they were like oh, this is actually, there's a lot more here that needs to that's good to know, because whenever I watch reality shows, I'm like these people need a coach.

Speaker 2: 13:14

I got to coach these A hundred percent and I think I came out. I went into that being like this is a joke, and I came out of that being like, oh my God, my whole life has changed. And so they paid for three months of therapy, which was brilliant. It was insufficient in terms of the long run, right. And the people that I worked with recognized that. And they also recognized that I didn't have I mean, I was $8 black pepper beef right, that's what I could do.

Speaker 2: 13:41

And so I saw two clinicians, jill and Reef. They saw me for two years without charging me a dime. They saw me pro bono and there was something so beautiful in that type of generosity and in them walking me through and helping me change my life that really inspired me to pursue this kind of work as well. And so I went back to school. I got a bachelor's in psychology, I got a master's in social work and I devoted my life to the mental health field, my life. Right now. Who knows if in 10 years, I'm like, oh, I got to do something else, right? Sure, the next chapter, right, yeah, the next chapter. And I'm open to that too.

Speaker 1: 14:24

Else, right, the next chapter right, yeah, the next chapter and I'm open to that too, and I love that you're reminding everyone of that where I mean I might be on my fourth career, depending on how you want to look at it.

Speaker 1: 14:38

And it's not a linear line and I think so often people feel that they have to stay in something. You know we need focus, we need a strategy, we need to approach it in a way that maintains, you know, the rent or the mortgage and if we're supporting children or all that. So we're not saying it's like easy breezy, but it can be done.

Speaker 2: 14:59

Yeah, I think the thing I hear you really touching on is this idea of flexibility. Right, like you come up with a plan and in as much as that plan serves you and nourishes you and fulfills you in the way that you want your life to be nourished and fulfilled, great, stick to the plan, right? If you start to notice that it's spilling your bucket a little bit, then babe, let's make a new plan, let's be palm trees and when the storm comes in, let's just bend a little bit instead of breaking. And so I think when I was in porn, I was so rigid, this is how it must be, and I held to that idea.

Speaker 2: 15:35

And there's a lot of pain in that type of rigidity and you miss out on so much. But when I was able to start to bend, my life really started to get better, and I anticipate that at some point in my life as a mental health clinician. I don't know, I don't want to say I get bored, right, but I love a project, I love doing new things, I love being challenged in really exciting ways, which is one of the reasons why I started my business, because it was a new kind of challenge in the same domain I don't ever want to be that rigid again to think that this is it?

Speaker 1: 16:08

It's the only path forward, right? So what's interesting to me too is and I want to get into your book, but you find being the founder of the West Coast Anxiety Clinic. When I was originally reading your stuff I was like, oh, I wonder how much she spent around addiction. So I'm sure many of the people you deal with have just the way. The people that I work with there's so many people that you know with my own drug and alcohol training, there's so many clients I work with that are also in recovery.

Speaker 1: 16:47

Is that when you are in your job and it's high pressured, at whatever the title is at, whatever the salary is, there's usually pressure? When you're in a job that's high pressured and you stop using your tools of choice, which in this case would be drugs and alcohol, how do you continue to function in that environment and succeed? And you're going to need support and, whether that's through an outpatient, an inpatient, a 12-step recovery, right? I love the idea of looking at the nuance of the anxiety, which is like, as Gabor Mate says, it's like not why the drinking, it's like what's the pain, it's understanding what's underneath that's causing that. So tell us a little bit about how it went into anxiety for you that.

Speaker 2: 17:27

So tell us a little bit about how it went into anxiety for you. Yeah, you know, I think I think what you touch on is so brilliant, right? Is that like there are these high powered situations and there's pain in that, and then we use something to numb that pain. I did the same thing in porn. I use drugs and alcohol in porn. It numbed that pain and then suddenly I got sober and I was confronted with that pain and and that's where change became possible it's like, oh, actually, this is not a sustainable path forward for me.

Speaker 1: 17:51

Well, it's the joke of like. If you want to know why you're drinking, stop drinking.

Speaker 2: 17:55

A hundred percent right Because you won't find out, right, because that's coming up really fast for you. Yeah, totally, totally right. And I think, even so, in drinking, or maybe, maybe every single night, you need a bath. I have to have a bath, I have to do this really intense self-care regimen so that I can continue doing my job. And there's this, there's a rigidity there, right, like if you take away all of those um band-aids, right, like, are you just riddled with bullet holes? What? What if? What if we take away all of that and just let you experience the difficulty of where you're at?

Speaker 2: 18:31

Do you actually want to stay in a position that is this difficult and you can, that's fine, right, that's a choice, right. And then the self-care, because that's sort of like what it's conceptualized as right, like this, like I've got to do all my self-care stuff right. Like the self-care, because that's that's sort of like what it's conceptualized as right, like this, like I've got to do all my self-care stuff right, like the self-care becomes about a gift to yourself, because you are suffering, not the thing that reduces your suffering.

Speaker 1: 18:57

Exactly, and I just want to also point out for our listeners that maybe it's drugs and alcohol, maybe it's the extra glass of Chardonnay, maybe it's hours spent, you know, on TikTok or Instagram Like. Either way, you're escaping from what that is. There is nothing wrong with spending hours on Netflix or Instagram. There is nothing wrong with having a drug or alcohol. If that works for you, it's when it's being used to avoid or impact your life is what we're talking about. So I just kind of want to make that little PSA in our conversation here.

Speaker 2: 19:31

I love that you put your finger on that explicitly right. It is the function of the behavior that matters. If you're using it to get away from something that's awful right now, there's a chance that the awful thing will persist because you are not tending to it right. There's a chance that the awful thing will persist because you are not tending to it Right. So if you're using TikTok to get away from how stressed you are at work, or or how stressed you are when your kids are trying to like pull on you when you're trying to write an email, right Like, we need to look at the bigger picture here. So a little time off TikTok, a little time off of a Pinot Grige, that's fine. Let's let the pain hit and see what it is, and that's what anxiety is right. So I work with a lot of people who are very, very anxious and who will use drugs and alcohol to make them not anxious. They don't have a drug and alcohol problem, they have an anxiety problem, right.

Speaker 1: 20:21

We're going to stop and have her say that again, say that again.

Speaker 2: 20:24

Yeah, if you are anxious and you are using drugs and alcohol to deal with your anxiety, you don't have a drug and alcohol problem, you have an anxiety problem right.

Speaker 2: 20:35

Brilliant. Stopping the drugs and alcohol is going to let you feel as anxious as you feel, and the beautiful thing about anxiety is that it's not actually dangerous. There's no harm that will come to you by feeling anxious. It's uncomfortable, it's kind of ick, but as an emotion it's designed to make you do something, elicit motion E-motion right. It wants you to act. It wants you to prevent the threat that's on the horizon. Right, it wants you to. It wants you to act. It wants you to prevent the threat that's on on the on the horizon, right. And so if you drink to make that feeling go away, then you're not doing the planning that you need to do. Right, if you're worried about your retirement, and so you, you have a couple of cocktails, that's probably not what you probably need to look into, like investing in your Roth 401k, that's possible.

Speaker 1: 21:25

Right. No, not in that Right Right Again. It's the escapism of that. So it connects then from the anxiety in digital overconsumption on how people are using that again as escapism. So explain how digital overuse affects our mental health and ultimately our relationships.

Speaker 2: 21:49

Yeah, I mean. So I think I think those two are so intertwined. Right when digital digital overuse is problematic because it's it's not just an escapism thing, it's also an autopilot thing, kind of like a body-focused repetitive disorders. Right, some of us have these behaviors that we pick at our skin and some of it is this intentional. I have to make this blemish go away. Some of it's just mindless. I'm sitting in front of the TV and scratching. So digital overconsumption is similar in that way where sometimes I am trying to avoid this uncomfortable elevator ride, so I'm going to dip into my TikTok, right, sometimes you're just sitting and then suddenly your phone is in your hand and it's in front of your face. So there's this both intentional component of it and this autopilot component. Right, the intentional side is problematic because again it's cutting you off from learning something about the pain that you're experiencing. Can you survive an elevator ride and be uncomfortable? You'll never know. As long as you use your phone, let's see if you can do it. But what that does is that will exacerbate symptoms in other domains. So suddenly you also feel anxious engaging with people at the grocery store. Suddenly you also feel anxious giving a presentation, right, suddenly, these social situations where there is uncertainty and you are under pressure or cast in an opportunity to be judged, right. So we don't know if we can tolerate that, and so much of it stems from using a phone to avoid seeing. If we can tolerate that.

Speaker 2: 23:35

The mindless stuff is a little bit more tricky, right, because it's insidious. It shows up when we're with our partner, right, and you're at the dinner table, and suddenly there's a lull in the conversation and brain I call her Brenda. Brenda gets bored and she's like I wonder what's going on online, right, and then hand just goes there and the phones are designed to keep us in there, right, and so that's what they do, and what happens is that your partner sees you choosing your phone over them and it's this moment of disconnect, right. Your kids, my two and a half year old knows that mommy's phone is very important, so she will seek it out. If she sees it's in the other room, she will fetch it and bring it to me, and it's one of those things where I'm like, oh crap.

Speaker 2: 24:28

Like she sees how much attention I pay to this thing and in her brain she's like that thing is important. We ought to bring it to her. She's going to need this right. She's going to love if I bring her this thing right. I'm going to be helpful and bring her this shiny little rectangle right. She's going to love if I bring her this thing right. I'm going to be helpful and bring her this shiny little rectangle right. And so in those little autopilot slides those cognitive errors into phone use. The message that we send the people around us is that they are not important to us. Whether or not we're choosing to do that is inconsequential.

Speaker 1: 25:06

That's the read and even if I think to your point, if you know, if it's your partner that you have a relationship with or tenure with right maybe not as much, but if you're in a new social situation, I would imagine people are also using it because they feel the social anxiety of what should I say in this moment I don't know. I'm going to pick up my phone. What do you recommend people do when they're in those situations?

Speaker 2: 25:34

Hide your phone. That's really good.

Speaker 1: 25:38

I want to yell that to everyone. I've been in a lot of social situations recently where I mean, I think, probably coming off of the COVID, there's enough time behind us, but they're still like, hey, we get to be in person and see each other. And when I'm in an event and people are all on their phones I'm like come on.

Speaker 2: 25:58

Totally, and it's a really tricky thing to overcome, because the phone is so appetitive, it is tasty, there is tasty stuff in there. I mean right now I have a picture of my two girls freaking out on Santa Claus's lap. Oh, I could gaze at that all day right, and just that pull to look at how cute they are. That's enough to get me hooked right. And so, going into a social situation, know that your phone is designed to hook you into it. So you're gonna to want to take steps to put a little bit of space between you and it.

Speaker 2: 26:30

So, whether that's hiding it, whether it's burying it somewhere deep in you, make it inconvenient to get to so that you have to really work hard to get there. Don't walk in there with it in your hand. Don't just slide it in your back pocket. If you can leave it in the car, leave it in the car when you're driving, put it in your hand. Don't just slide it in your back pocket. If you can leave it in the car, leave it in the car when you're driving, put it in the trunk. Right? You want to do everything you can to help your brain have space to choose how you want to engage with the phone, because otherwise the phone is going to choose how you engage with it.

Speaker 1: 27:01

Yeah, yeah, I often tell people, you know if they, if they need to use the phone for professional reasons, but they're finding themselves being constantly distracted by social media. If you can't remove those apps from your phone because most of them you can get through other means. Right, you can move it off your phone, but maybe you use it on the iPad, right?

Speaker 1: 27:20

You can use it in different ways. And if you can't do that, make sure you're at least moving those apps to a couple of swipe screens away, so that it becomes a more conscious effort to have to find that thing, and then you can go wait. Do I really want to go spend another 10 minutes on TikTok right now, or do I want to come back and be centered in this networking conversation that I'm in right Because you're using your phone professionally?

Speaker 2: 27:43

Yeah, absolutely yeah. So any sort of like environmental control strategy is going to help you have a little bit more space to choose how and when you use your phone and in what context. And going into context where you know you might feel a little bit uncomfy, you know that that pull to escape is going to be there too, right? So anticipate that it's going to be more difficult to refrain from using your phone in situations where you feel judged. You just, you just know it. You walk in there, you're like, well, this is going to be uncomfortable. Like, let's go see if you can actually like lean into that discomfort. How uncomfortable can I feel right now? Let's see, yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:23

I love it. I often tell clients um, I call it the three, two one, knowing you're going into a conversation again. You know our listeners are people who are here because of their careers. So having three questions, maybe about questions around your industry or your profession. You're going into the networking event, you're going into the cocktails after work with friends and colleagues. Three questions, two people, one hour at a time. So you think of three things to talk about. You think of two people you might want to zero in on or reconnect or connect with, and then look at it one hour at a time. If you've stayed an hour and you feel like that's good and you can make it another hour, great. If it's time to leave, great. There's no judgment there. But I often find that when you do that three questions, two people, one hour at a time you blink and you're like, oh, I can actually stay at this event for two hours and then head home and have a productive event and not feel overdrawn or worn out by that.

Speaker 2: 29:18

Yeah, I love that. I love that skills-based approach to entering social situations. You know, and I think, I think a lot of us really sell ourselves short about how we're going to show up in something and how we're going to perform and how we're going to, how we're going to be with other people and and some of that is in part due to, you know, exposure to these really high ideals unrealistic at best, right, these messages that we get from all of these different places. I get a lot of messages about how I should be as a mom, as a woman, as a partner, as a best friend.

Speaker 2: 29:54

I get a lot of messages from Instagram and going into a situation where you're sort of put on the spot, right, like, okay, you can go in with three questions, two people, and just see, okay, you can go in with three questions, two people, and just see if you can stay for an hour. That's a great exposure strategy. Like, let's go in, let's see if you can do this, let's see if you can tolerate, right, and then the next time, see if you can go in with two questions and one person, yeah, and extend maybe an hour and a half time.

Speaker 1: 30:23

Oh, that's's so good. Even my stomach just went Right, exactly.

Speaker 2: 30:29

I mean, look, cause even that three, two, one that can set itself up to help you escape the anxiety from it. Right, what if you go in there totally unprepared and see what happens? Can you survive? Even if you crap the bed right, Can you survive that?

Speaker 1: 30:53

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean it's an interesting take. You know, I totally get where you're going. I think in many cases, if it's part of your career and it's high stakes, you sort of want to set yourself up for a situation where you're crapping the bed. But, point taken, right, it's about understanding. Again, you have a little anxiety here. What is it that? What expectation are you putting on this exchange? How are you in compare and despair? What thoughts have you come in preloaded into this exchange? That's making you more anxious. So again, point point taken on that. So I want to get a little bit into your book, right. So the book look up 30 day path to digital minimalism and real life maximalism. I love that. What provoked you then? I mean you're, you're running this anxiety clinic what provoked you to deep dive into the concept of digital minimalism?

Speaker 2: 31:51

A lot of my clients, we do an assessment of all of the different safety behaviors. What are the things that they're doing when they feel anxious to make themselves feel safe? A lot of my clients end up on some sort of nutritional plan when it comes to their phone use. What are the things that are depleting you and sucking the life energy out of you and what are the things that are actually adding value? Right? So we try to limit the use of phone as an escape and we try to allow for the use of a phone where it actually promotes the kind of life that you want, right? And so that was a curious moment. I was like this is happening with a lot of my clients, where the phone's being used in this very specific way.

Speaker 2: 32:35

And then my daughter was six. My daughter was Elsie. My six-year-old was just learning to walk, and so I actually wrote this book quite a while ago. But she was learning to walk and we were at this Super Bowl party and I had this errant thought, as one does, about Snooki from Jersey Shore and I was like what is she doing now? I must know. And so I'm doing a deep dive on Snooki, and then, naturally, it leads to the situation. And then is Ron in jail yet, and, and so I I'm going down this deep dive and then suddenly everybody at the party starts clapping and I look up and I'm like, oh, football has happened something.

Speaker 2: 33:21

Right, I was wrong. I was wrong. Elsie had taken her first step and I missed it. You know my second daughter, sadie. I saw her first step. I don't really remember it, but I remember missing Elsie's first step. Yeah, right, and, and that's what made me think, oh, this isn't, this isn't a pathological thing, this isn't a clinical anxiety thing, this isn't just an avoidance thing. This is, this is just autopilot, this is just brain making silly errors and chasing after little delights. But in that chase we miss so much of the life that's happening right in front of us. And so, you know, as a clinician, I wanted something that was evidence-based to help me change that, and I couldn't really find anything. I found some interesting books on like breaking up with your phone and that kind of stuff, but it didn't necessarily offer the evidence-based approach that I wanted, and so I thought, well, let's go.

Speaker 1: 34:30

I love it. I love it. So give our listeners a little taste this 30-day challenge that I know you have in the book. Give them a couple of tips of what they can take away from this conversation and what they can implement today.

Speaker 2: 34:46

Okay, so the 30-day challenge is a collection of micro practices that you do daily right, and the 30-day challenge is not 30 days of no phone use, so we can just let go of that idea immediately.

Speaker 1: 35:04

Everyone can exhale. That's not what we're suggesting.

Speaker 2: 35:06

Take a breath, you're going to be fine, right? And what the practice is really about is about coming off of autopilot, identifying the narratives, all of those stories that keep you so attached to your phone, identifying the moments where you're actually trying to escape some difficult thing by using your phone, and then really clarifying your values so you can see what is this life about, because it's not about the shiny rectangle, right? So that's the broad overview and the there are a variety of fun little experiments that you'll run in in the 30 day challenge. One of my favorite experiments is called point and call, and so for an entire day, you're doing this. It's a mindfulness practice called point and call.

Speaker 2: 35:55

It comes out of Japan and what it is is train conductors use this strategy to reduce cognitive errors as they are conducting trains, and so they narrate in present moment everything that they're doing out loud. So every time you touch your phone, you narrate what you're doing out loud. As you're doing it, jenny is picking up her phone. She is looking at a picture of Elsie and Sadie and Santa. She is swiping up. What this does is it both is incredibly aversive, frankly, right, like most of us don't want to narrate what we're doing with our phones, but it's going to help you stay on track. So if you have something you actually need to do in there, it's going to help your brain move toward the thing and it's going to prevent you from slipping in to one of those accidental. I know I'm Instagramming and it's you know, accidental.

Speaker 1: 36:50

I know I'm Instagramming and it's, you know, 20 minutes later and yeah, yeah, so. So it's a way of tricking yourself into being intentional and to really thinking what how you want to be spending your time.

Speaker 2: 37:07

It's, it's a way of short circuiting uh, cognitive errors, right, you? You are basically interrupting brain's habit of sliding into easy appetite of things by just saying out loud what's happening in the moment, describing what's happening. It's a mindfulness practice. It is actually a meditation, and if it feels aversive and you notice that, you can even announce that, and then that becomes part of the mindfulness practice as well. Right, you don't have to run away from that.

Speaker 1: 37:32

I love it. So I believe it was a country of France that passed a law recently about how you can't email employees after work hours, which of course, set off a great conversation amongst many of my friends For longtime listeners. You know I come out of strategic marketing from the tech space and I worked across many time zones, so how do you figure out what after hours are? And I'm sure each company figures out their own guidebook according to that law. But I wonder for you like how can workplaces contribute to a healthier digital habit with their employees, because that expectation is real. And again, if you're someone like myself who very easily worked across, I mean there were times in which I was meeting with my colleagues in Dubai in the morning and my colleagues in LA like late evening and somewhere living in New York City. I'm in between those two things. It would be a very long day. How would you recommend that workplaces can contribute to creating healthier habits for their employees?

Speaker 2: 38:37

I think it's a great question and I think it's twofold right. I think there's our perception of the expectations and then I think there's the actual expectations, right? So I think, in terms of our perception of the expectations, it is beneficial for us to really consider what has been verbally and contractually expressed to me about my obligations when it comes to email response time, meeting time, work hours. Is it in the actual documentation that I have signed on for this job, that I am on call, that I am supposed to, that I must, and what are the consequences if I don't? Right? So if I don't respond within five minutes, within 30 minutes, what are the consequences?

Speaker 2: 39:23

Is it that I don't feel like I'm being good? That's an us problem, right? That is us really being uncomfortable. Is it that they will fire me? That is, that is a workplace organizational structure that's going to have to change, right. And so I think I think the first step is to really have a solid grounding in what is expected of me, and I actually I have a little quizlet that I made. I can send it to you. You can include it in the show notes if you want to.

Speaker 2: 39:58

We'll do that, yes, so it'll help you determine whether you are on call, whether you think you're on call or whether you are smartphone dependent, meaning your smartphone is your only vehicle for internet connection, right right For you to do your work, exactly.

Speaker 1: 40:10

So what I'm hearing there is the onus is on whether it's called HR. You know, head of people, right? Executive leadership needs to get really, really clear in their employee handbook what the expectations are, because the onus is on them to set the expectations, otherwise their employees are going to default to whatever their own expectations are. And that's where, again, not only are you going to lead to a lot of confusion, but a very unhealthy workforce where people are working at all times or maybe not at all, which I doubt is happening.

Speaker 2: 40:44

Yeah, yeah, I think the onus is it is on HR departments to come up with really clear expectations for their manual. It's also in the. It should also be in the contract, the one-on-one contract, because expectations for a physician or for an engineer who deals with things that break and is on call is going to be very different than for a medical assistant who clocks out and goes home for the night right, absolutely, but still same night, right, but still same industries, right. And so, being really really specific at both, like an organizational level and a contractual one-on-one, what is the contract between the employee and the organization? That's the first step and, yeah, you're right.

Speaker 2: 41:26

So if they are not managing that really well and really tightly and coming up with clear, explicit rules and boundaries for when it is expected and required to respond, then what's going to happen is we are going to be swayed by our own emotional experiences and our stories of origin and all of the times where we weren't good enough and I didn't make this team, and this was the moment where I didn't good enough and I didn't. I didn't make this team and this was the moment where I didn't perform the way that I wanted to. And all of those memories bombard us and all of the emotions that came with those memories show back up and will sort of push us around. And if we're not really mindful of that and we're not really grounded in what the expectations are like, what does the data say, then there's a good chance that we're just going to be sort of swept into it and do the most.

Speaker 1: 42:15

Yeah, yeah. Can you share a quick, just as we start to wind down, can you share a quick success story of some of the people either you've worked with or people that you've witnessed, who have transformed their relationship with their devices?

Speaker 2: 42:30

Yeah, I actually. So I sent this out. I sent the book out to a bunch of therapists on some listserv that I found, and that was an exposure for me. Frankly, right, I'm like, here are here's my clinical work. Judge me right.

Speaker 2: 42:43

And so, one by one, I've been getting responses about what their experience is in doing the 30-day challenge. The one that was most striking to me was a clinician wrote back and said that after they put together the sheer number of hours that they would lose by using their phone in the way that they are and the number of years that they would lose by using their phone the way that they are, and they imagined all of the things that they would lose by using their phone the way that they are, and they imagined all of the things that they would have to give up. This is all part of the challenge, but they looked at all of the things that they would be willing to give up in order to spend time scrolling on their phone. The result is that they've not only like reduced their cell phone usage significantly, like down to like one, one and a half hours a day from aid. They said that they feel like they're in high school again, like they've been given a new lease on life.

Speaker 1: 43:39

Wow and for me that is magical. That's almost like a second PhD you could have earned.

Speaker 2: 43:47

I mean, I've thought about yeah, that's another, that's a, you know what that the PhD is actually? So for me, I is one of the like Ooh, do I need this to be good enough? I know, when I started considering PhDs, that Brenda is hard at work figuring out ways to make us good enough.

Speaker 1: 44:01

Right, right, right. I call that the education of the credentialing gap, that you think you have to wait, but, but, but I'll start that, but first I have to do this right, that's the next thing that your brain plays trick on. Picks on us more. Jenny, this has been great. There are so many things. I feel like I could talk to you all day about lots of different topics. I'm going to put all of your information in the show notes and, for our viewers, I will put them on YouTube. Thank you, this is really great. And for everyone if you have any questions, send them to hello at jillgriffincoachingcom. We will get them to Jenny. We will bring her back. We will have further discussions. I really appreciate you being here and shedding some light on the overconsumption and what it is doing to both of us mentally and our well-being and our relationships. It's really important work, so thank you for being here.

Speaker 2: 44:46

Jill, thank you so much for your work and for including me and to your audience.