My Week of Recentering and Isolation

Reflecting on how spending time alone (and off my phone) helped me confront anxious thoughts and insecurities.

The last week (November 16th to 24th) has felt like an extreme whirlwind of emotions, several of which felt difficult to bear. Perhaps for the first time of my life, I feel like I experienced a week where my emotions felt like it followed the traditional beginning, middle and end used in storytelling, except it was just my life. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. It began with an anxious spiral last Saturday night after I came home from work, I smoked too much weed, and somehow every anxious or insecure thought I had—that I thought was fleeting, within the last three months came to the surface.

I was praying that I just felt that way because of weed-induced anxiety, but woke up Sunday morning still feeling remnants of anxiety from the night before. I tried to force myself out of it, I went to a coffee shop and wrote in my journal as a means to better myself for the night out with friends I had planned after. I flopped on both sets of plans and instead went to my friend Leora’s to go cry and talk about how I felt—having reached a point where I realized I needed the help from someone else.

After talking about how I felt, I set an intention to make the entire week about focusing on myself and re-discovering the joy in being alone after consistent months of doing nothing but working and hanging out with people almost every day. For me, this meant spending my whole day alone before work in the evening, taking some time away from my phone and from constantly posting on social media (especially my close friends story), and putting my mind into other activities I’ve lost sight of. Embarrassingly, I hadn’t read a book in a while, so Leora lended me My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh to read (hence the name of this post). Alongside that, I threw myself back into what helps creatively fulfill me—writing, sewing and painting.

I wanted to commit to stimulating myself in a way that doesn’t involve other people, which is why I tried to avoid posting anything during this week. I wanted to see how I felt when I didn’t have any of the attention of others on me. I recently read a post on here by Catherine Shannon entitled Your phone is why you don’t feel sexy, and this post (despite having gone out in July), found me at the perfect time. She mentions that “The proliferation of devices surrounding us at all times may help us get in touch with other people, but they impede our ability to get in touch with ourselves.” After this week of disconnecting from others and refocusing on myself, I’ve never felt this to be more true.

When I checked my screen time throughout the week, most of my time on my phone was spent more on my Messages rather than any other app. I noticed while I was trying to reconnect to myself outside of social media this last week, I placed more effort in speaking to people one on one—starting conversations that didn’t originate from a 'post’ of sorts.

I think to my core, I just truly love sharing so much of my life with people. It’s why I started writing on here to begin with. However, something I want to continue to explore is finding the balance between sharing versus overextending myself, as well as sharing from the heart versus a place of wanting to satiate my ego’s need for constant stimulation. That’s another reason why I want to continue to limit my social media use as an effort to be more present. “What’s sexy is always here and now, not somewhere, out there, forever,” is another quote from Catherine’s post that felt relevant to share.

I finally acknowledged this last week that my confidence started to fall into a shit hole—partially from my social media usage and not spending enough time alone lately. That’s not to say that I don’t think I’m beautiful, I just don’t believe I truly felt it these last few months. The “fake it til you make it” approach I had previously taken wasn’t working anymore. I believe that method is a stepping stone to gaining confidence, not the end all be all. It was a method that worked for me a few years ago when I was pulling myself out of deep-routed self esteem issues and calling myself ugly everyday—when I didn’t believe there was any beauty to me at all. I’ve learned, and continue to learn, there’s so much more to it that comes from the intuitive and emotional parts of yourself rather than the physical part that you display to the world. To realize that alone, when everyone tells you confidence is ALL about “fake it til you make it” is overwhelming in itself. I realized I was using this method as a way of repressing and ignoring the anxious, insecure thoughts that I felt constantly creeping up on me within the last few months.

Today, I reflected on the waves of emotions I experienced this last week—going from the anxious spiral of Saturday night that left me so overwhelmed I couldn’t even begin to think about how to recenter myself then heading into Monday and Tuesday with the intentions I set on Sunday with Leora still fresh. I was heavily observing the way I felt—and while it was slightly better, it was still anxious. It was a different type of anxiety though, more so feeling overwhelmed by information I had been trying to keep in mind to help me get through my “spiral”. Tuesday night was THE night I specifically felt my mindset shift. I talked to my mom about the timeline of events that led me to spiral in the first place, and when I acknowledged what had triggered me, I physically felt a weight come off my shoulders, allowing me to feel a bit lighter on Wednesday when I went to my workout class and worked on some writing throughout the day. Thursday I made the conscious effort to get ready, put something nice on, and spend the day working/reading from one of my favourite coffee shops.

It was yesterday, Saturday, where I felt resolute with my week of recentering and isolation. I went to another coffee shop to hand sew and coincidentally walked in on someone’s classical music album release party where they played it live in the cafe. I woke up today, 8 days from last week’s spiral, feeling extremely refreshed and content—to the point where just a few hours ago I was crying over how overwhelmingly grateful I am over the happiness I’ve managed to create for myself this last week.

I decided weeks ago to spend both the first hour of my day off my phone and instead spending that time cooking breakfast and journalling, but now I’ve decided to extend that to the last hour of my day through reading, writing, or anything else that feels right. It hasn’t been long doing all of this, but today on the way home from work, I felt present in every way. I didn’t feel as though the week had passed me by in an instant. I was walking around smiling because I felt like I had missed seeing the beauty and stillness in my day to day life for so long and I hadn’t even realized it.

I’m learning to become okay with the fact that moments of confidence and insecurity are going to continue to fluctuate as I grow, and that I need to feel like shit sometimes in order to feel my best. All of this was something I felt important to share when referring back to my want to share pieces of my life from my heart versus trying to satisfy my ego’s want for constant attention. I always hope that what I say resonates in some way to whoever chooses to read these lengthier posts.

Aaannnnddddd as always, thank you for reading <3