Whether you watch the news every night or spend hours scrolling social media, it’s obvious that our attention is being pulled in all different directions as the world faces crisis after crisis. Lately, my DMs and messages are filled with screenshots of headlines followed with, “Have you seen this yet?” Honestly, although the state of the world is exhausting to think about along with the weight of work, politics and relationships, I feel compelled to give the energy to respond to each one.
As Black women, we often feel the pressure to speak out and be leaders in our lives. It’s been deeply ingrained in us to take care of everyone else—Janine from Abbott Elementary springs to mind—before ourselves. We tell ourselves to keep it pushing, even when we’re on the brink of emotional burnout, but we deserve the space to take a breather too. Luckily, spring is the season for new beginnings, including cleaning out bad habits and putting healthier ones in their place. As we enter May—Mental Health Awareness Month—I’m disconnecting from the digital world to slow down and check in on myself.
Don’t bottle up negative emotions; name them instead
It’s cliche, but it’s true: when your body is trying to signal something to you, slow down and listen. Although Black women show up to work when we’re not feeling our best, the “grin and bear it” mentality comes with serious pitfalls. The longer we ignore our emotions, our sleep schedule might suffer, our mood might become more unpredictable, and our bodies might even start to ache. Putting on an unbreakable mask for everyone around you isn’t going to make the feelings magically evaporate; in fact, bottling them up will only intensify the exhaustion we feel.
I started carrying around a pocket-sized notebook that was easily thrown in my purse or tote bag before leaving the house. It felt so easy to jot down the feelings that threatened to overwhelm me at a moment’s notice. Anxiety. Stress. Grief. Writing down the words allowed me to feel present in the moment and acknowledge I was feeling them. Using the notes app that’s always a tap away on your phone screen isn’t a bad option, either. The next step is to decode where that discomfort is coming from and try to take the right steps to shift to a better headspace.
Monotasking over Multitasking
Things are more convenient than ever, and with that comes the expectation to multitask and maximize our productivity. It’s inescapable. In fact, we probably don’t even recognize when we’re doing it: answering an email while eating lunch, calling the doctor’s office while walking the dog. Expending energy like this may seem great on the surface as we check off things from our to-do list, but it can also raise our stress levels and leave room for errors that we have to correct later. That all just snowballs into living in a constant state of tension and always having something to do.
I caught myself trying to multitask during my personal time, too, and companies know this. Infamously, certain movies are now written with the dreaded “second-screen” mentality in mind (guilty as charged), but how present can I be in my relaxing time if I’m cooking over a hot stove while that movie I’ve been dying to watch is being half-ignored? Prioritizing a single task at a time—monotasking—is the answer. Starting a task and following through until the end before picking up another one gave me the chance to do a task right the first time, and I felt more enjoyment and pride in the work I did.
Disconnect and recharge
Somewhat ironically, physical media and touching grass are all the rage on social media right now. While many of us don’t have the luxury of being totally disconnected from the news cycle, it’s worth it to log off every once in a while; “news anxiety,” or the stress of seeing constant negative updates, can cause us to tense up or worry about the headlines we read all day. Maybe your friends, like mine, are always trying to keep you up to date on the latest piece of information—and it’s all too overwhelming to absorb. We owe it to ourselves to find a balance between staying in the loop and being bogged down by bad news.
Fortunately (and again, ironically), the internet is also a great source to find a new analog hobby to occupy a couple phone-free hours. I replaced my daily doomscrolling session with crafting zines out of copy paper and magazine cutouts. It can be as simple as reading a chapter of a novel that’s been untouched on your shelf for eons. I felt much more refreshed when it was time to get back to work or chat with friends. It’s always worth re-evaluating how much energy you give to issues that are beyond your control versus how much you pour into the things that you can.
Don’t be afraid to say, “I need a moment to myself.”
When our phones shrunk down and flattened out to fit in our pockets, we made ourselves available to our contacts—business and personal—nearly 24/7. When everyone hopped on social media apps, we started taking in hundreds of comments from strangers. This opened the door to shouldering a lot of extra emotional weight (I’ve certainly sent support to trauma-dumping friends and online strangers alike). Just like “news anxiety,” we all have our limits to the amount of negative information we can be bombarded with.
One of the hardest lessons I had to practice was setting a personal boundary. It was necessary to balance the needs of my relationships with my own well-being, but it was a difficult line to establish in my mind. When I feel like the conversation has veered off from venting to trauma-dumping, I simply remind myself that I don’t need to respond right away or say, “I just need some space at the moment.” It’s not always possible to control the issues that our environment or those around us are experiencing, but it is possible to control the way that we respond to them.
Trust me, I know that building these new habits into our routines is easier said than done in our fast-paced world. But when we recalibrate from feeling constantly frazzled to knowing when to slow down, we can be our most present selves—for the world, but most importantly, for ourselves.