I have been taking a social media break over the summer. It’s been about 2 months I’ve intentionally not engaged with social media. I go on to check my messages and respond to things once in awhile, but other than that I am not on it.

For someone who spent the last 10 years (with one 6 month break around when my second daughter was born) building a social media account and showing up there pretty much every day, this has made me feel a lot of things.

I knew I had to take a break when I really saw and, more importantly, felt fully in my body, how being on instagram at the capacity I was, was undeniably going against my values of nourishment and presence.

Integrity: Why I Chose to Take an Instagram Break

I recently read this definition of integrity from Amy May: “Integrity is the alignment of what you think, what you say and what you do.”

About six months ago, I saw, with full, blinding clarity, that the way I related with instagram was not nourishing me or my family.

I felt myself constantly being pulled into the digital sharing of my life versus actually living my life.

I found myself preferring the ‘social engagement’ I received on instagram over my real life community connections.

I noticed that if something cool or exciting or novel happened in my actual life, my first response was to think about how I would share it on instagram, instead of actually being in the experience itself.

I noticed how when I was sitting down to eat dinner or relax on the couch I was much more likely to grab my phone and start scrolling than I was to be with or connect with my kids and husband right in front of me.

This narrative around social media use and its insidious, dehumanizing qualities is a well discussed phenomena, most of us here on the internet are abundantly, conciousnly aware of it.

Those of us that use social media regularly have heard it and felt it all before. We’ve all probably felt guilty or shameful about the way we use instagram as a pacifier at times.

It wasn’t the first time I had noticed myself being hijacked like this, but it was the first time I really connected the dots between my social media use and my own aligned integrity with the frequency of nourishment.

There was also this new dissatisfaction I was feeling with my ‘real’ life. Some way that my actual life just wasn’t filling me up in the ways I knew it could. I was starting to notice more and more low level, almost subconscious, uneasiness and disquiet, a lack of contentment that followed me around like a piece of toilet paper stuck to my shoe.

I know the signs of addiction.

One of the ways I know addiction is running the show in my life, is an isolated dissatisfied jitteriness, a pining for the one thing and not being able to enjoy anything else fully.

There is an always-on-my-mind rumination that starts to surface. It brings me into myself in a harmful way, in way that makes me feel separate, hollow, and desperate. It disconnects me from those around me.

There was all the sudden no longer a doubt instagram had become an addiction.

The Personal is Political

Poised at precipice of needing something to change, I heard my ‘business owner voice’ loud and clear saying: “You can’t stop. This is how you generate an income for yourself. This is how you ‘find clients.’ You’ve spent so much energy, time, and attention on building this platform and audience, you can’t just let it go!”

And yet… I could not unsee how much lifeforce I was giving to this entity that is soul-less.

If I am to be the change I wish to see in the world and be in alignment and integrity with my teachings and messages, I could not continue.

If I was going to be the mother, wife, daughter, friend, and person that I would like to be, I could not continue.

If I believe that I serve the highest and best good in the Universe when I am full, nourished, juicy, and grounded, I could not continue.

If I believe that nourishment is possible in this modern world, I could not continue.

If I believe that integrity, alignment, and authenticity are the most powerful frequencies, I could not continue.

This is so much more important than my business.

This is so much more important than money.

This is so much more important than anything else.

These are places we have to hold our values so strongly if we really want to see a New Way and new paradigm emerge.

If we want to see a paradigm that truly values integrity, beauty, authenticity, nourishment, and the power of Life itself, we need to value those things more than our own fear.

This is where, as Marion Woodman says, “The personal is political.” Through our choices and what we choose to follow within our own lives, we choose what we take part in creating.

We are culture creators with each of our very personal choices.

I am not on a crusade of better-than. I do not judge you if you use instagram. In all likelihood, after this summer I will probably find a way to use it with more consciousness.

I am on my path and you are on yours. I trust both of those paths, completely and infinitely. How could I ever know what is best for you?

How I Feel Off of Instagram

In the last two months since I got off instagram, I can feel my nervous system settling in a way it hasn’t in many, many years (maybe since I got on social media).

I feel genuinely happier. I keep searching for more a more precise way to say that, but that’s really it. I just feel happier. I feel more content.

I feel more excited about my real, in person life. I have more energy for depth and connection for those friends that don’t live close to me, but that I value deeply.

I feel more bonded with my children and like I have more capacity to hold space for them in their hard and frustrating moments. I feel like I am more engaged and am leading my family with more clarity and precision, instead of just reacting to what is thrown at me.

I have more space for my husband and find myself way more interested in intimacy. I find myself feeling more gratitude and heart opening for him and our life together. More genuine connection.

What I think, what I say and what I do are endlessly more aligned.

Performance and Narcissism

Being off Instagram, I have been struck, like a clanging bell, by the amount of performance social media creates.

As someone who had the conscious intention to be completely and totally ‘real’ on instagram, to not use filters and to not only show the highlight reel of my life but share some of the hard stuff too, I’ve realized how it’s actually impossible not to perform at least a little.

When you are creating content for other people, you are always going to be orienting externally.

No one would be on instagram if they weren’t interested in having other people see them. That could be for business purposes or creative goals, but it’s going to create this view where a person is constantly putting themselves as the object of other people’s gaze.

This creates an energy of performance and breeds narcissism.

Narcissist is a big buzz word these days and I’m not going to get deep into the pop psychology that surrounds it, but it comes from the Greek Mythology story of Narcissus, who becomes so enamored with his own reflection that he eventually dies from unrequited love.

Think about instagram, YouTube, and reality TV personalities, they are entertaining. They create a caricature of a person, which doesn’t allow that person to be multifaceted and nuanced (like a true human).

Instagram promotes characters, not people. It puts people into black and white, pro and anti. It doesn’t have space for the nuance that true connection and understanding requires. This doesn’t have to be wrong or bad, it’s just true.

If I create a character for myself and I play that character for years and years for my audience, I eventually come to believe I am that character. This can create a numbness. A despondency that can make people depressed. It’s what I imagine happens to celebrities, on a smaller scale, but more prolifically, considering the way anyone can be an ‘influencer,’ these days.

If you create content on social media you know how blatantly narcissistic it can be.

Photographing or videoing yourself constantly. Looking through and editing photos and videos of yourself. Listening to yourself over and over again. Writing about your life, your thoughts. Again, always orienting to yourself as the center, the ‘main character’ energy.

I don’t believe there is anything inherently wrong with promoting myself or creating content that centers me, but I think it is very important to be aware of the way it can plant seeds of narcissism. It creates a tendency to preform, center myself, and speak in aggrandizements and half truths.

Even with the best of intentions, I would argue that social media will make anyone who uses it regularly more narcissistic. It’s not a reason not to use it, but it is a trade off to be wary of.

The story of Narcissus, is the story of so many “influencers,” big and small. It is possible to get so obsessed with ourselves, that we start to miss our lives. We miss o