What Our Generations Are Losing: Self-Control

I've been wondering why I so impulsively spend time on the internet. Even when I know it makes me unhappy and that time off of it will eventually leave me happy, it's a sort of addiction. It draws me back. It's like there's a force that I don't know how to fight. Sometimes I succeed, and thank God for that. Often I don't. This isn't something I struggled with as a kid. I didn't have crazy obsessions with needing more: more computer, more iPod, more this-or-that, more snacks. Not because I want it, because I need it [or so my self tells me].

There are countless articles about how screen time harms brain cells and dis-regulates people's circadian rhythm. There are lots of articles warning that our next generation is coming up glued to the screen like super glue: unable to resist it, because they don't know how.

I've sensed that even when I spend my time with the screen looking up good things and so forth, there's still something detrimental about being in front of the screen.

Recently, I started a diet due to allergies. I've felt better since it: more-so psychologically than anything. I think it's because I'm finally starting to exercise self-control and that build up the foreign feeling of self-worth. The diet helps some due to the fact that I'm not eating certain foods that make my stomach upset, but I think the biggest thing it has done for me is it has given me a sense of worth and control. Now I think before I eat. And I don't just resist. I say no to things that aren't good for me. I won't just eat whatever I crave. I'm still prone to eating to try to reduce unpleasant feelings, but it's not like it was.

Many issues I deal with are related to psychological and other physical symptoms. That said, most of them relate to not knowing how to take control. It's the whole "I don't want to, but I do it anyways" and somehow I didn't know how not to. It sounds odd or irrational, but there's a strain on my body: an impulse I don't know how to control. I can tell it has something to do with my brain patterns.

I deal with it in relation to my sleep schedule, in relation to the media I watch... I'm finally getting a better hold on it in regard to the food I eat (though it could be better)... I have lots of addictions and phobias. I'm not saying that other things didn't lead to or contribute to these things, but the main thing I deal with now is feeling a lack of control.

I don't mean the kind of possessive control that dictators use over their people. I mean the ability to decide what and when I am going to do things. I'm like a slave to some unknown force that I can't describe as anything better than a glue-like addiction.

I guess these things (media devices, etc.) have become so commonplace in my life that I just don't feel safe without them. The unknown hurts, and even when I experience it and am glad to be away from the computer there's often a nagging force (almost like a vibration in the air) that calls me back.

But the media hurts even more. It's killing me, because I know I could live a fulfilling life where I have control. But I don't. It's hard. I'm afraid and unpracticed.

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I'm grateful that I had a pretty media-free childhood. We watched some movies, but it was limited. We didn't watch TV at all except for a few months in fourth grade, so we didn't have to impulse that I need to be glued to the screen. We didn't go on the internet. I never played online games. The closest I came to that was a training program for speed typing in fifth grade, but even that was goal-oriented. We kept it from being an addiction. I was more interested in playing dolls, writing stories, or playing outside. By brain and body-brain connection felt (for the most part) healthy.

I'm so grateful I've had this, because I know even many children from my generation haven't, and hardly any children born even half a decade after me had this privilege: the privilege of being screen-free. Exercising self-control.

It's not that the media is the only thing that disregulates our brains and makes us lose control, but it certainly contributes. We learn we can no longer resist things that peek our interest. It's so easy to click on an add or the next episode in the sidebar on YouTube or to scroll through Facebook and refresh the page when one gets bored.

It's all training for: I see. I want. I take/do.

My brain is in training for this, and I need to take it back. The battle IS NOT going to be easy. I'll probably never have back exactly what I had before, but I want to take it back. I'm going to therapy now. I'm hoping to learn self-control. Not just impulse control but to control my fears.

I think the best form of retraining or untraining is PRACTICE. With that mysterious psychological force pulling my mind (called addiction or I want or don't want but impulsively need-->I take/do), this will probably be one of the hardest battles I ever face.

It will take effort to get my brain out of this impulse-serving mode. It's painful pulling off the glue. But I actually WANT TO LIVE. I think what's unfortunate is that much of the upcoming generation will never get to experience what true living (to not being slaves our impulses, passions, desires) is. 

It's so free. So beautiful.

I pray that some parents will still provide their kids with THE FREEDOM OF SELF-CONTROL by teaching them to limit media, not get a phone right away, avoid websites (especially some until a certain age), not insist on eating everything they crave in the moment, not buying every single toy on the market.

If you're born into slavery, how do you know what freedom is? What you're missing?

Yet I have hope that at least a few people in our upcoming generation will learn this discipline that makes it possible to breath, to mean it when you smile, to experience, to enjoy (vs. helplessly scrape for more) things.

Meanwhile, I'm going to try to do the hardest thing I have ever done. FIGHT THE FORCE. GET MY BRAIN BACK. 

I have been blessed to know what screen-freedom is like, to know that it's worth it. And I beg our next generation to give at least some of our children true childhoods (not iPad schools, not video game evenings, not TV dinners, not electronics for the holidays but textbook schools, evenings that include playground and ballgames and dolls, planned-out family dinners where people take responsible roles, REAL toys for the holidays) so that true freedom lives on.

And parents -- MOST importantly of all -- DON'T just hand your child your iPad while you're making dinner or taking a nap of need a little break. Let them get creative. Trust me. Kids can get creative if they get the opportunities and actually have decently self-regulated minds. It's what they were made to be.