I have known about mindfulness since I was a psychology student. I immediately fell in love with it and have since tried to be so in every possible way. However, in this very distracted world, it’s very hard for me to stay so. I thought the problem was the internet that I have 24/7 access to, so I set time limits on all my social apps, installing and uninstalling them several times throughout the month, only so that I would lose access altogether. Turns out, it wasn’t all true; it’s not just that social media is the problem, but my mind is also the problem.

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I’m a psychologist and set time limits for my social media apps. I, at a full-blown adult age of thirty, still need to restrain myself from instant-unlimited doses of dopamine. Ten, fifteen, thirty minutes–I change the timer every now and then, and the timer on my phone will block my access to TikTok and Instagram. I have set rules that I’m allowed to ignore those limits on weekends. But, sometimes, if not often, I would easily go to settings and delete the time limit I had just set yesterday.

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I am a generally anxious person. I couldn’t remember not being an anxious person in any stage of my life: childhood, teenage, early adulthood, now; all–I survived thirty years of my life in a constant wave of anxiety. Being a psychologist–having two degrees to be that—doesn’t make me not an anxious person anymore. I am a less anxious person now, but I’m not a not-anxious person–unfortunately, that complicated-double-negation sentence is the only right way of saying what I wanna say. 

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I’m sitting at the library today, looking out at the trees’ reflections on a square area of water where the birds usually gather to drink. A few moments ago, I received a text from a client saying that she finally did the one thing she’s been wanting to do for the past few months. I couldn’t help but feel so proud of her—and of myself. She reminded me of why I finally decided to do this job back when I was still in training.

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