#16 - You, Technology & Boundaries

Welcome to Beyond Bitchy, mastering the art of boundaries with Vicki Tidwell Palmer. Do you think of personal and relationship boundaries as harsh, rigid or bitchy, or do you feel clueless about how boundaries work? Whether you think boundaries are bitchy or baffling, we will give you a fresh vision of personal limits as a source of freedom and liberation. Every week, Vicki shares expert information about how you can master the art of boundaries so you can get the space you need and the connection you crave. Hi, this is Vicki Tidwell Palmer and welcome to episode number 16 of the Beyond Bitchy podcast. Before we get started today, I have one quick announcement. I am pleased and thrilled to share that next week, Sherry Winston will be joining me for the first episode of the month, which as you know, if you've been with the Beyond Bitchy podcast for a while, is the one that's all about women and boundaries. Sherry is a holistic sexuality teacher. She's the founder and executive director of the Intimate Arts Center and she is the author of women's anatomy of arousal along with several other books. I encourage you to go to Amazon and just search Sherry Winston as H-E-R-I and check out her books. She is an awesome sexuality educator and I was so inspired by really the way I got introduced to her was through her online courses and I was so impressed with Sherry and her work and what she has to offer that I invited her to be on the podcast and she gratefully agreed. There are so many topics that I would love to talk to her about, but in next week's episode, we will talk specifically about how women can feel more comfortable talking about and negotiating sexual boundaries with sexual partners. Most of us, whether we're male or female, we were never taught how to have honest, authentic and direct conversations about what we want or what we don't want sexually and frankly, most of us weren't even taught about how to think about that or how to even know what we would say or how to express what we would like or even how to identify what we would like. So this is a pretty extensive topic and Sherry is going to share with us not only how to do that, how to have those conversations, but why it's so important to first of all know yourself and then also know how to go about having these often very difficult challenging conversations. So this episode of the Beyond Bitchie Podcast, episode number 16 is you, technology and boundaries and don't you feel the guilt and the pressure already as you just think about the topic of you technology and boundaries. And unless you're a person who feels like you are in complete control of all of your devices and technology and that you've essentially become a master of your technological world, I haven't met that person yet, but you know, you're probably out there somewhere. Most of us have a love, hate relationship with technology, with our devices and we have boundary problems around technology and devices. I'm going to talk about how you can assess or figure out your own boundaries around technology, you know, where you're challenged, what you might want to do about that and hopefully inspire you to own your technology and your devices, rather than having technology or your devices own you. Because when you think about boundaries as simultaneously creating limits, so you're setting limits, which is usually the place we focus on when we're thinking about boundaries, and we have to keep in mind we are also simultaneously creating space every single time we create a limit or we say no to something or we otherwise create some kind of restriction or limit. I want you to keep focusing on how that is simultaneously creating space. So in order to talk about you technology and boundaries, I want to start with an overview about consumption in general. This is something that most of us are not that aware of. When you hear the word consumption, you probably think of food, you think of what you put in your mouth by way of physical food, maybe something you drink like alcohol or soda or something like that or maybe you go a little further with it and you think about medication or drugs or those kinds of things that a person might consume. But the reality is that we are consuming on multiple levels all of the time when we are conscious and awake. So for example, right now as you are listening to my voice and listening to this podcast, you are consuming with your ears. You are hearing what I'm saying, hopefully. You're probably also consuming with your eyes. So unless you're in a situation where maybe you're lying down in your eyes or closed, you are also aware of what's going on around you. So you're consuming with your ears, you're consuming with your eyes. We also consume by way of our thoughts. So we are not in 100% control of every thought that we have, but we are in control of most of our thoughts and some of us indulge in thoughts or we consciously choose thoughts and that's another form of consumption. So thoughts are a form of consumption. Also what we touch is a form of consumption. That one's a little harder maybe to wrap your mind around, but it's another way that we are receiving input into our system by way of what we experience with our sense of touch. So there's consumption through our mouth, through our eyes, our ears, of course through our nose and through our body and our consciousness in the form of thoughts. And so when you think about technology, you're consuming through multiple in multiple ways. So in some types of technology like let's say through television or through watching video on your phone, your tablet or your computer, you are consuming with your ears, with your eyes and sometimes with your thoughts. But I believe that really the most powerful consumption for us is typically through our eyes and secondarily through our ears. And this may be a little surprising to hear because again most of us are focused on what are we eating and then how does that impact, you know, how much we weigh and how we look and, you know, we're very sort of externally focused when it comes to consumption. But I believe that what we consume with our eyes and our ears is probably more important than anything else we consume. Obviously, if we are consuming a lot of alcohol or harmful drugs, that would be an exception to what I'm saying. But what I want you to see is how powerful what you consume through your eyes and ears is and how that impacts you. One of the things that we know from neuroscience is that images are very powerful. So images are stored in a part of the brain that is older than our thoughts. And so often for example, when I work with clients specifically around resolving trauma, I'm always interested to learn if they have any images that are associated not necessarily with the trauma, but when they think about how to resolve it or what they would like to do about it. So to give you a practical example, if perhaps they're processing trauma around how someone was abusive to them in the past, I might ask them, "Do you have an image that comes to mind about what you would like to happen or what would you have liked to have happened in that particular situation?" And often they'll say to me something like, "Well, I want to do this to this person or I would like to see this happen to this person or I would like them to disappear in outer space or whatever it is, but they'll have an image come to mind. And it's extremely powerful to work with these images for the resolution of trauma, because there's a lot of symbolic meaning and images, and there's so much more about that that I could say, but coming back to consumption, you really want to be mindful and aware of what you're taking in with your eyes and your ears, especially, and how that relates to boundaries that you want to create. And, of course, in relation to all the other ways of consuming, you want to be mindful of those. But when it comes to technology specifically, we're largely focusing on what we are seeing and hearing. And there are so many distractions now, there's so many opportunities for us to be engaged with technology. I really love a, and actually speaking of images, I love this image that I recently heard this. I'm a big speaking of consumption. I'm a big fan and a consumer of podcasts myself. And one of my favorite podcasts is the Robcast. Some of you may be familiar with it, but Rob Bell has a podcast called the Robcast. And on one of his recent podcasts, he talked about the fact that if in the past or even now, if you saw somebody walking on the beach in their swimsuit with their family looking like they're on vacation or they took the day off and they were carrying around their briefcase or they were carrying around the big computer monitor, you would think that they had lost their mind. You'd be thinking, what in the world are they doing with their briefcase on the beach with their whole family? And as ridiculous as that may seem or sound, when we are walking around on the beach with our smartphone, we essentially have our briefcase with us. And I love that image because it brings home the level of distraction that we have available to us really 24/7. And especially if we stay in close proximity to our devices and especially not even just your smartphone, but now there are smart watches. I happen to have an Apple watch and I'm not advertising Apple watches, but I just want to say that you can be completely and eternally connected by having everything on your smart watch all hooked up to your email and your text and your, you know, whatever, mine is intentionally very dumbed down. I don't get any alerts or anything on my watch, but anyway, just to make the point how severe the distractions are. So I want to talk about some of the signs that you may have a problem with technology. So sign number one is you get online for a specific purpose or you pick up your phone to do a specific task or your tablet or whatever. And then you realize 30 minutes later that you haven't even done what you intended to do when you first logged on or you picked up your phone. And not only that, you can't even remember why you went online in the first place. And if all of us had to raise our hand to relate to having done that, I would definitely have to raise my hand there. But it just illustrates how easy it is to get sucked down into the rabbit hole and to follow one link after the other or one idea after the other. And pretty soon you had no idea how you got there. So another sign that technology could be a problem is that you spend more time documenting what you're doing by posting updates on Facebook or Instagram or whatever or photos or taking selfies or videos of yourself and posting those. You're spending a lot of time sort of documenting and sharing or blasting your life online than you actually are enjoying the moment. And I have to say that this is not new. I can remember times in the past. I'm old enough to remember when the only technology in most people's home or I'll just say in my home growing up, we had a black and white television. We had one and it was in the living room. And when I was growing up until I got to be a teenager, that was pretty typical. People didn't have multiple televisions. So we had one black and white television, which was in this huge console that also included a radio that probably only had maybe, I don't know, three stations or five stations. And then it also had a turntable on it. It was this giant console piece of furniture. So we had that and we also had this kind of pale yellow dial telephone that hung on the wall. That was it. That was the technology we had. But even if I fast forward to like the 80s when video cameras started to come out, I remember seeing certain relatives at family events like, you know, family reunions or those kinds of things or somebody's birthday or some special event. And they're walking around with the video camera. And in those days, they were pretty big. And they sort of hid behind the camera. And these were often the people who weren't really very comfortable socially. And so it was just more comfortable for them to be like the historian and to film everything rather than being engaged with other people. Well, now we have the ability to do that all of the time by virtue of having our cell phone. So essentially sign number two is, I'm spending more time documenting my life than I am actually engaging in it or enjoying the moment or being present. Sign number three, you spend time on the computer or watching TV or on your phone or tablet or whatever. When you have multiple projects, action items, tasks, goals, etc. that need your attention. So here you are using technology to procrastinate, to maybe self-sabotage or to just avoid doing what needs to be done. And, you know, the truth is we all do this from time to time. I mean, how many of us can relate to, you know, like when you were in school, you had a big project or paper do, but instead you were meticulously getting all your laundry done or folding it when you ordinarily, you know, wouldn't even bother to do that. Or somebody in my life who loves to sweep every time they get kind of anxious about what they've got to do, they get the broom out and start sweeping, right? So that's another sign. Sign number four is, you feel like you're busy, but you're actually not productive or you're engaging with people on social media, but you're not really connected. So essentially here you're getting a false sense of being productive or maybe even being connected to other people, but you still feel like you're not getting stuff done, you feel like you're behind and you feel disconnected. So it's sort of this illusion or facade of productivity and meaningful connection with other people. And then the fifth sign is that, and this one is so huge and I think it applies to the vast majority of people that you notice more often than not when you get off of Facebook or social media or you stop watching cable news, you know, like you've watched some cable news show or whatever, you feel worse emotionally than you did before you started. And we've known for a very long time, even before the internet age, that women, for example, feel worse or more depressed after looking at a so-called women's magazine than they did before they picked it up. So they've done studies on this where they have a woman rate her mood before she looks at one of these so-called women's magazines. And then she looks through the magazine and then she has her mood rated again and she's more depressed than when she first looked at it. And that's because it's a lot of reasons, but there's a lot of comparison going on and not to mention that what she's comparing herself to is a highly manipulated, airbrushed version of some woman who she probably wouldn't even recognize on the street if she walked down the street without all of her makeup and having six people work on her for three hours and having all of the photographs touched up. And it's often the same with social and other media. You know, what you're seeing is what other people want you to see, whether it's Facebook, Facebook friend, or advertising. And you're seeing their front stage and you're comparing it to your backstage. People are not going to post about how their life is falling apart or how they just filed bankruptcy or how they're having a big argument with their spouse. Of course, some people do post things like that, but for For the most part, it's all about how I'm having this fabulous time in Europe. but I have all these friends and, you know, look at this great thing that I just did and posting all the photos of the vacation. And I want you to pay attention to your responses around all of this, including your physiological responses. And when I say physiological responses, it's just a fancy way of saying notice how your body feels. You know, you can even experience this when you get online or you get on social media. And then you start noticing that maybe you feel anxious or you feel angry or you just notice that like your heart rate's going up or maybe you feel your kind of your body temperature rising or maybe you can tell that your blood pressure is going up. These are all signs we need to pay attention to that are red flags and signals that maybe what we're consuming is something that we need to create a boundary around because it's not helpful to us. And in fact, it's maybe even toxic to us. So sign number six that there may be an issue is that you feel out of control. You feel out of control around technology or like you just can't stop. Like maybe you can't stop picking up your phone or checking email or going to a particular site or whatever it is that you're struggling with. Or you feel compelled or like technology or media is owning you rather than you being in charge. And I want to say here for the sake of really informing and helping you assess whether or not you might even have an addiction because I do believe there's such a thing as technology addiction or gaming addiction or technology addiction can also fall into the category of pornography addiction and very highly problematic symptoms. And I want to share with you the hallmarks of addiction so that you know what they are. So according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, addiction is characterized by and I'm going to read you a quote and I'm going to explain the components of it so that you really get this. Addiction is characterized by quote and inability to consistently abstain, impairment in behavior control, craving, diminished recognition of significant problems with one's behaviors and interpersonal relationships and a dysfunctional, emotional response. So there's a lot here. And it starts with the inability to consistently abstain and I think most people can relate to that one in particular around technology, but this definition is much broader than that. So there's impairment and your ability to control the behavior. You experience craving. You have this, what they call diminished recognition of significant problems. This is basically about being in denial of what the consequences are. So like let's say that you have this habit of taking your phone to every business meeting or social event or meal with your spouse and people are starting to notice and complain. Are there making requests of you to put your phone down, for example, and your attitude is, you know, what's your problem and you don't see an issue with it, but your phone is like your constant companion and you might even be sleeping with it and getting alerts all night when they happen. So not having recognition of significant problems means I'm essentially in denial of how this is impacting me. And then the last part of this definition has to do with having a dysfunctional, emotional response. And what they're saying here is that, for example, if you're, let's say something happened to your phone like it was, you know, every now and then, you know, if you drop your phone, you have to take it to get the screen repaired or something else happens like that and you don't have access to it. And you get really irritable and this sort of craving sets in and you just can't tolerate being separated from your device or from some kind of technology. That's a great example of a dysfunctional emotional response or your hyper defensive or reactive when somebody brings up that they have an issue with your use of technology. So there's a lot of ways that this can play out and it also, this emotional, dysfunctional emotional response speaks to the kind of withdrawal that people have when they have a dysfunctional or compulsive or addictive relationship to a substance or a process. And when I say process, technology addiction is definitely would be a process addiction. So process addictions are addictions that are not about substances. They're more about behavior. So food addiction or technology addiction, gaming addiction or pornography addiction. Those are all examples of process addictions. They're about behaviors rather than substances. And then the last sign that it may be a problem or technology may be an issue for you is that when you're honest with yourself and you do an honest assessment around your own relationship with technology or your devices, you realize that your use of your computer of TV, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever the platform or device is, it is not bringing you closer to your goals, to your dreams for your future and your aspirations. There's something to be said for having downtime and even being bored. You know, often when we have free unstructured time which I recommend everyone do at least one day a week where you are work free, you're not on your computer for business or you're essentially not doing any work related activities. But when you have this kind of free unstructured time and even feel a little bit of boredom, you often come up with creative ideas and solutions that would have never come up if you were just constantly plugged in. And I don't know if you've had this experience. I know I definitely have where I usually unplug from business for sure at least two days a week. And I also try to unplug from technology in very specific ways. And I'm gonna talk about those in a minute. But what you'll find when you do that is again, you will often solve problems. They will just sort of come to you spontaneously or you'll get great creative ideas that you wouldn't get otherwise. You know, it reminds me of one time someone compared this benefit of unplugging to the reality that when you, for example, plant a field with a certain crop, and I'm not a farmer, so I may misspeak the exact details about this, but the idea is that you don't just perpetually replant a field with the same crop over and over and over again, you give the field a rest or you rotate crops. And I think that we can also apply the same principle here is that we need to give ourselves a rest and in order for us to restore and to feel rejuvenated and not to feel like we're a slave to our devices and technology all about boundaries. So let's talk about solutions. And these solutions for technology or devices is of course about creating boundaries for yourself. And I also wanna say here that if you are, you know that this is a problem for you, I highly recommend that you download the Five Step Boundary Solution Clarifier, which is available in the show notes for this episode. It's also available on the homepage of beyondbitchy.com. You can use the Five Step Boundary Solution Clarifier to create boundaries for yourself. Often people associate the clarifier with establishing boundaries in relationships, but it is very helpful for times when you know you need to create some limits for yourself. So these are some of the recommendations I wanna make and solutions to this problem of too much technology are too much devices. So the first thing that I highly recommend you do, and this is for a change of any kind that you wanna create in your life, is to start with just tracking what you're doing now, just noticing. So for example, you can notice how much time you spend with your device, how much time you spend on the computer, how much time you spend watching television. And you know, I do wanna say here that there are times where it's appropriate and even fun to be out of balance in some way. So for example, if you have a favorite show and it's the middle of winter and you're snowed in, you would probably love to binge watch something on Netflix or you have recorded three football games or soccer or whatever. whatever it is and you want to watch those, that I'm not talking about that, you know, there are sometimes when we are out of balance in different ways, but I'm talking more here about a pattern. So you just start with tracking without any need to change or to be different because you may be surprised, like if you're a person who tends to focus more on how you're not measuring up. So, you know, most of us have a default in terms of assessing ourselves, we either think we're doing a lot better than what we're really doing or we think we're doing a lot worse. So sometimes this could be a pleasant surprise. So you may have the perception, oh, you know, I'm spending like two hours a day on useless, you know, social media on the computer, but really it's only like 20 minutes. That's probably not likely, but you know, you get the point. So start with that. Just track what you're doing and notice what you're doing, so that you're gathering information. And second, do an honest evaluation of whether your relationship with your devices or technology is enhancing your life or bringing you closer to your goals and your dreams. This is all about noticing what you're saying yes to, what you're saying no to, and whether or not these choices around yes or no are in alignment with who you want to be and how you want to spend your time and how you show up in your relationship. And if they're not, it's time to make some changes. You can also start experimenting with not having your devices with you in certain situations. For example, and this is one that I do. I'd never have my cell phone out when I am having a meal in any context. So if I am, well, actually, there's one exception to that. If I'm by myself, I may have my phone out or I may not. But if I'm with another person, I never have my phone out. The only time that I might is if I need to reference something that I'm talking about with another person like I may be with a friend and I want to share a picture. But other than that, I keep my phone in my purse and I often have my phone on silent. My phone is on silent almost all the time. But that's an example of starting in certain situations that you, you know, either leave your phone in your car or you decide that for meals with family or friends, you're not going to have your phone with you or you're going to decide not to take your computer or your tablet on vacation with you. Just keep in mind that briefcase on the beach. I think that will help a lot. So you can start experimenting with that. Certain times, certain places where you are going to commit to be device free or technology free. Here's another one that I think is huge. And this is a tool that I use often. And it's to set a timer. So let's say that you need to be on Twitter or Facebook or some other or LinkedIn or something like that for, let's say for a business matter. And you know it's going to take you five minutes, ten minutes max to get something done, set a timer for five or ten minutes. It's so easy now. There are timers. If you have a smartwatch, there's a timer there. You have one on your phone. I have a timer on my computer that I downloaded that I use from time to time. And I'll tell you, too, this is how I got my book moving beyond betrayal written. I would literally sit down with the computer. I would only have open the browser, the specific pages that I needed in order to do the work that I needed to do or the apps that I needed to do. So I would have word open and I might have one browser window open if I had to do some research about something. But everything else was not available to me. And you know, speaking of awesome and wonderful technology, people have come up with some incredible solutions around this like locking down certain apps that you can't access or makes it very difficult to access so that you can get things done. But this whole tool around setting a timer, I can tell you from personal experience and seeing other people do it. Often for productivity, it is a fabulous tool and I encourage you to use it. And another solution is, you know, if you're used to relying on your phone when you're bored, you know, like for example, when you go to a doctor's appointment and you know you're going to be waiting for a while or you have to go to the department of motor vehicles and get your driver's license renewed and you know you're going to be there for a long time. Think about or consider just taking a physical book rather than your phone or pen and paper to write like you may have some, you know, ideas you want to put down on pen or paper or if you have a craft that you like to do like you could, I've seen people knitting in 12 step meetings, for example, or you know, now they make these really fabulous adult coloring books that people love that you could take that and just do something else. So essentially, you're replacing your device or you're replacing some activity with technology with something else and this is often the best way to get something like this done because for most of us, if if we are faced with just having something taken away, we're not really excited about that. But if it's replaced with something else that we do feel excited about or we have some interest in it makes it so much easier. Another solution is that to just make certain events or situations media free. So I mentioned before about phones at the dinner table or when you are with other people having a meal together, some people intentionally leave their phone in another room after a certain time of day. So I remember one time working with a client who when they were ready to go to bed, they lived in a two-story townhouse and they would intentionally leave their tablet and their phone downstairs before they went upstairs. It's also interesting. I think that there was actually a study about this and I wish I could remember where I saw it so that I could post it for you on the show notes. But what they found is that if you do something that or you you essentially create a solution like this that builds time into your capacity to access whatever it is. So the example that was given is if you're trying to reduce your television viewing if you take the remote control of your television and you put it in the farthest place you can in your home. So like let's say that the farthest room away from your living room is in the back left corner of your master bedroom closet. If you take it back there and you put even like a 20 second delay into getting it, it will discourage you from going and doing it. Or if you take the batteries out of a remote control, anything that actually slows you down to access whatever it is that you're going to access. So this is one of the reasons why a lot of times people don't keep certain browsers open on their phone and there are just endless ways of getting creative about how to do this. And you know I mentioned before when you're on your computer, really think about what browsers you need to have open. So I'll tell you right now. I have two apps open on my computer as I'm recording this podcast. And of course, you know, I can't simultaneously record this podcast and be on Facebook. I guess I could, but it wouldn't be very enjoyable for anybody if I was doing that, including me. But I have two apps open. I have the app that's recording my voice right now. And I have the app that has the notes that will remind me what I want to talk about for this episode. And that's it. That's all I have open. And you can apply that to whatever your situation is. And you know, I have to add this last one. And there are so many, so many that I haven't even mentioned. But this one is kind of the ultimate resource in terms of boundaries and technology. Believe it or not, somebody has actually invented a tech solution to these kind of tech problems. And there are now locking tech safes with timers that you can use for devices. People also use them for food. The one that I'm aware of is called the kitchen safe. There are many others out there. But if you Google the kitchen safe, you'll find what I'm referring to. But it's a box that you can put anything in. You put the lid on and you set a timer. And it won't open until that particular amount of time has passed. And you know, of course, like everything else, there's usually a way around these things. But it just goes to show you or sometimes you could use these with children. I mean, there's just so many uses for them that are helpful, but often they're helpful for adults as well. But you know, this is kind of the ultimate boundary is to essentially completely restrict your use of the technology and to put it into a container where you can't access it. Or sometimes people will put a password on a computer that only another person knows so that they can't even access the computer. Again, I want you to get creative around this and have some fun with it. You know, again, coming back to the spirit of this whole endeavor around technology and devices, is that I want you to see how you're limiting what is not bringing you joy, what is not enhancing your life, and may actually be draining you, or is making you feel more stressed, more afraid, more whatever it is that you don't want to experience, that the more you are saying no to that, you're saying yes to the ways in which you want to enhance your life, the great goals that you have for yourself, and all of the wonderful things that you want to accomplish. So, till next week, I invite you to embrace the power you have to create any boundaries that you want to create, so that you can get the space you need, and the connection you crave. See you next time. Thanks for listening to BeyondBitchy Podcast. Head over to BeyondBitchy.com for show notes, the BeyondBitchy blog, and other resources to help you master the art of boundaries. Till next time, remember, boundaries aren't bitchy.