WHAT MY PHONE TAUGHT ME ABOUT PRESENCE, AND WHY I KEEP PUTTING IT IN ANOTHER ROOM
I read something recently that stopped me in my tracks. A psychologist described phones as a third person in the room. Not a tool, not background noise, but an actual presence that sits between you and whatever you are meant to be doing.
The moment I read that, I thought about every meal I have half eaten while scrolling, every quiet evening I have let slip through my fingers because something on a screen felt more urgent than it was.
It made me think about my own recovery, and how much of it I nearly missed because I was somewhere else entirely, thumb moving, mind elsewhere, body right there but not really present in it.
The phone as a distraction from rest
When you are unwell, or exhausted, or simply trying to heal, rest is not passive. It takes intention. Your body is doing enormous work quietly in the background, and it needs your attention to actually settle. But a phone offers something rest cannot compete with in the moment. It offers stimulation dressed up as relaxation.
Scrolling feels like doing nothing, but it rarely feels like nothing afterwards.
I noticed this most during the hardest stretches of my treatment. I would lie down to rest and reach for my phone within minutes, not because I needed anything from it, but because stillness without distraction felt harder than I expected. Facing my own thoughts, my own fear, my own body in that moment, sometimes felt like too much.
The phone was an easy place to put my attention instead.
Rest is not the absence of doing. It is the presence of attention, and a phone in your hand quietly takes that attention somewhere else.
What qigong taught me instead
Qigong brought me back to something a phone never could, which is simply being in my own body without narrating it, documenting it, or checking anything about it.
Slow movement, breath, stillness. No notifications, no third person in the room. It is one of the reasons I still teach it and still practise it daily, long after treatment ended. It reminded me what undivided attention actually feels like, and how rare that had become.
I am not against phones. I use mine constantly, for Elliegance, for staying close to people I love, for a hundred small useful things. But I have started asking myself a simple question before I pick it up: am I reaching for this because I need it, or because sitting with myself for a moment feels uncomfortable.
Small things I have changed
What has actually helped me:
- Giving my phone a home. It no longer lives in my pocket or beside my pillow. It has a spot downstairs, and walking away from it has become its own small ritual.
- Turning notifications off, not the phone. I check what I want to check, when I have the capacity to check it, rather than being summoned every few minutes.
- Naming it out loud. If I need to check something in the middle of a conversation or a quiet moment, I say so. It keeps me honest about why I am reaching for it.
- Protecting the moments meant for rest. Motorhome trips, qigong, evenings that are meant for winding down. The phone stays somewhere else entirely.
- No phone before bed. The last hour of my day is phone free now. It changed how quickly I actually fall asleep, and how present I feel the moment I wake up.
- No phone on walks. Whether it is Coco and I pottering around somewhere new, or a proper walk out in the countryside, my phone stays in my pocket switched to silent, or gets left behind altogether. Walking was one of the first things that felt like mine again after treatment, and I did not want a screen creeping into that too.
None of this has been about willpower. It has been about noticing how much quiet space a small glass rectangle can take up, and deciding, gently, to take some of that space back for myself and for the people in front of me.
If you want to try cutting back too
I get asked this a lot, so here is what I would actually say to a friend who wanted to feel less tethered to their phone. Start small. You do not need a dramatic detox to notice a difference, you just need one or two honest changes that you can actually stick to.
Gentle ways to begin
- Do not reach for it the moment you wake up. Give yourself a few minutes to actually wake up before the world floods in. If you must keep it by your bed, put it on night mode so it is not the first thing pulling your attention.
- Pick one phone free window a day. Bedtime, a walk, a meal, the first half hour after waking. One is enough to start.
- Give it a home outside your pocket. If it is not on your body, you cannot reach for it without noticing you are doing it.
- Turn off notifications you do not need. You will check social media and email when you want to, not when your phone tells you to.
- Say it out loud when you reach for it. Even a quiet “just checking something” to yourself keeps you honest about why.
- Be patient with yourself. The urge to check does not disappear overnight. It softens gradually, the more you prove to yourself that nothing urgent was waiting.
You do not have to overhaul everything at once. Pick the one that feels most doable this week, and let that be enough for now.
If you are in a season of rest or recovery, however that looks for you, I hope this is a gentle nudge to notice where your attention is going, and to remember that stillness, even when it feels uncomfortable at first, is where a lot of the healing actually happens.
With love,
Hannah x