Sometimes I yearn for the days before the internet, when the TV output became a dark fuzzy hum late at night. It stayed that way until the next morning, and no-one complained! If you wanted to be in touch with someone far away, you could telephone them. We used a device with a tightly curled cable attached to the handset. It had a plastic dial you turned with your finger for each number. Back then we had a much simpler life, where we could very easily switch off.
Nowadays we all seem glued to our phones. We’re connected to a vast web of data 24/7. We’re bombarded with messages and some of us feel compelled to be available to anyone who wants to reach us, at any time. Why do we check our emails in bed before we sleep, and again when we wake up? You’re ‘checking in’, you’re ‘keeping on top of work stuff’. It seems so normal, and yet at the same time completely ridiculous, if you think about it.
Why do we need to be constantly available?
The truth is, when we’re glued to our emails and constantly available, we feel more valuable. And as human beings, we care about other people valuing us. It gives us a sense of belonging, and helps us feel good about ourselves. It makes us feel that we matter, and we’re happier and less lonely. When people value us we feel seen and respected. It motivates us to be a better friend, partner, parent, human. We enjoy it when others perceive us as valuable. And it makes perfect sense that we want to keep this feeling flowing into our lives.
But how did we make this connection?
How is it that being constantly available means that you’re a worthwhile human?
We need to look a bit deeper under the surface to figure this out.
The answer lies in your early life experiences.
For those of us who had difficult early life experiences, we didn’t get the love and care that we needed. Your parents might have given you everything they could, but it still wasn’t enough. I’ve written more about what that looks like here.
If you grow up without the care and nurturing you needed, then you never learn what it means to feel loved and valued. We then grow up without a strong sense of our own intrinsic value. And we become experts at seeking a sense of worthiness from outside of ourselves.
You do whatever you can to make other people feel good, and ignore your own needs. We strive for perfection in everything. You make yourself available by attending to emails constantly. We don’t consciously notice we’re doing this, because it becomes part of our normal way of being. This behaviour pattern plugs the gap temporarily. But we’re always looking for our next ‘fix’. Because we always have that empty space inside us that needs to be filled.
So your habit of checking your emails in bed, can be directly linked to your perceived lack of intrinsic value. (Which you learned growing up.)
That’s a huge concept to get your head around, right?!
There’s you thinking it was just a bad habit that you could stop if you wanted to.
You can’t change what happened in the past, but you can change how you relate to yourself in the present.
If you find yourself in this situation, ask yourself “Am I checking emails because it’s important?
Or am I checking to meet a need or to compensate for something?”
If you reflect on your answer, that in itself is an important piece of learning. Simply noticing your pattern is the first step to changing it.
There’s ways you can help yourself, so you can let go of this pattern and find a healthier way of being. (You can read more about that here.)
If you want more information send me an email, or you can book a no-strings call with me here to chat things through.