Phone addiction

@Teymaaz

I think the first part is to ask your self why  and what are you doing on the phone? ........fear of missing out?    is it social media  or games ?

Once you identify the real reason it will be easier to put down the phone .... you may start with for example starting with an hour or two a day you do not check  or use the phone.  i mean if you had a call etc you would answer.... make a list of all the activities you are missing out on because you are instead scrolling/ or playing games?     

phones are easier to put down when you realize you are missing real interaction / people / life while addicted to an object. 

Hey teymaz, im sorry to hear you are having a hard time. I am struggling with phone addiction for over 3 years too now and I went to 1 support group last year and am now being counciled by a therapist. So I would have quite a lot of things to recommend, but I will try to limit it to the most important once:

the support group with other people addicted to media was the best thing I could have ever done, it made me feel more normal with my addiction and helped me take it serious for the first time, as it has only recently entered in the official diagnosis catalogue and not every therapist is informed about it.

seeking for therapy was the second best thing, even though I was only able to do it when I had encouragement from the support group.

for me, realising I have underlying mental health conditions was also important (anxiety and depression in my case).

now my therapist and I say we treat the addiction with the most urgency, then we do everything else.

yesterday I read an article in the guardian from a psychiatrist where she stated something along the lines of “going from full usage to limited is usually more difficult than pausing the consume and then starting with limited usage”. She recommended putting the phone away somewhere you don’t have acces for at least a day, the longer the better.

I personally tried a mixture of these approaches and celebrate every minute I can spend without my phone and calm down from constant anxiety/sleep or even do something in the real world involving my senses. However, I find it difficult not “using”, when I have my phone on me, and would recommend something like the kind user above me.

i also deleted all social media apps (very important step for me) and use Firefox browser where I can block websites (originally for youth appropriate content blocking) and have blocked all social media websites, some news pages and YouTube.

when I really need to watch a video (turns out I rarely do), I can ask my sister to watch it with me on her phone so I can’t keep watching other videos.

by the way, that method is called stimulus control, where you limit your own access to the addictive thing.

maybe some of this can help you, you are definitely not alone with this and I believe you can get through it and one day you will be proud of what you have achieved ❤️