I have a secret I’ve been holding onto for a long time, a secret that makes me feel embarrassed and ashamed.

I think a lot of secrets are like this, even if they start small, over time they become weights that hold us down. I want to share my secret with you both to set myself free and to let you know that you’re not alone. You may not have the same secrets or problem(s) I have, but you have things you keep hidden in the dark because of fear, shame, guilt, embarrassment, pain….

I’ve found that the more we can be open about our truths, the more connected and free we become. When we speak our shame, share our pain, and shine a light on everything that we’ve kept in the dark, we become able reclaim our wholeness. Loving ourselves through these difficult and vulnerable moments is the most healing and empowering work we’ll do as we navigate our human experience.

I’ve reached the point where living with this weight is far worse than opening up and sharing it. I’m ready to heal, to empower myself, to live fully.

My Secret

I’m addicted to Instagram. When it comes to social media, Instagram is my favorite, and I’ve struggled with my addiction to it for a long time. I feel silly writing that, I feel embarrassed and ashamed. It’s Instagram, not heroin! But the reality is that anything we’re addicted to is a problem because addiction itself is a problem.

I think of addiction as an escape hatch from life. It’s what happens when we engage in compulsive behavior in order to avoid pain, anxiety, fear, loneliness or other unpleasant feelings. We lose control, and this creates a downward spiral that feeds off of itself. The worse we feel, the more we engage in the addiction, and the more we engage in the addiction the worse we feel.

A Bit of Backstory

When I think back I can see clearly how my addiction came to be, and when I dig in and really look at myself I understand how it’s persisted for so long. I’ve acknowledged this problem to myself before, but never really owned it, never actually used the (for me, very loaded) word addiction.

My mother was an addict, in a family of addicts. Her addiction prevented her from truly living and it hastened her death. Even when I was very, very young I could see the damage it caused. I hated her addiction. I decided when I was child that I wasn’t like my mother and would never make the kinds of choices she made.

As I grew older and watched my mother implode I became even stronger in my conviction. I lived a lifestyle completely opposite of my mother’s and have always prided myself on not being vulnerable to vices and addictions. I viewed myself as too disciplined and in control to ever fall prey to addiction. Addiction was for weak, broken people, and I was strong. Until I wasn’t.

Facing the Truth

Imagine becoming the kind of person you most disdain. That’s essentially what happened to me, and the shame resulting from this experience has been crushing. The damage I’ve done to my sense of worth, to my self esteem, to my life, is very real. But the only way forward is through, so here we are.

About a month ago, in a very low moment of realizing I’d lost another hour to the Instagram vortex, my intuition came through very clearly telling me it was time to stop. Not just reduce my usage, but delete the app from my phone and completely stop using it. I felt so much relief at this prospect, even though I knew it meant facing a lot of things I’ve been avoiding.

I tried to distance myself from Instagram last summer after a similar low moment, but what ended up happening was that I stopped posting yet continued consuming everyone else’s content. As I’ve said many times, when your consumption outweighs your creation, it’s a recipe for disaster! For me when the balance tips toward overconsumption I experience lowered self-esteem, depression, and anxiety, not to mention less productivity and more stress.

I recalled that experience and accepted that my intuition was right: I needed to stop completely in order to break the cycle of compulsive behavior and create a permanent shift.

Facing Myself

Over the last month I’ve thought about what truly stopping would look like, what the repercussions would be for my life and work, and how I’ll address what’s really driving my addiction. Will I feel more isolated, less connected? Maybe, but it’s a good incentive to nurture connections outside of Instagram. Will I experience FOMO? Probably, but the irony is that the time I spend on Instagram is causing me to actually miss out on my life.

I’ve thought about my work and how I’ve held so tightly to the belief that Instagram is necessary for me to grow and promote my business…while not really using my account to do much of that at all! The truth is that my addiction is robbing me of time and energy I could be devoting to tasks that would actually create the results I’m looking for.

I’ve thought about what triggers me to pick up my phone and open Instagram, and what I’ll do instead when it’s not there anymore. I’m still sorting through what’s underneath it all, but I can tell you that there’s a lot of loneliness,grief, anxiety, and fear.

Moving Forward

The last 18 months have been particularly emotionally and intellectually intense for me and I think that has brought me to a crux as far as my Instagram overuse and what’s driving that behavior. In my experience if you dig deep you’ll always uncover a buried treasure, so even though I’m a bit nervous about both admitting this addiction and taking steps to address it, I’m also excited to see what unfolds in the space I’m creating.

I can’t say for sure how long I’ll be away from Instagram, but I’m certain that I’ll be intuitively guided to return at the right time. In the interim, I’ll be relaunching my email newsletter, which has been on hiatus for the past year, and focusing more on sharing both via that newsletter and my website. If you’re not already receiving my email newsletter, you can subscribe by clicking the “Get Free Guidance” button in the pink bar below this post.

And if you’d like intuitive guidance, coaching, and support to work through your own challenges, I’d be so honored to work with you. The funny thing about life is that the more I work on facing and working through my own pain, fear, and challenges, the better I continue to become at helping others do the same. Everything comes full circle, and we’re all in this together.