What I learned after deleting Instagram for a month

Another name for this blog would have been: Perfectionism and the nervous system.

Or: The shame I felt, maybe still feel.

Or: If you refuse to rest when your body tells you to, something else will intervene.

I logged off Instagram for a month.

There was something wrong with my account.

What I’d originally thought were glitches or changes to the platform were actually restrictions that had been placed - something that my followers or people I followed alerted me to.

At first, I ignored it (avoidance at its finest). Then, I pretended it didn’t matter (more avoidance, denial). Then, I called Meta, and was told there was nothing they could do. The entire thing was controlled by the algorithm. They couldn’t see what restrictions had been placed or why - only that one day, the algorithm might lift them. When the algorithm saw fit.

Of course, this answer provided no concrete solutions. No “how to fix it.” Simply: sit and wait.

My nervous system went into overdrive. My fight response kicked in and showed up as researching, overresearching, changing strategies, following advice from Youtube “Instagram experts” - even paying for an “audit” at one point.

The ironic thing was, the more I tried to do, the worse things got. Finally, on my last attempt with Meta customer service to look for answers, the suggestion they gave me was to log off for 2-3 weeks in hopes that the algorithm would reset. No promises.

And the first thing I said was, “I can’t.”

And as soon as I said this, I knew I had to.

When the source of doubt and reassurance, shame and validation, failure and success all live on the same app, it becomes a breeding ground for addiction.

And with every addiction, there’s a sense of exhaustion, and not knowing how to stop.

Instagram was what I’d used to build my business. And my “performance” on the app threatened my “performance” in my business.

This was the narrative that drew me into despair.

Of course, looking back now, I can see how tunneled my vision had become. And how inaccurate and blown out of proportion it was.

As is usually the case with anything made up in the mind.

And, as is usually the case with anything made up in the digital world.

The Process of Detaching

The first week of IG detox was indeed blissful. No pressure to think of what to post. No checking of analytics. No comparison.

Then came restlessness. Missing something that I’d come to rely on for connection. For direction. For distraction.

Then came the anger. The injustice of being accused of something I was not. The fact that I couldn’t speak to a human person to clear this all up. The inability to fix something when I needed it to be fixed.

Then came denial. “I don’t need IG to succeed!” - as I promptly started a YouTube and a Substack. Once again using productivity to take away the discomfort of uncertainty. The anxiety of not being in control.

Then came bargaining. Maybe I’ll log back in after 2 weeks. Maybe 2 weeks is enough.

Then came depression. The guilt of being in a paradise of my choosing, and not being able to enjoy it. The shame of why. Of my own very humanness. Attachment to something that should be trivial.

At the end of the 3 weeks I finally realized I needed to call in reinforcements.

Tammy knew right away. “Something’s going on.” (Me, thinking I was hiding everything so well behind a smile).

And that was all the permission I needed to finally cry. To admit I wasn’t fine with this. That this wasn’t just a much needed break.

Not knowing the extent of the problem for so long meant I thought the problem was me.

And that I needed to contort my message. The pressure to please the algorithm. Trying to earn safety. Avoid rejection. The pressure to perform.

The loneliness of it. The self doubt that comes from loneliness. The unwillingness to admit that, because that feels like failure too.

Projecting all of this outward gave me something to fix. Which meant I could delay looking at the hungry ghost I’d been feeding.

The fear of not succeeding. The shame and guilt that would follow.

Finally Giving In

Tammy suggested giving myself one more week. One more week to recalibrate, now that I’d finally gotten to the root of it. “I know you’ll probably hate me for saying this,” she said. But of course I didn’t. Again, it felt like the exact message and permission that I needed.

That weekend, I finally exhaled. I sat in the park, and just sat. No plans. No I need to’s or I have to’s or what’s next.

Just, now. Here. This tree. This sky. This bench.

I finally zoomed out. And realized there was no problem at all. Nothing to fix. Just all the suffering that I create for myself, because of my resistance to what is. What’s temporary. What’s real. What’s not.

With each iteration of detachment, something new emerges. And it gets easier each time. Allowing it to show me where I am still judging myself.

The liberation didn’t come from deleting the app as I thought it did originally. It came from realizing all the ways I still let something outside of me determine if I was going to let myself feel worthy.

The liberation came from finally saying it’s okay to not know what’s going to happen. To feel when things are moving at an unsustainable pace and to pause so my nervous system can feel safe. So my body can tell me what’s next.

Which means I need to redefine what success is, for me. It might mean rest. It might mean retreating for a while because showing up online all the time fucks with the introvert’s mind. And to not judge myself as failing when redirection happens. Because every step is a step in the direction I want to go, if I’m not forcing myself to get there a certain way, by a certain time.

What I’ve learned is that things happen to point you in the direction back to yourself. To face the parts that I still want to hide. And to love them a little bit more.

To grieve the times that I couldn’t.

Power, or Suffering?

With anything that holds power in our lives, how we use that power is up to us. How we allow ourselves to be used is also up to us. And it’s hard to tell the difference sometimes. Especially when something feels good.

As Buddhist teachings remind us, one of the ways we keep creating our suffering is by looking for happiness in all the wrong places. Mistaking the suffering for happiness. And creating that vicious cycle of “more” for ourselves.

Things will constantly change, and rather than forcing myself to scramble and rush to fix it, I can just be in the middle of it.

At the heart of what I do is connection. And I’d like to think that part of the reason the app was created in the first place was for that purpose.

The app is neutral. How I use it is up to me. There’s nothing to blame for what I feel, or how I feel it. There’s nothing to hide behind.

Fighting the good fight is knowing that the only “opponent,” is me.

Where are you still looking for happiness in all the wrong places?

What would happen if you stopped trying to fix what isn’t working, and just let it be?