Your Phone Is Quietly Stealing Your Presence and Spark (Here’s How to Get It Back)

Summer’s here. It’s supposed to feel light, unscripted — the kind of aliveness where you laugh outrageously, dance in the kitchen for no reason, say yes to a tart lemonade popsicle dripping down your wrist just because the sun is out and you can. But if that spark feels far away right now, it’s not because something’s wrong with you. Your nervous system has been trained to look for aliveness in the wrong place.

What’s actually happening in your brain

Your phone was built to spike your dopamine. Constantly. On purpose. Every notification, every scroll, every little “ooh, what’s this” is a hit — fast, bright, and gone the second it lands.

That’s phasic dopamine. The spike.

But there’s another current — slower, quieter, deeper — and it’s where the real aliveness lives. This is your baseline. It’s what gets you out of bed excited for what’s to come. It’s what lets you move through your day guided by your own urges and curiosities — toward playful joy, toward passionate engagement with what’s actually in front of you — instead of reaching for your phone on autopilot. This is the current that makes life feel like something.

And it’s the one quietly taking the hit.

Here’s why: chase the spike enough times, and your brain protects itself the only way it knows how — it turns the volume down on your own receptors. Which sounds fine, except that turned-down volume doesn’t stay in its lane. It drags your baseline down with it. Suddenly the steady, ordinary joys of your actual life stop registering. Nothing has to get worse for your life to stop feeling like yours.

Why this steals your feral joy first

Remember how everything felt like magic as a kid? A snow day. A sleepover. A tart lemonade popsicle on a road trip. You had no money and no freedom back then — and it was still magic. Not because those things were remarkable. Because your baseline hadn’t been worn down yet. The wonder was never in the popsicle. It was in your capacity to be fully present and engaged in it.

Your feral joy — the unscripted, delighted, slightly ridiculous parts of you, the kitchen dancing, the unhinged voice memo to a friend — needs that same undisturbed capacity. When the baseline wears thin, that’s the first thing to go quiet. Not because you got boring. Because your spark needs a nervous system that can still register small, ordinary aliveness — and yours has been running on spikes instead.

Where the spark actually went

It didn’t die. It’s not gone. It’s waiting for you in the one place we’ve all quietly agreed to avoid: boredom.

I know how that sounds. Stay with me.

Boredom has a bad reputation. But it’s fertile ground — where creativity stirs, where your real feelings finally get room to surface, where the more interesting version of you has been waiting underneath the noise. We avoid it because it doesn’t just bring the spark back. It also surfaces whatever you’ve been quietly outrunning.

Case in point: yesterday I had to stay in town instead of heading to the mountain. First reaction? Disappointment. Day already feeling smaller. Then I sat in the spaciousness instead of avoiding it. A painting got started, spontaneous dance break outs occurred and I finished a support guide with inspiration from the universe. And I finished off the day, writing this to you. None of that happens if I fill the gap with scrolling instead of leaving it open.

That discomfort is real. Your aliveness is on the other side of it. Not around it.

A gentler way back in

This isn’t about tossing your phone in a drawer forever. There’s real value in asking for a little more honesty in the reaching.

Start with your mornings. Before you scroll. Before email. Before the world gets a vote. Check in with yourself first. Notice what’s actually there. Whatever energy shows up, honor it before you hand your attention away: stretch if you’re stiff. Sprint if you’re restless. Dance if your body wants to move. Sit in the sunlight if it wants stillness. Talk to your pets if you want softness. Be your own first notification of the day.

Then, when it’s actually time to pick up your phone: pause. Ask: am I choosing this, or escaping something? One is a choice. The other is a habit your nervous system picked up because it worked, once, and never got updated.

Give your phone a curfew — and actually enforce it, like you're the fun-but-firm parent your apps clearly need. Not as punishment. As care for your own baseline. Then let yourself be bored, on purpose. Let it feel uncomfortable. Let whatever's underneath finally rise. Let yourself feel, even clumsily, like a kid again — the version of you who could still turn an ordinary afternoon into something worth remembering.

What this actually looks like for me

Some of my favorite days are the ones where I check my phone about as often as we used to check the answering machine: once, when I get home. I keep a go bag and my hiking boots packed in the Jeep, so I can follow the whim of my own energy — paddleboard, a stroll in the woods, chasing a waterfall, or a grueling hill climb that empties my mind completely. Whatever the day is calling for. There’s something sacred about just following the energy.  

It’s in those unplanned hours that I feel closest to that kid-in-the-summer aliveness — curious about what’s around the next bend, delighted by nothing in particular, fully in my body instead of dictating it. I always come back more myself than when I left. That’s the whole practice. Not a productivity hack. Not content for later. Just proof, every time, that the world is still full of things worth being surprised by — if I give myself permission to go find them.

Your feral joy summer isn’t gone. It’s waiting on the other side of the scroll, in the quiet you’ve been politely declining to sit in.

And yes — I see the irony of you reading this on a screen. So this is your sign. Stop scrolling, even through this blog, and go find your version of adventure. I'll be here later. Washington sunshine or whimsical moments, may not be!

If you've had an event disrupt your summer and you can't shake it, consider a session or two of clearing rather than the whole EMDR protocol. In a joint venture with Lisha Song, LMHC we are offering online sessions starting in August. Visit www.groupEMDRof WA.com