pjvf.me

Why I rarely watch tv

note: I wrote this as a stream of consciousness and have not bothered with editing or rereading, due to brain fog.

Essentially the reason I don’t watch tv is not that I don’t enjoy it, or don’t find it gripping, it’s that tv works too well on me.

When I have negative emotions, either I manage to do the healthy thing and feel and process them, or I avoid them and distract myself into not feeling them at all. All kinds of content are good at distraction (in fact I think part of the reason we have the world we do is a lot of people’s go-to unhealthy reaction to emotions is the same as mine), but at least for me, tv is the worst of it.

The success of a tv show is extremely dependent on it’s ability to make you watch the next episode, and the systems we have make that extraordinarily easy (binge-watching, as a term, has been in use since 2003, and it’s only gotten easier since). Couple that with the fact that tv-shows are increasingly designed to be consumable as secondary media, where you’re also on your phone at the same time, and you’ve got a recipe for not only distracting yourself with a tv show, but also with something else at the same time. Cause it goes in both directions: people are on their phones while watching tv -> tv gets designed so you can still follow the plot if you do that -> tv is dumbed down enough that you need another source of stimulation to hide your feelings / keep yourself entertained.

So for myself, I’ve noticed repeatedly over last decade-plus, that I go through these stimulation cycles. So if we start at a mid stimulation level (lets say a 4 out of 10), and I get a medium sized negative emotion, I may reach for some tv to distract myself. Now, human’s most prominant trait might be our adaptability, and so what happens is that the level of stimulation needed to hide that emotion goes up, so I might start scrolling reddit while watching (6/10), and then I have the show playing in the background while cooking (7/10), and before I know it, I’m convincing myself it’s an okay thing to do to pull up netflix while driving (9/10) and suddenly I’ve rearended someone (real story, I was 17, everyone was fine)

The requirement for stimulation can actually exceed the ability for you to be able to give the brain, so the requirement can tick up to 11/10, and even doing the most stimulating things you can, the emotion’s still present.

I’ve been meditating since I was about 15 years old, and meditation represents the other end of the pendulum cycle. Essentially what happens is: the stimulation need goes real high, and it’s driving down my mental health, and then I remember “hey, feeling emotions is good for me actually, and is the only thing that will actually help, let me start meditating and being in the moment more.” Over time the stim level goes way down, and can reach 2 or 1 or even 0. The pendulum is all the way over to a pretty healthy state. But life is life and time is time, and eventually meditation might become logistically difficult / my schedule changes, and maybe I let it go a bit. Overtime the stim level creeps up, and I start the pattern all over again.

One of the biggest things I’ve worked on is “how bad can I get before I start taking care of myself” and moving that threshold up and up so I don’t get quite so deeply unhealthy.

Additionally, I’ve uncovered some tools, patterns and rules that have proved really useful in my effort to maintain my physical and mental health:

Unfortunately, walks are not something I can do now, with long covid, but I’ll save that for another post.