The first thing I did after my chronic migraines went into remission was sign off of social media. This seemed like a coincidence at the time—a writer I follow happened to be organizing a summer off of social media and for the first time ever I thought, what the hey?

Having worked for Facebook and then Instagram for the majority of my twenties, I’ve always had a somewhat complicated relationship with social media platforms. In my early days at Facebook in particular, when employees had to use their personal Facebook profiles to message coworkers and collaborate on projects, I was on Facebook all of the time. Even after Facebook launched Workplace, which allowed employees to use a separate profile for their work duties, I still used my personal Facebook account most every day for testing changes to the website.

It wasn’t until 2019, when my chronic migraines forced me to quit my job, that people really started to talk about the evils of social media. I, overwhelmed with the daily demands of chronic illness and hurting from the loss of my career, had no brain space to spare for forming an opinion on the matter. I was also stuck in my house all day and isolated from most of my friends—an isolation which was soon to be worsened by the pandemic. So I didn’t just want social media, I thought I needed it. It was one of the only distractions I had from my nightmare of a life.

But by the time I heard about this summer off social media challenge, life was miraculously, significantly, less nightmarish. I’d just finished what ended up being a curative treatment for my chronic migraines, the amazingness of which cannot be overstated. So, in a moment of clarity, I uninstalled Instagram and Facebook from my phone.

Then I had the most stressful summer I’ve ever had.

One of my favorite doctors often tells me that chronic pain is never a straight line. In the battle against it, some days are two steps forward, one step back. Other days are two steps back, no steps forward. But it’s rarely the case that, in managing a chronic pain condition, you feel like you’re really winning.

Recovering from an incurable disease has felt much the same—not because it is the same, but because my brain often tells me it’s the same. For six years, my brain learned to anticipate pain. My brain would, for example, make me feel anxious at night, because my migraines usually began near bedtime. It would similarly cover me with anticipatory anxiety prior to social occasions, or any plans I’d made to be out of the house. This was a survival reflex, an attempt to warn me of situations that were likely to cause me pain.

Yet after my migraines improved, this fear response did not. It would take the entire rest summer for my brain to catch on to the new state of things. In the meantime, I was in a low-grade state of totally freaked out, *all of the time*. Something as simple as turning on lights in my house, or hanging out with friends—things that used to make my head hurt, but no longer did—would make my heart race in panic. This is a bad idea, my brain would scream, despite the fact that these things didn’t cause me pain anymore. This is, apparently, called an amygdala hijack. Thank you, amygdala.

It was in these moments that I desperately wanted the distraction of an endless stream of random of photos.

But my brain’s survival reflex wasn’t the only problem, nor was it the biggest one. When life isn’t a straight line, it’s all too easy to feel like there’s no way forward, no point in wasting energy trying to get anywhere. Better to just survive. That’s how I’d come to see my life, and the deeper reason why I found myself pining after social media. It was this survival mindset, more so than my brain’s survival reflexes, that had decimated my life and left me, now, unable to live it.

The options to teach my brain to chill out (through things like pain reprocessing therapy, for instance) and to “thrive, not just survive” had always there, pain or no. I made the wrong choice in not pursuing these things earlier, and never pursuing them fully. But now, I knew that if I wanted to truly experience recovery, I had to deal with my fears instead of numbing them with a newsfeed.

So it was, as I said, a very stressful summer. Despite being physically healthy again for the first time in years, I spent most of it battling the fear of pain. But that’s also what made it my best summer on record. Because when I, unable to distract myself from my anxiety with social media, began to work through it, I felt my soul slowly expanding beyond the confines of survival mode. And by the time the summer was over, I was not only physically recovered—I was also well on my way to an entirely new way of living.

It’s October now and though my social media boycott is technically long done, both Facebook and Instagram remain uninstalled from my phone. This is much to the dismay of my dog’s devoted followers. To all 100 of you, I apologize. Maybe I’ll log back on someday. But in this complicated, joyous, messy, roller coaster of a season, I’ve decided to let go of my phone, raise my hands up in the air, and simply enjoy the ride. 🧠

P.S. Speaking of being offline, I’m currently traveling and not checking my phone too often. I apologize for the delay in responding to comments, but please keep them coming!

One final memory from this past summer: