BOOK NOW

Knock Knock

Picture it. You’ve just sat down for the evening to relax after another long day. You’ve done all the right things. Had a solid 8 hours sleep, healthy food, regular hydration. You were super productive at work getting the grey matter going with a sense of progress and purpose. You did some exercise and had some casual chit chat with some friends. You checked in with various family members, you spent an hour or so getting lost in a hobby and now you need a little time to unwind before getting off to bed on time and doing that all over again. Perfect.

Then the doorbell goes. You’re not expecting visitors so there’s a sudden shot of adrenalin, cortisol and a startle response. Who could that be? What do they want? What’s wrong?

You go into action mode. This can only really be a problem. Let’s go. Let’s see who it is.

Sales call, politician, the Town Cryer, a friend showing you what they had for dinner – that’s weird! Another friend asking you how to fix their printer. Your cousin that you hardly ever see telling you that their child, who you’ve never met, got some badge at school for swimming 10m. Great, well done them but it’s Thursday evening and I could do without the intrusion.

Your child’s teacher comes around to remind you it’s Tudor day tomorrow and they need to be in costume. I know. You’ve sent me 3 messages already and I’ve got the costume laid out, ready to go in the morning. We’re sorted. Thanks for the reminder but I would just like a moment not to think about all that please. Just an hour to bring my day to a slow steady stop, ready for sleep. Clive Myrie himself knocks on your door to update you on the state of the nation, the wars around the world and then Donald Trump elbows in with his “alternate facts”.

All the goodness of your day drips away with each and every knock on the door and now you’re shattered. Wired by all the interruption, fully wound up when you really needed to wind down.

The worst thing about all of this – is that you brought it on yourself. It didn’t need to be this way.

Every time your smart phone pings a notification, you get that interruption response. We are so used to it by now that we don’t even see it as an interruption anymore. Each alert is a subtle stressor, anxiety inducer. Who is it? What can it be? and of course FOMO – the fear of missing out.

They all stimulate an internal biochemistry. We have become so conditioned to it, that the stress of it isn’t necessarily “felt” but it is happening. It’s a little bit like high blood pressure, the silent killer. You don’t realise your blood pressure is high until you have an event that might catastrophically bring this to your attention (unless you are monitoring it of course).

I’m fairly sure that in the years and decades to come we will look back at this time of highly addictive phone reliance in our daily lives as the smoking of our time. So normal. So casual. So acceptable, yet so destructive. The impact on our health, wellbeing and chronic pain system increasingly apparent.

As many of you who enjoy this blog will know, it’s those insidious micro stressors that can derail your Health Hexagon and contribute to frequent and persistent chronic back and neck pain. Those pings that we allow into our lives have significant impact on our stress response systems, our sleep quality, our immune system, our inflammatory systems, our mental and physical health. Don’t wind yourself up when you really need to be winding yourself down.

We are so used to filling space with our phones that we can easily feel anxious or lost without them. Unproductive even but John Lennon probably said it best “Time doing nothing, is rarely time wasted”.

“Knock Knock”

“Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh!. Not now”.

 

If you want to learn why pain can offer the secrets to your health and wellbeing read Pain: The Ultimate Mentor, available in print, ebook & audiobook from all the usual outlets.

Ptum Bjgp Review Banner

Subscribe to our Newsletter

Join The Conversation

If you’d like to have your say on this article feel free to add a comment using the form, we love to hear your thinking and open the table to discussion, and hopefully share resources, blog posts, articles and information that’s useful to you!

If you’d like to discuss anything in private instead, just get in touch using the contact details at the bottom of the page!

Comments

1 Comment

  1. Kathy

    So true, thank you Kevin for providing us with these easy to understand reminders of what we can do to help ourselves

    Reply

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Leave A Comment

1 Comment

  1. Kathy

    So true, thank you Kevin for providing us with these easy to understand reminders of what we can do to help ourselves

    Reply

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Posts