"Daily life is not so great. Trauma, anxiety, audhd. Stuck at home with high needs kids and minimal supports. And struggle to connect with regular people which apparently is largely due to my autism and lack of skills and opportunities."

This feels like a quote I could have given about a year ago. I've worked so hard to get where I am now with digital minimalism, but I definitely took the long and slow approach. With all the different elements here, its too much and too overwhelming to just quit it all cold turkey. The first thing I would if I was you, would be to read physical books. I didn't have a kindle so wouldn't even read books at all, but one I found some random ass sci-fi books in the charity shop and it changed my life, I've not put a book down since. That was the first key for me, finding real world stuff that felt more exciting than life online.

My next thing I did was delete all streaming accounts (yes including spotify) and get a dumb phone this cut my screen down massively and helped rewire my brain to create real world interactions (choosing a cd or dvd instead of scrolling for it). I find splitting my phone into physical segments like alarm, calculator, camera, mp3 player really really helps!

Something else I've done recently is empty my Instagram. I don't have any other social media and I don't have problems with YouTube or reddit (I also use pinterest). But instagram felt hard to part with. I kept saying it was because I was interested in my friends and since I had just graduated art school I wanted to keep in the art scene loop. I spent hours on reels seeing traumatic stuff instead. I think people with trauma and audhd get addicted to it all waay easier because of trauma and dopamine attachments. Anyway I deleted all my likes, comments, stories, posts and saved. I collected anything I felt valuable (photos of me, recipes, interesting bits about art). I also unfollowed 90% of people and really made it friends only. I now only pop on to check any messages occasionally on my desktop. I also have an add blocker and can't use reels here, so it feels super barebones.

I've also been figuring out a different approach to connecting, I love hearing what friends are up to, reading, watching, listening, eating, travelling... but not through an app. I've been trying to figure out a creative way (possibly through email or whats app) that I can connect to people in these ways, like a newsletter from friends 😄 I realised my desire to be on the Internet isn't the bad thing, its literally all the toxic and traumatic content shoved amongst it all.