You told yourself one episode.
Just one.
You need to decompress, right? Give your brain somewhere soft to land after the day you had. Completely reasonable.
Ahem.
That was three hours ago.
Now you're still on the couch, something is playing on the TV that you aren't even really watching anymore, and you've somehow also been scrolling your phone for the last forty-five minutes.
The dishes are still in the sink, and that thing you were supposed to do tonight? Still there.
You know the thing. It's been quietly following you around all week, appearing every time you have a still moment and then disappearing again the second you find something else to look at.
We'll deal with that tomorrow.
Obviously.
Except now you're tired, slightly annoyed with yourself and wondering why you have absolutely no self-control.
Or perhaps your version isn't Netflix. It's scrolling. Snacking when you aren't particularly hungry. Online shopping when you absolutely did not need another package arriving on the porch.
It can even look like keeping yourself ridiculously busy. Cleaning the house works just fine if you're committed enough to avoiding the thing you actually don't want to deal with.
That's what makes this interesting.
We tend to judge the behavior without getting very curious about what the behavior is doing for us.
We say, I need to stop scrolling so much. I need more discipline. I need to stop wasting my evenings.
And sure. Sometimes we do.
Sometimes we've simply developed a habit that's eating up more of our time than we'd like, and putting some boundaries around it would probably be useful.
But sometimes there's another question worth asking first:
What do I get from this?
That question changed the way I started looking at some of my own habits.
Because if I keep reaching for the same thing at roughly the same kind of moment, there's probably a reason. Not necessarily a deep, buried, childhood-trauma reason either.
Sometimes the reason is simply, I'm freaking exhausted and this requires absolutely nothing from me.
Fair.
But that's still information.
Scrolling might give your brain somewhere to go where nobody needs anything from you. The show you've watched seventeen times might feel wonderfully predictable after a day that wasn't. Shopping might give you a little hit of anticipation when everything else feels like obligation. Staying busy might mean you never have to sit still long enough for the thing you've been avoiding to catch up with you.
And suddenly the habit looks a little different.
This is where it connects to the control conversation we've been having, because checking out doesn't look like control.
Quite the opposite.
Last week we had the calendar and the plan and the color coding. That's obvious managing.
This week we're horizontal on the couch watching people renovate a house in a city we've never visited.
Not exactly screaming control freak.
But escape gives us control over one very specific thing:
What we have to experience right now.
For a little while, I don't have to think about it. I don't have to feel it. I don't have to make the decision, deal with the conversation or acknowledge the fact that I'm completely depleted and have been pretending I'm fine for three weeks.
I can just... not.
And sometimes that's exactly what we need.
There are nights when watching television for three hours is not a cry for help. You had a long week. Watch the show.
Rest is not something we need to pathologize. Neither is fun or distraction. Sometimes distraction is useful. Sometimes your brain needs a break before you're ready to deal with something.
The problem isn't that you ever escape.
It's when escaping becomes the only way you know how to feel better.
Because temporary relief is very good at doing exactly what its name suggests.
It's temporary.
The show ends. The package arrives. You put the phone down.
And whatever was underneath it is still waiting.
Except now we've often added something else on top of it: shame.
Why did I waste the whole night? Why did I eat that? Why can't I just get myself together?
Which means the thing we reached for because we needed relief has somehow left us feeling worse.
That's a miserable little cycle.
And I don't think more self-criticism is particularly useful for getting out of it.
Curiosity might be.
Instead of immediately asking, How do I stop doing this? try asking, What was I needing when I reached for it?
That doesn't mean you automatically give yourself whatever answer pops into your head. It means you pay attention.
Were you tired, overstimulated, lonely or just bored? Were you avoiding something? Did you spend the entire day responding to everybody else's needs and hit 8:30 p.m. realizing you had absolutely nothing left?
Or did you simply want to watch the show?
That's allowed to be the answer too.
We're not conducting a psychological investigation every time we open Netflix.
But if there's a habit you keep promising yourself you'll stop and then repeatedly find yourself right back in, I'd get curious before I got stricter.
Because the behavior might be solving a problem.
Not particularly well. Not permanently.
But enough that some part of you keeps choosing it.
And if that's true, simply removing the behavior leaves you with the original problem and no relief from it.
That's why I like the idea of adding before subtracting.
If what you're actually craving is rest, what would real rest look like? If you're lonely, where could connection fit? If you're overwhelmed, is there something you can put down instead of finding another way to numb yourself from carrying it?
And if you're avoiding one particular thing, what would happen if you gave it ten minutes instead of spending three hours trying not to think about it?
You don't have to overhaul your entire coping system tonight. You just need to start noticing what works—and what it costs.
Faith has changed this conversation for me too, because I don't think God is particularly interested in us becoming people who are simply better at suppressing what we're feeling.
The Psalms certainly don't read that way.
There's frustration in there. Fear. Grief. Anger. Exhaustion. Questions.
People bring the whole mess to God.
That makes me think there's room for us to get more honest too.
I'm exhausted. I'm overwhelmed. I'm lonely. I don't want to deal with this.
That's a much more useful place to begin than What's wrong with me?
Because the habit you keep judging might be telling you something you've been too busy to hear.
You don't necessarily need to declare war on it.
Listen first.
Then decide what you actually need.
Want to keep going with this conversation?
🎧 Ep 59: When Escaping Becomes Control, Not a Discipline Problem →