139 Why A Doomscrolling World Needs a Return to Joy

Hosts Geoff and Cyd talk about how to return to joy in a doomscrolling world by creating small moments to turn toward God instead of compulsively turning to devices.

They explore why people doom scroll—negativity bias, seeking control, dopamine loops, emotional avoidance, fear of missing out, and “revenge bedtime procrastination”—and how constant exposure to global danger can overwhelm the nervous system and fuel comparison and anxiety. 

They emphasize that “choosing joy” requires active training, not slogans, and point to biblical rhythms of rejoicing as a model. Practical experiments include intentionally looking for and savoring goodness and beauty, pausing to pray (“God, you know”) before scrolling, setting phone boundaries, and changing a lock screen as a prompt.

Dive deeper in our new book, Landscapes of the Soul: How the Science and Spirituality of Attachment Can Move You into Confident Faith, Courage, and Connection, and learn about our trainings and other resources at embodiedfaith.life.

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Transcript

A Doomscrolling World Needs a Return to Joy 

Cyd Holsclaw: Welcome back for this season on the Attaching to God podcast. Geoff and I are looking at the key concepts and practices around becoming more deeply attached to God, so that whatever landscape our souls might be in, we can follow the Good Shepherd back to the pastors of joy and peace.

Geoff Holsclcaw: And today we are talking about returning to joy in a doom scrolling world. As you listen today, we hope that you'll be encouraged to find some space to return to God in some small moments throughout the day, rather than turning to our devices that are. So addicted. Uh, in our last episode, we talked about what if God really liked me, question mark.

And we talked about the blessing that God had given to Aaron to speak over Israel and how it had the aspects of amplifying joy and returning to joy. And that was because in the words of the prayer, it speaks of God's shining face toward us, as well as God turning his face toward us and giving us peace.

And today we're gonna dig in a little bit more into that returning to joy kind of practice.

Cyd Holsclaw: Yeah. 

Gratitude Practice Setup

Cyd Holsclaw: And speaking of returning to joy kind of practice, Geoff what are you grateful for today?

Geoff Holsclcaw: Yeah, so this is our practice of gratitude. So before you gotta set it up a little bit for the, because this is

Cyd Holsclaw: Okay, so I'll set it up a little bit. So the reason that we do this gratitude practice is because it you know, we talked about the connection, the protection priority in our nervous systems. We've talked about that before. And so when you are expressing appreciation or gratitude for someone or for something or to someone, it ends up.

Causing your body and your brain to relax into a connection pri priority in your nervous system. It's really hard to be grateful when you're feeling threatened or feeling like things are dangerous. And so we can choose to intentionally put ourselves into a connection priority by expressing gratitude.

So Geoff, what are you thankful for?

Geoff Holsclcaw: Yes. 

Sharing Gratitudes Today

Geoff Holsclcaw: So I am, let's see. I didn't do a great job preparing for my gratitude. I have I have future

Cyd Holsclaw: You're modeling well,

Geoff Holsclcaw: I know I have future gratitudes. Does that count? So I need a, like a referee because 

Cyd Holsclaw: gratitudes.

Geoff Holsclcaw: I have one that's coming

Cyd Holsclaw: You're allowed a future gratitude. You're allowed a future gratitude if you also do a past gratitude. How about that?

Geoff Holsclcaw: Alright. This is gonna sound very bougie. But I got one of these small collapsible mobile. Hot saunas, dry saunas, like a one person little canvas thing. Uh, and I've been using it the last several morning. I use it quite a bit, but I don't know. I've just been really grateful for sitting in the heat.

I really like that. I know some people don't. And then my future gratitude. Is we're having a game night with some friends. They're coming over tonight. And so that is fun. We've, I always talk about, we always talk about game nights with our children, but we also have a couple friends, so that's a lot of fun.

Cyd Holsclaw: Yeah, we have a couple friends. It's good to have a

Geoff Holsclcaw: We have a couple friends. I'm also grateful that we have a couple friends. That too. 

Cyd Holsclaw: Yeah, me too. I am super grateful because I am, I probably talk about the weather a lot in my gratitude, but the weather impacts me a lot. And today there is sun coming in my window and I'm always really grateful when sun comes in my window. And I'm also really grateful because we had to change our health insurance, which meant having to get a new doctor.

And I had researched and read reviews of all kinds of doctors, and I finally found one. That I thought would be good. And I went and saw him yesterday for the first time and he's fabulous. So I feel really good about a new connection with a doctor that seems like a good doctor. So I'm grateful for that too.

And I'm also grateful that we have a couple friends and that we could, to see two of our friends tonight who are also a couple, and we get to play games together.

Why We Doom Scroll

Geoff Holsclcaw: Well, so onto our topic. So gratitude helps to maybe dispel us from doom scrolling, but let's talk about doom scrolling really quick. Why I am gonna throw this to you, Cyd without any preparation and you can't look at the things I listed here. Is what, why do you think people.

Engage in doom. Scrolling in the real broad sense of just like mindlessly, it could be mindlessly scrolling on their phones or

Cyd Holsclaw: Yeah I know why I do it and I wish I didn't. I wish I didn't doom scroll at all. But I know I do it sometimes when I'm feeling bored or restless. So looking for stimulation or for something and I don't feel bored and restless very often. But I'll just confess I have this bad habit of we both have it, so I'm just gonna be honest.

Revelation of the holes. Claw bad habit. Um, we have both been known to go into the bathroom with our phones and take a little longer than we need to take because we're looking, we're catching up on our phones. I know I just told the world because I'll bet we're not the only people who have done that. But I notice that I, I sometimes tend to turn to my phone when I'm wanting to avoid something that I need to think about, right? 'cause then I can distract myself with something. Um, I notice that I also, like sometimes it's not even, I have a particular reason. It's just like I'm searching for something which is probably a dopamine, like that little dopamine loop.

Yeah, I have to be really intentional about putting boundaries around my phone use. And one of those boundaries is I can't take it into the bathroom. So

Geoff Holsclcaw: For that was not what I thought you were gonna share about our, like us. Like I thought you were gonna share that we send like reels back and forth to each other about comedians that we think are pretty funny. But I guess not.

Cyd Holsclaw: that's not doom scrolling, that's laugh scrolling. That's gotta be something different.

Geoff Holsclcaw: But it's also part of being on our restless devices too much.

So when I did a quick search for doom scrolling why do some people like talk about why this happened so much? One mechanism, or one reason is that we have this survival, maybe evolutionary survival kind of wiring where we're biased toward negative. Things. Um, we're always trying to find something so that we can survive.

Like you're always paying attention, being hypervigilant. So that we can avoid or anticipate threats for other people. Maybe it's kind of a searching for control in a chaotic world. It kind of provides this false sense of safety. You already mentioned the dopamine loop. Also like emotional avoidance.

There's also this sense of like, the fear of missing out. So everybody wants to be like up on the new things. Uh, so we're always kind of scrolling so we don't miss out on, on whatever it is that. People these days are missing out. And then there was this last one that popped up and I was like, oh no, this is me.

This is me. The last one that popped up is called, and I can't believe this is what it's called, uh, maybe this is some AI generation of an idea. I don't know. But it was called Revenge bedtime Procrastination. Revenge bedtime procrastination. It is when you try to regain a sense of control by not going to bed because you feel like your schedule has been dominated by others or by to-do lists in

Cyd Holsclaw: Oh

Geoff Holsclcaw: up longer to then.

Exert a sense of control over your day. And I was like, I thought I just did that because I'm an introvert and I need to get some of my book reading time. But there are a lot of times where I stay up too late and it's really just me time, which means I'm in control of my time and I start, this is true confession.

I start off reading, but then I think to myself, may, I don't even think, I just like, and then if my phone is nearby, I just grab it to

Cyd Holsclaw: Suddenly it's in your hand.

Geoff Holsclcaw: Then, yeah, it's like magically the phone appears in my hand and then I magically teleport or not tell time. Travel like 30 minutes to an hour into the future, like somehow.

Because you're just scrolling. So, revenge, bedtime, procrastination. If anybody else suffers from that, please uh, hit me up on Facebook

Cyd Holsclaw: a name I love. Like it makes me laugh that the revenge is in there. It's not just bedtime procrastination. It's revenge, bedtime, procrastination.

Geoff Holsclcaw: Alright, so these are all kind of different reasons why we might fall into our phones. Uh, fear of missing out revenge, bedtime, procrastination, emotional avoidance maybe some sort of, certainly the dopamine kind of loops and hits. So we just talked a little bit about the protection, but could you kind of go over that kind of again about why it's so easy to get stuck or to fall into these kind of protection modes?

'cause I do think that doom scrolling is. Connected to our protection mode or stance. Do you think that's true?

Cyd Holsclaw: yeah, it's certainly not a. Most of us don't doom scroll because it makes us feel connected to others. I

Geoff Holsclcaw: called social media, but that's not what it's

Cyd Holsclaw: I think maybe we start out that way thinking, oh, what are people up to? Or what are my friends posting? And maybe it starts out that way, but I think, anybody who spends even a couple of minutes on social media can then sometimes default more often than not into a protection stance because then it starts to become comparison or just, you know, hearing things that are not.

Easy to hear or reading things or seeing pictures that are not easy to see. And you know, the default is, like you were talking about with that, uh, with that sort of wired in looking for danger is that, it's not the good stuff that can kill us. And so the stuff that we really pay attention to and notice is the stuff that's.

Dangerous or threatening to us, and then that puts us into a protection state. And protection state is really necessary in our nervous system, but it's necessary in our real life, like in the real circumstances we live in. We were never meant to be able to protect ourselves from global events. you know, when we know like what's happening globally across the world, that's more than our nervous systems are really meant to bear is an understanding of what's dangerous worldwide rather than what's just dangerous in my own environment that I personally live and breathe and move in. At least that's my, yeah.

Geoff Holsclcaw: so then in that sense, social media is overwhelming our collective nervous systems because we're knowledgeable about things that go way beyond just our family, our house, our neighborhood or kind of region. But

Cyd Holsclaw: Yeah, and most of it we have absolutely no ability to impact like we

Geoff Holsclcaw: why people engage in, what is it, revenge, bedtime, procrastination, because it's like everything is so outta control and it's being shoved in my face constantly, even though I'm the one opening my phone and navigating toward it, but it's shoved in my face. So I need some me time at the end of the day to get revenge for this information overload and overwhelm.

Cyd Holsclaw: Whatever you have to tell yourself.

Geoff Holsclcaw: So that is what I tell myself. I used to tell myself that it's because I'm introvert and I would like to get a little book time in, but now I'm gonna have to revise that,

Cyd Holsclaw: So next time I come and see you, you scrolling on your phone in the evening, I can just ask you, honey, is this revenge, bedtime procrastination?

Geoff Holsclcaw: well, I, I do wanna check in with that. Last night I did not give into it. I actually went to bed at a reasonable time. I was thinking, I, you know, I should stay. And then I was like, no, I should go to bed. So I actually, I did, I chose the better thing. 

Is Choosing Joy Enough

Geoff Holsclcaw: So, but to shift then to returning to joy rather than the dopamine hits of the doom scrolling is just choosing joy.

Enough. We have those things plastered around our house. Actually. We have the joy of the Lord is my strengths. In the kitchen we have choosing joy like in the front hall when you walk in. But is having those things

Cyd Holsclaw: not, I,

Geoff Holsclcaw: enough.

Cyd Holsclaw: you're just reminding me, I dunno if, do you know how something is on your wall for eight years and you even don't see it anymore? I'm not sure I even love that Choose joy thing anymore, but it's still there. But is choosing joy enough? What do you mean? Just how are we choosing joy?

Geoff Holsclcaw: like having pictures that just say that, 

Cyd Holsclaw: no. Having pictures that just say that clearly isn't enough, because I don't even see the one that says Choose Joy anymore. So just having a reminder for myself like that, that fades into the background. No, absolutely not. But. I, I bi it's biblical to choose joy. And we've talked about this before on other episodes of this isn't toxic positiv positivity, it's actually choosing to enter into the joy of the Lord that is already available to us.

But yeah, it's a practice because our bodies are wired to notice the negative. And so it's gotta be more than just. Choosing. It's gotta be more than just doing the default thing. 'cause the default thing is gonna be to notice the negative and the default thing is gonna be to enter into protection. And so if we want to first of all find joy and ch choose joy, we have to take initiative and we have to be active about that.

Geoff Holsclcaw: So that'd be like training for joy or

Cyd Holsclaw: Yeah. Training.

Training for Joy Rhythms

Geoff Holsclcaw: I'm thinking of, I forget exactly how many, five or six different annual festivals that God gave Israel. Only one of 'em. Is like a really downer one, and that's like the Day of Atonement. The rest of them are festivals where you're supposed to be rejoicing and having a lot of fun.

So that's its own training for joy. And those are also pilgrimages too. So you actually have this physical transition that's happening in your life, 

Cyd Holsclaw: and even the Day of Atonement, there was rejoicing in the reality that your sin is being put on the lamb that's now leaving. Going away. Your sin is still leaving you. That's still a rejoicing, but I was just reading this morning you know about when Solomon consecrated the, the temple when it was finished and that they had celebrated for seven days, the temple dedication, and then seven days, the festival of shelters, you know, when they're going back and remembering God's provision for them in the wilderness.

And so I was thinking. 14 days, and then the statement was at the end of all of that was, and they all returned to their homes full of joy and gladness. I was like, what a great statement about those rhythms of the nation of Israel, that it was this constant rhythm of joy and gladness and celebrating and being together with God. I loved it. Yeah, so that's the choosing joy, that's in being intentional about joy and we don't really have a lot of things like that in our modern, um, practices that are that immersed and that deep and that rhythmic, and so we have to create rhythms and create practices for ourselves to be able to enter into that fullness of joy and gladness that God intends for us as his people.

Lent Practices to Notice Good

Geoff Holsclcaw: So what would be some of these practices we're in Lent this time of training? How can we practice joy in the midst of Lent?

Cyd Holsclaw: I have found myself like in the last, uh, two weeks having this conversation with like two or three different people about noticing what we look for. And so when we're looking for, and if there's this sort of pervasive idea that like, oh, everything's a mess. Everything is chaos, you know, and then I have no control over everything.

If that's kind of what your prevailing theme is. As you go into a day, that's what you're gonna see evidence of. Everywhere you turn, you're gonna see more evidence of everything is chaos, everything is out of control. But if you go into the day saying, I know there is still goodness in the world. know that there are still beautiful things happening, and if that's what you're looking for going through the day, then that's what you're gonna see.

And using the example of if you're looking for something, if, let's say you're like for me it's this time of year where you're starting to think about planting perennials for the summer. And so I'm looking around at I notice plant sales, I notice advertisements, so there's perennials on sale because that's what I'm thinking about right now.

And so I'm seeing it a lot because it's everywhere, but it's not really everywhere. It's because I'm looking for it. I'm training myself to look for it, and that's why I'm seeing it everywhere and it feels like it's everywhere. And so in the same way, training ourselves to look for the good and the beautiful, um, is then that's, if that's what you are training yourself to look for, then you're gonna find it.

You're gonna find evidence of goodness and beauty because God is still at work in the world and where God is at work, there is goodness and beauty. And so training yourself to look for that, you'll find it. And then when you find it, savoring it and celebrating it and taking a moment of pause and gratitude that there is still goodness and beauty in the world when you do discover it.

that's a really good practice to sort of retrain what you're looking for. In the world and in your days. 

Phone Pause and Lock Screen

Cyd Holsclaw: And then the other one that I was thinking too is that, you know, with God. That one's more of like within yourself and you know, sort of your daily rhythm, but then also thinking about life with God.

A way to choose joy in life with God is, you know, the joy is the presence of being with someone who's glad to be with you. And so, you know, choosing with God, whatever it is that's causing you to pick up the phone and whatever it is that like, you know, if you can start to develop a moment of when you pick up the phone before you.

And I know this is like the hard loop to break, but before you even start looking at anything, just taking a deep breath and just saying, God, because God knows everything that's in you that caused you to go for the phone and God knows everything that you're gonna see on the phone. And so it's that sort of God, you know, like you are present in all of this.

You are present with me. And so that moment of a deep breath of God, you know. And maybe just, maybe if you take that pause, you'll find you don't actually want to look at the phone or you don't need to look at the phone. Or maybe you'll notice that as you are scrolling, if you choose to scroll anyway, something might feel different in your scrolling because you're scrolling with God rather than alone. I dunno. What do you think of those ideas, Geoff? How accessible do those feel?

Geoff Holsclcaw: Well, I was, I was branching onto other, possible practices, which is totally allowable. So if anyone's listening and you, Cyd was talking, and then an idea of how you could do it came into mind, uh, you should definitely do that. W well, for the first one, well, for really these two, it's really kind of like training.

Around what you're paying attention to.

and I think that is really key because we are trained, whether it's by our culture or by some of our genetics to really pay attention to the threats around us. Rather than paying attention to the abundance or the gifts or the grace that God is continually pouring out on us.

And it's not that those threats or those problems aren't real but are we paying attention to them more and more than maybe we should, given all that God has given us. So that was kind of my, my first thought is this is a a practice of, of paying attention and really, like most of spiritual formation could get distilled into that.

What are you paying attention to? Are you paying attention to God? Or what are you looking to? Are you looking to God? Are you lifting up your eyes to the mountains? Psalm uh, 1 21, from where my help comes from. Or are we looking around to other kind of things? So that was like the big, deep thought I had.

The really practical one is that I wrote down, I was like, change my lock screen. And so like right after this episode is done recording, I'm gonna. I'm gonna write something on a, on a note card that is gonna, I don't know what it's gonna be. I think it's gonna be something like, don't open your phone and I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a picture.

I'm gonna make that my lock screen so that it always shows up. So I don't, that was the idea I had. I don't know if I'm, if that's gonna help or work, but at least I'm gonna try it.

Cyd Holsclaw: and we're laughing, but I think that's such a great idea because it's such, it's like a, we talk about stumbling upon something to help you remember, because you're not just gonna remember, that's like the choose joy thing on our wall that's been there for eight years. I don't stumble on it anymore because it's such a part of the scenery, and so.

Changing your lock screen is probably gonna, that might be really helpful for a little while until it becomes ordinary and then you change it again. Right? But that idea of I'm stumbling upon, as soon as I pick up the phone, the first thing I see is a picture of this thing that I wrote that says, don't look at your phone, and that'll probably

Geoff Holsclcaw: what was,

Cyd Holsclaw: really helpful.

Geoff Holsclcaw: workshop this. What would be a more positive message? God loves you or pay attention to God, or God is watching you. No, that wouldn't be so good. 

Cyd Holsclaw: The phrase I was suggesting is God, of, it's, it turns into a prayer God, you know why I wanted to pick up my phone, so it's a way of saying, yes, God is watching, but not in a Big Brother. God is watching domineering kind of way, but in a God is already with me and God already knows what my impulse is to pick up my phone. I don't know. That's a thought. You gotta find something that works for you.

Geoff Holsclcaw: I'm gonna try, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this right before, I'm gonna do this right now. I was thinking though about those pictures of the picture frames around our house. I bet if I skewed them all by an inch, so they're hanging crooked, then you'd pay attention to them.

Cyd Holsclaw: I'm sure I would. 

Run New Experiments

Cyd Holsclaw: All right, so we have some experiments to run and we'll see what happens. We'll have

Geoff Holsclcaw: And all of you listening, you two should run experiments. This is what we always say is faith is running new experiments. It's kind of shaking up our normal world a little bit so that God can break in. And so running these experiments, iterating them, updating them you know, if things don't work, then just forget about it.

Move on to something else. And just, yeah, run these experiments. Update. How you engage with God in the world and. We'll see what happens. 

Next Episode and Aaronic Blessing

Geoff Holsclcaw: So next time we're going to we try to end episodes with practices. And this is, we've been talking about this practice. So, but next time, uh, we're gonna be talking about during Holy week Jesus' journey to the cross who, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross.

And we'll be talking a little bit about intimacy and independence, uh, and how, uh, our yo-yo like emotions can get transformed, uh, because of Jesus's. Yes.

Cyd Holsclaw: Nice alliteration as usual. Looking forward to that. All right. But we always wanna end with the blessing that God gave to Aaron to speak over the nation of Israel. And so if you have a moment, if you're not driving, invite you to take a pause and just even close your eyes if you would like or open up your hands to just receive the blessing of God.

So may the Lord bless you and keep you, Lord, make his face to shine upon you. Be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. And remember, God is always with you, with compassion, and glad to be with you. Amen.

Geoff Holsclcaw: Amen.