What Is Your Phone REALLY Doing To Your Nervous System?

Your phone isn’t just a tool in your hand, it can become the background environment your nervous system lives in. When that environment is filled with constant input, rapid topic switching, comparison, and fear-based headlines, your body can stay slightly on alert all day long and we end up calling it a “mindset problem”. I want to take the shame out of that and bring it back to something more honest and more workable: regulation starts in the body, not in perfect thoughts. 

We talk about why modern screen time can leave you feeling tired but wired, why scrolling before bed or first thing in the morning primes your stress response, and how clickbait and negativity hook into survival wiring that doesn’t always know what is relevant to your real life. I also share the dopamine layer of social media and novelty, why stillness can feel oddly uncomfortable over time, and why even curated images can land in the body as a subtle signal of “I’m behind”. 

Rather than pushing discipline or deleting everything, we explore a gentler, more sustainable path: creating space. Small pauses like a phone-free start to the day, a short walk without input, waiting in a queue without scrolling, or keeping your phone out of the bedroom can give your nervous system the gap it needs to settle. When your body softens, your thoughts often shift on their own. 

If this resonates, listen, share it with someone you care about, and leave a review. Subscribe so you don’t miss next week, and tell me what you notice when you add a little more space to your day.

Transcript

Mindset Series And A New Root

Naomi Mills 0:31

I'm here to guide you back to the truth. You are not broken. You are the answer. Hello and welcome to episode 26 of the You Are the Answer podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. We are continuing with the mindset series, and in the last episode, we explored four cultural lies or misconceptions about mindset. Not sure I'll go as far as to call them lies. They are just misplaced. So the idea that we should think positively, push through, override, and control our thoughts and why ultimately that would be reinforcing almost the opposite in our bodies and in our nervous systems. And today I want to gently introduce something that sits underneath all of that, something that's shaping all of our thoughts before we've even had a chance to think them.

Screen Input And The Tired Wired Loop

Naomi Mills 1:38

And that's screen time. Now, before we go anywhere with this, I want to be really clear. I am not ever wanting you to feel guilty or that you're doing it wrong, or that you just need to throw your phone in a drawer and move into a cabin in the woods, although that would be phenomenal for all our nervous systems. But since we want to live in the modern world, as everything, it's about trying to bring some more awareness into what our habits might be doing in our bodies and our brains to our nervous systems and to how they are influencing our life and our health. We live in a world where screens are a part of life and they really are not going anywhere. But what is the cost of constant input on your nervous system and therefore on your mindset? Because you know your thoughts don't exist as isolated pieces. Our thoughts are shaped by what we consume every day, where we live, the communities we're in, what we're scrolling, and what we're absorbing. And we're often not even realizing it. Now, the important part here is that your nervous system evolved over thousands of years to respond to real immediate physical environments. And like it or not, on a physiological level, we are still wired that way. We see it especially in childbirth where we know we're going to have the best outcomes. We're in a safe, quiet, dark space. At a very primal level, we're still wired as we were thousands of years ago. And whether you agree 100% or not with that statement, hopefully we can all agree that our nervous systems are not set up for hundreds of new stories in a day, dozens of opinions, constant comparison, endless stimulation, and rapidly switching between topics. So when you scroll, your brain is trying to process everything as a real-time experience. And so it makes sense that it's really waking up and becoming activated pretty much all the time now. Not always in a huge, obvious way, but in a low-level, persistent state of alertness. And this is what I see so often in clinic: people who would describe themselves as tired but wired. They might feel really exhausted but struggle to switch off. Or they drop off to sleep because they're so physically tired, and then they'll wake up some point in the night with their brain rattling off at them about all sorts of things. Usually not a specific genuine worry, but more about things to do or work or the household. They might feel overwhelmed, but at the same time be acknowledging that I've not really gotten much done recently. They're struggling to focus. They're really struggling to slow the mind. And often underneath that, I'm finding as a clinician, their nervous system is not getting the space it needs to settle. Often every spare moment is filled. A quick scroll while they're waiting for an appointment, even though I really want to reach across and be like, put your phone down and just relax. Scrolling before bed, first thing in the morning. We talked quite a few times now about how the mind puts a filter on the day. Well, what you feed your mind first thing in the morning puts a filter on your day. And it's why when we talk about self-care or tools that you're using to keep your nervous system calm and grounded, my number one piece of advice is do it first. Because A, it gets done. But even more importantly, is that when it gets done, because it's putting the filter on your day, which is so important. So if you're picking your phone up first thing, have a think about what are you setting your whole system up for each day. And something we are all experiencing now is just not allowing the natural pauses that our bodies need to just regulate. Moments staring out the window, moments just being, moments where we just switch off from doing anything. But these are really integral to our nervous system health.

Clickbait Fear And Body First Calm

Naomi Mills 6:44

So if we come back to mindset, if your brain's overstimulated, if it's got too much information coming in and we've moved into a bit of fight-flight, particularly because negativity sells, you how many times do you click into a story if you even bother and you're not just reading the headlines and you think, well, this story doesn't reflect what's written in that headline, that headline sounded terrible. It's that's what clickbait is, because it hooks into our fear response. And the problem is your nervous system doesn't know what's real or whether you're reading about something that is or isn't related directly to your life. It's just taking on that information and it's going to respond to that environment. Like we said last time, you cannot think your way into being calm. Calmness really starts in the body. And it's how chiropractic works. When we make that adjustment to your spine, we are helping shift the wiring in your brain out of sympathetic fight-flight into that parasympathetic healing state. And if you are constantly low-level activating your brain, it's incredibly difficult for your nervous system to settle and stay in the state that you want it to be in. Then there's another layer. Another layer.

Dopamine Loops And Comparison Signals

Naomi Mills 8:24

Our brains love novelty, it loves information, it loves distraction, it likes pretty pictures. So it's acting on a chemical level in a highly rewarding way. And I think we definitely identify this when it comes to our young people that cannot seem to get off their phones. Well, no, because nothing else in the modern world gives you a constant hit of dopamine all the time that makes your brain feel good. And as adults, and you know, certainly as myself, and I'll tell you, one of the favorite things about my job is that I can't look at my phone for six hours. I really enjoy not being near my phone. But if I'm on it, I enjoy that. I get the same dopamine hits. You notice yourself getting sucked into habits that maybe aren't helpful. Because have you noticed yourself ever feeling uncomfortable, just doing nothing or being still? Like, could you sit at a bus stop and wait for the bus for 20 minutes and not look at your phone and be okay? Maybe even start a conversation with someone else in the queue. Have you noticed that it feels harder to focus on things? Because over time, this constant dopamine stimulation is changing the way that your brain wants to experience the world because it starts to accept expect it. And even if you know, even when you know you're not being told the truth all the time when the media that people's Instagrams or their pictures are all curated, it's still registering in your body. That logic actually doesn't go deep enough. We're still subconsciously receiving the signal that I'm behind or I'm not doing enough. I should be more like that, I should look like that, I should be more whatever. And again, it's not a mindset problem. This is a whole nervous system response.

Create Space With Small Daily Pauses

Naomi Mills 10:26

So today's invitation, if you're sat there going, right, that's it, I'm gonna put my phone in the bin, great, but that's not practicable, it's not gonna last. We all want to use these tools for their common good, for their best. So perhaps instead of cutting down your screen time or creating more discipline around it, where can you create more space in your life? Where can you allow some small moments where your nervous system can just settle? So it might be not reaching for your phone the moment you wake up. It might be going for a short walk and you don't have anything in your ears or a screen in front of you. Letting yourself sit in a queue or in silence or in traffic or when you're waiting next waiting for something and just sitting. It might mean putting your phone in another room when you go to bed, or if you're feeling particularly disciplined, switching off at eight o'clock, for example, having a time after which you don't look at it. And then you're not restricting, but you're also adding opportunities for yourself to regulate. Because what your body is really asking for isn't less technology, it's more real connection, focusing in on breath, sensation, environment, and real human interaction. And none of these are things that we get from our phones. But when you give yourself even a small moment of that, your nervous system will begin to settle. Your thoughts will begin to naturally shift. And in my experience and my hope is that through creating more space, you will naturally unorganically uh use the phone less for the scrolling, comparing, overwhelming information. So as you move through your day-to-day, my invitation is for you to just notice not how much screen time you have or haven't spent, but how does it feel in your body? And where might you uh choose to do something differently, where you can be a bit slower, a bit more quieter, something a bit more real and interactive, hence the start a conversation with somebody else in the queue suggestion.

Notice Your Body And Closing Invite

Naomi Mills 13:11

And if it resonates with you, I'd love to hear your experiences and what you notice. Thank you as always for being here, and I will see you in next week's episode of You Are the Answer. Thank you for joining me on You Are the Answer. If today's episode sparked something in you, share it with someone you care about and leave a review to help others find their way back to their body too. For more tools, inspiration, and resources to support your journey, head to www.uareanswer.co.uk. And until next time, stay connected, stay curious, and remember, you are the answer, and you always have a