Protecting Attention: Mitigating Attention Hijacking

Last week I blogged about online rage/hate bait and attention hijacking. Knowing that people manufacture rage and hate for profit confirms a decision to delete my personal social media accounts within the month. Protecting time, space, and energy is recovery. Take it back. Protect it.

My two-step process includes:

1. Withdrawing from the toxic online stew.

2. Engaging my top-down attention with intentional, active decisions, choosing where I invest focus.

   
   

I share this with you, Gentle Soul, because you can plug in your version:

• Step 1: Say no to things that waste time.

• Step 2: Engage in a past passion or new fascination.

Returning to something that you were drawn to as a kid is one effective and empowering approach. I loved dancing. I was going to be a ballerina. I had aptitude for it. My ballet teacher even cast me in a professional show. However, when my teenage rebellion hit, I quit. I’m glad I didn’t dance professionally. I do wish that I’d continued dancing.

Last fall, I discovered a ballet school 5–10 minutes from home. The North Reading School of Ballet offers adult classes in my sleepy, commuter town. The teachers are amazing, and fellow classmates are funny, kind, and friendly! Now, three hours a week, I engage my top-down attention and return to my body in coordination with classmates. We laugh, share our lives, and support all levels of dancers. My toes don’t really point. I get dizzy when I turn. My jumping skills are not what they were. But my body still loves it! Sometimes my cellular memory kicks on, and younger me takes over. That authentic part dances for the joy of it.

Ballet requires engaging opposing forces:

• Feet root to the ground and shoulders drop, while the spine and neck elongate.

• Core muscles circle in, while leg muscles circle out.

I can’t balance, move, jump, or turn without focusing on being embodied and present. I’m physically in sync with classmates.

According to neuroscience, all these elements are components of trauma recovery:

• Embodied, as opposed to dissociated.

• Present, as opposed to lost in the past or worrying about the future.

• In sync with community, as opposed to isolated.

And it is my perfect break from cynical online attention baiting, manipulation, and the firehose of terrible news.

Gentle Soul, what can you return to, or explore? Your inner yearning is your compass to authenticity. You take agency over your life energy when you follow internal directions. It’s one practice in honoring authenticity. The more that you work that muscle, the more that it works for you.

Esther Friedman

Author of The Gentle Souls Revolution

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