I Went Offline and Apparently That Was the Therapy I Needed.

Morgan Jensen

2 days ago

4 min read

A funk isn't a mood. It's the distance between you and yourself, and every piece of self-care advice you've ever ignored is a way of closing it.

I love my birthday, I really do. I tell people I don't care about it, which is a lie I've told for years with total commitment. I love a second margarita at Ellie's bar in East London without a flicker of guilt. I love buying a new dress to wear on the night and maybe twice more, except my birthday is in September, so its second outing won't be until next summer, if at all.

This year, I skipped all of it. I spent my birthday on a plane to a small town in Austria.

A birthday is a marker in time, and it makes it almost impossible not to take inventory. Where I am. Who I am. Who's around me. What I've actually done with the last twelve months. For most of the months leading up to it, I'd been living my life the way I watch TV with my phone in my hand. I knew roughly what was going on, but don't ask me for details. I was about 90% there.

When I'm anxious, I put just enough distance between me and myself to keep moving. I go to work, see friends, buy things I don't need and have a perfectly nice time. But a birthday pulls you back inside your own skin for a whole day, whether you're ready or not.

Here you are.

This is your life.

This is what you thought you'd have figured out by now and, unfortunately, have not.

Which is annoying, because I would much rather have been at Ellie's.

I wasn't drifting by accident. I was half in and half out of something I knew I needed to leave. Being around it kept my nervous system permanently on alert, and I'd spent so long reacting that I'd forgotten how to simply be myself. Part of me wanted to stay. Putting off the decision felt safer than making it, and every week I put it off made everything worse.

Being inside my own head felt scary, so I stayed out of it. Whenever any of it came close, I picked up my phone before I'd even noticed. It helped for about four seconds. Then all that noise wound me up even tighter, so I put the phone down more anxious than when I picked it up.

Then I picked it up again.

The longer I stayed away from myself, the scarier coming back felt, so I stayed away longer. The gap didn't wait patiently. It widened.

After a few months, I felt frozen. I did the things that had to be done, and everything else was washed away by my phone or by sleep, neither of which was actually rest. When I tried to work out how I felt, I found a wind tunnel where my thoughts used to be. I couldn't form opinions. I didn't have the energy to see friends. Worst of all, I couldn't make a decision to save my life, least of all the one I most needed to make. When you live in a low hum of panic, the part of your brain that makes choices quietly clocks out. Nothing I felt seemed fully mine.

I found myself in the biggest funk of my life.

That's why I spent my birthday on a plane, heading for a small town with patchy signal, nobody to socialise with and nothing to do but be outside. The first week was uncomfortable. With nothing to reach for, every feeling I'd been dodging finally had a clear run at me. So I sat on the deck with a notebook and let them come.

About a week in, the wind tunnel went quiet.

Then I noticed something. Every tip anyone has ever given for getting out of a funk is the same tip. Journal. Move your body. Walk in nature. Call your family. Cook yourself dinner. Learn something new. Paint, sing, dance, read a book, delete the app for a week, try a new sport. It looks like a random list, but each one asks you to be inside your body and your mind at the same time. You can't do any of them as a spectator.

A funk isn't a mood. It's the distance between you and yourself, and every one of those things closes it a little.

The catch is that none of them feel as good as the phone does in the first four seconds. The phone pays out instantly. Everything else pays out slowly, so you have to choose it on purpose, again and again. The moment I stop choosing, the drift starts again.

You don't need a small town in Austria. I needed it because I'd drifted so far that the signal had to drop before I'd look up. The way back is much smaller than that. Ten minutes with a notebook. A walk without headphones. Dinner made with your own hands and nothing playing in the background.

I haven't made every decision yet. But I can hear myself again, and that's where decisions come from.

Maybe getting out of a funk isn't about feeling better.

Maybe it's about getting close enough to yourself to find out what you actually feel.