Human beings seem to be wired for distracting themselves from discomfort, and our modern lives, and the extraordinary material wealth we are surrounded with, hasn't helped making this tendency any better. Products like social media, media channels, legal or illegal drugs (e.g. anything from coffee to heorin), and shopping centers, are all counting on our abilities to become distracted from our focus of interest. As John Gardner, author of "On Leadership", argues: "We can keep ourselves busy, fill our lives with so many diversions, stuff our heads with so much knowledge, involve ourselves with so many people and cover so much ground that ... By middle life, most of us are accomplished fugitives from ourselves."
So what has distraction got to do with our abilities to heal?
In simple terms, to heal we need to know deeply what hurts, and to know deeply what hurts, we need to be able to remain focused on those thoughts and emotions that are painful or uncomfortable to confront. The measure of someone's healing, is, in my opinion, how able one is to look straight into the pain without moving one's gaze away.
Wounds are the very reason why we become distracted. We turn our internal gaze away from that which is painful because we are scared of experiencing the negative spectrum of emotions that come with the wound, whether it is mainly physical or psychological. Emotions like fear and anxiety, anger or rage, sadness or despair, and shame and guilt are all likely to surface when we get hurt, whether it's because we fell down and got hurt, or because our partner left us.
I remember when I was 9, and I arrived in Verona, that I was playing as the goalkeeper of a team, and someone shot a ball and in protecting the goal I dislocated and slightly fractured my wrist. Being new in town I wanted to fit in, and to fit in I believed I needed to look strong and capable. I wanted to be THE goalkeeper, the saviour of our team, and be accepted and celebrated for it.
But here I was in hospital, crying my eyes out for the pain, and I remember feeling shameful and sad about it all as well. The physical injury simply hurt, but it also had its psychological facet. And later, when I got out of the hospital with my cast, and went back to school, I remember lying about the pain I had experienced. I was afraid of looking back at the sadness I had felt for letting my teammates down, and shameful for not having been strong enough to protect the goal, let alone not cry. I acted out a mask, and distracted my gaze away from these painful emotions, and acted playfully again.
Counterintuitively, this looking away amplified my sense of separation and insecurity about the group I wanted to belong to, and a year later I left. But as Jamie Marich puts it in her TEDx talk: "when wounds remain unaddressed we ...run the risk of pervasively harming other people by bleeding all over them".
As traumatised, or partly traumatised individuals, we have often not had the chance to process many of these uncomfortable emotions. My continuous movements, for instance, made it so difficult for me to find enough ground to process grief. Overtime, this grief became depression, and eventually suicidality.
But in this process of self-distancing, our bodies and minds become burdened by the energy it takes to repress these emotions, making it look like as if they were never there. Eventually, we cannot handle this suppression anymore, and we become very projective. Being projective means we begin to tell others they are this or that, as a way to externalise the way we feel about ourselves, without admitting it to ourselves. Is a self-deceptive trick we play so very frequently to distance ourselves from that which we find scary to re-experience.
As a child I was afraid of connecting with sadness and shame, and as an adult, none of this difficulty got any easier, so I began to think as weak those who showed any form of sadness. Many of my clients struggle with the consequences of this internal mechanism of avoidance, this turning away from. And much of my work is to make them feel safe to turn their gaze back towards the original wound.
A marriage about to break
Mr. D showed up for his session with the seemingly stereotypical nerdy look of an Indian software engineer, ready to tackle and solve his marital issues like a computing problem. There was an energy of urgency in the fast paced manner in which he spoke, and a desire to share with me the many many things he had tried to make things better. Then at some point during the session he told me: "After my wife told me, 6 years ago, that she had been repeatedly raped by her brother as a child, nothing was ever the same. She now hates anything and everything Indian, she cannot even stand the way I speak, my mother, and my friends".
Mr. D's wife was Indian herself, but as expats and immigrants to the United States, many of their habits, connections, and ways of communicating with one another had changed over the years. But while Mr. D. had kept in touch with his culture, family, and traditions to teach their two children the many ways in which Indian culture can contribute to their future wellbeing, Mr. D's wife had become obsessive about avoiding all of these. In Mr. D's words "everytime my children ask about India now, my wife tells them "ask your dad about it, I don't want to talk about it"". On top of this, she accused Mr. D of being too attached to his culture, of being too dependent on his family and traditions, and of being too emotional about his origins.
This is what projections are all about, and they are the most intimate form of distraction we can enact. For Mr. D's wife, denigrating her husband's connection to their culture of origin, allowed her to take distance from her wound. The shame, the guilt, the despair, hatred and rage that naturally come with such experiences of abuse, were now being kept at a distance by turning their marriage into a disgusting affair. By becoming emotionally divorced, and accusatory, with her husband, and by throwing herself into work and restricting their communication to English, Mr. D's wife fulfilled her desire to turn her gaze away from these traumatic memories.
"Look away! Move away!" is all that her internal soul could say and do.
A world of distractions
Modern forms of distraction are therefore not the primary form of distraction humans have used in evolution. Turning our gaze away from pain, and focusing on things we find pleasurable comes very natural to us. But as you can imagine, in today's hyper-connected society, distractions are more prevalent than ever, amplifying our natural tendencies to look away from discomfort. The ease of access to entertainment, news, and interaction creates an environment where escaping unpleasant emotions is as simple as a swipe or click on a device that is never out of reach.
Therapist Scott Kiloby argues that our Western cultures have developed and empowered each other with tools that create and reinforce distance from ourselves. Fear is not to be felt, anger is to be shut up, crying is to be stopped. Drinking caffeine or taking pain killers, on the other hand, are widely recomended and are tools of separation. Moreover, studies reveal that the average person checks their phone more than 90 times a day (Peng et al., 2015). Platforms like Facebook and Instagram are designed to keep users engaged for hours (Rozgonjuk et al., 2020), and this continuous engagement with external sources of stimulation creates a psychological feedback loop that encourages us to seek more immediate gratification and avoid discomfort (Montag et al., 2017).
Consider also the way in which modern work environments contribute to this cycle. With the rise of remote work and the blending of professional and personal life, many people are encouraged to "hustle" endlessly. The pressure to always be productive contributes in turn to avoid sitting with uncomfortable emotions, as this would be, literally, counter-productive. Advertisements, retail therapy, and the pursuit of material goods are all geared toward the same goal, to make us feel better, instantly. So it's not just about distractions being available — it's also the fact that they're crafted to hook us when we're most vulnerable, offering temporary relief at the expense of long-term healing.
In short, while distraction can serve a short-term benefit, it often becomes an obstacle to deeper emotional growth and recovery. Our modern ways of living have greatly amplified our ability to turn our gaze away from such painful experiences, to the detriment of our capacity to face life's difficulties, and as you have seen in the case of Mr. and Ms D, to stay connected. If these more powerful mechanisms of distraction seem a relief in the short term, in the long term, it always means a loss of connection with reality.
As Leonardo Capozzi, a mindfulness-based psychotherapist, emphasized in his All About Trauma LIVE session, healing from trauma or emotional wounds requires more than just avoiding pain. It requires being present with the discomfort in a mindful and compassionate way. The distractions of modern life, while providing temporary relief, often amplify the disconnection we have with ourselves. To truly heal, it is essential to turn our attention inward and be present with our pain, rather than seeking external distractions.
Leonardo shared that mindfulness allows us to confront our pain without being overwhelmed by it. This involves cultivating a sense of curiosity and openness toward our difficult emotions and sensations. Rather than tightening up or avoiding what hurts, we practice staying with it, bringing a kind and non-judgmental awareness to the experience. By doing this, we can gradually dismantle the emotional charge that pain holds over us, leading to deeper healing.
He also spoke about using small mindfulness practices, like focusing on sensations in the body or tuning in to your breath, as tools to build the strength to confront painful memories or emotions. These simple but powerful exercises help ground us in the present moment, reducing the need to distract ourselves with external stimuli.
The key takeaway from Leonardo’s session is that trauma and emotional wounds are stored in the body, and the path to healing lies in reconnecting with these experiences in a safe, mindful way. Instead of turning away from pain, we can learn to stay present with it and allow it to transform.
In practice, this might involve:
Through these mindfulness-based approaches, we can counter the distractions of modern life and reconnect with our inner selves, leading to a more profound and lasting healing process.
Check out this All About Trauma LIVE session with Mindfulness based Psychotherapist Leonardo Capozzi to understand better how to use your attention to heal.
Look after your heart,
Your Shrink In Bansko
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