I hate to say it—but hardly anyone is immune to stimulation (dopamine) addiction.
Doomscrolling is another word for it.
And that behavior is currency—but for whom?
Engagement is valuable. We know the terminology. We’re taught: the higher the engagement, the better. It’s sold as a measurement for being more successful, more popular, more valuable—right?
Your attention is a commodity. And the more cortisol runs through your body, the higher the engagement, the greater the advertising potential.
Self-Worth Is the System’s Enemy
If you feel whole, there’s very little you need. You don’t need all that makeup, clothing, cars, jewellery, luxury travel, or other image-fortifying protocols.
For advertising institutions, that’s not good business. They sell the need for more; they sell “you’re not enough,” so you buy more. Then they can sell more ad space to the people reminding you—you need to be more than you already are.
The overwhelming message is: “You need [fill-in-the-blank] to be enough.”
How do you know you’re being drawn into this game of emotional manipulation?
Pay Attention to Changes in Your Energy
It’s in advertisers’ interest that we don’t notice how our emotions—our stress levels—are poked and triggered into reactions.
If we’re aware of what’s happening to us—if we pause in a mindful moment—we might catch them in the act of making us feel things that don’t support a healthy, balanced nervous system.
So they keep us moving (engaged) from one nervous response to another. From dopamine hit to dopamine hit, like an addict who’s come down from a synthetic high.
I know this might sound harsh—and a bit scary—but it’s the reason for so many illnesses and dysregulation in this modern world.
We Have Forgotten How to Reconnect with Our Inner Calm
If you’re feeling a bit poked right now, it’s because you’re on the verge of breaking out of the invisible cage you sit in every day.
Yes, it’s disturbing to realize this isn’t a conspiracy theory—it’s just business for folks earning their billions by keeping you off balance.
When you look at it that way, it’s not so personal. When you see this happening to you, all of a sudden you realize—you are now empowered to CHOOSE how much you expose your nervous system to.
When someone posts a nasty comment, it’s engineered that way. It’s also quite possibly a bot—not a real person—prodding you into a response. The more you engage, the more ad revenue.
Simple maths.
Reclaiming Ownership of Your Emotional State
The amazing thing about reaching this realization is that it puts you in a position to do your own hostile takeover.
You can reclaim your mental state, your thoughts, and your internal data.
By creating a pause long enough to see (remember) that this is the game, you can choose how you respond.
Cultivating pauses when you feel a reaction—or a slight shift in your energy—in response to stimuli allows you to process with clarity.
What am I feeling here—anger, outrage, insecurity, FOMO? Hmm. What is the purpose of this post? How is it presenting the usual “not enough” story?
When you look at your daily responses from the safe space you’ve created, you see opportunities to say, “Nope—not today. I’m owning my state today.”
Start by giving yourself permission to own your emotions and your space. Rather than thinking someone is doing it TO you, the machine is doing it FOR you. It’s giving you an opportunity to decide which mental monsters you want to feed or tame—or maybe let go of completely.
The machine is an opportunity to claim your state of peace—using tiny gaps. Tiny spaces you can cultivate that no one can take away from you. They might try to fill that space so you feel “less,” but you can reserve that space just for you—
—to remember who you are (even if you’ve forgotten your own essence, the one you were born with as an innocent child).
The Invitation
I invite you to cultivate the awareness that lets you see how you’re tricked into believing things are being DONE TO YOU.
That awareness contains all the answers and paths to your inner empowerment. It’s waiting in the quiet space between all the stimulation thrown at you every day.
If you want to explore more ways to find your inner voice and inner strength, feel free to subscribe to more posts like this as they’re published.
And for anyone curious about the tricks of the media trade, I wrote a short book on the subject. Warning: it will reveal truths that can’t help but raise the question, “Who do you want to own your emotional state?” If the answer is what I think it is, this book will help you see the game clearly and understand why it’s not personal. You can choose to see it—and enjoy the feeling of empowerment when you decide to choose something else for yourself.
