The Hidden Cost of Always Being Online: Nervous System Fatigue and Grief
From screen addiction to spiritual disconnection, exploring the quiet trauma many of us are carrying and how to start healing.
Something shifted in me last week.
It wasn’t dramatic, there was no lightning bolt, no big breakthrough in therapy, no tearful conversation. Just… something inside my body dropped back into place. Like a gentle click in my chest, a quiet remembering.
It followed a Kundalini activation, but more than that, it followed an honest moment. One where I let the grief move through.
First, it was personal:
Grief over disconnection in my relationships with others
The ache of unmet needs.
The longing for ease and warmth and shared rhythms.
But then, something else rose up. A different kind of grief.
Wider. Older. Not just mine.
I felt the ache of the world.
The loneliness of people who scroll all day and still don’t feel seen.
The overwhelm of our nervous systems trying to keep up with pings, posts, breaking news, back-to-back tasks.
The way even our homes don’t feel tended to anymore, because we’re never really in them. We’re always somewhere else: online, reacting, consuming, checking, comparing.
I looked around my house and saw it with new eyes.
Messy. Untouched.
Not dirty, well, maybe - lots of cobwebs and dust….. the last 5 years of utter reactivity rather than presence. Experiencing a work based trauma and my ADHD diagnosis in 2020, doing my CBT training, my EMDR training, leaving the NHS, starting a business.
And I realised: this is the cost.
The screens.
The pace.
The need to “keep up.”
It’s costing us our connection to place, to each other, and most of all, to ourselves.
That day, I didn’t want to fix it all. I just wanted to stop.
To sit with the grief, the ache, the clarity.
To pick up my knitting.
To open the windows.
To cook something slowly.
To sweep the floor.
To feel my feet on the ground.
To not need to broadcast any of it.
For the first time in a long time, I felt stronger.
Clearer.
Not because I had a plan, but because I had a nervous system that wasn’t on fire.
Here’s what I think is happening on a collective level:
So many of us are living with chronic input, and our bodies weren’t designed for it.
We’ve trained ourselves to be available to the world 24/7, but unavailable to our own inner world. We’re hijacked by devices, by performance culture, by the pressure to keep up, and it’s severed our link to embodiment.
What we’re calling “burnout” is, so often, a miscalibrated nervous system in a culture that won’t slow down.
And what we’re calling “disconnection” is, underneath it all, a wound of loneliness, one that tech can’t actually soothe.
This isn’t a post with answers.
Just a truth I needed to say out loud:
I don’t want to live like this anymore.
And maybe you don’t either.
I want to build a life that’s deeply human.
One that honours grief and joy, stillness and movement, tending and resting.
Where I get to be in my body.
Where I notice the seasons change.
Where I feel part of something again, not just reacting to everything.
Maybe this resonates with you too.
Maybe you’ve been feeling the ache, the overwhelm, the low-grade panic of being always-on
Maybe your house also looks unloved.
Maybe you’ve been reaching for slowness without knowing how to name it.
If so, you’re not alone.
You're not broken.
You’re just remembering.
And that remembering? It’s sacred. It’s political. It’s healing.
I’ll be here, tending gently, slowing down, staying rooted.
Let’s keep going. Quietly. Together.
I’m not putting a call to action here, just the need to quietly sit and observe - however, if you feel called to reply to this, please do let me know. I can’t be the only one who is feeling this?
