The feeling that arrives after the scrollStep 1 of 8

Before you read on

Two things this course does not treat, and both of them go somewhere else. If food is being restricted or brought back up, if exercise has stopped being optional, or if you are weighing or checking yourself over and over, that is not a comparison habit and nothing in these lessons will reach it. It has its own treatment. Ask your doctor, and say it in plain words. And if you have been hurting yourself, or having thoughts of ending your life, that comes before anything on this page. Tell someone today and contact your doctor or an emergency service. Nothing here asks you to stand in front of a mirror, work through photographs of yourself, or post an unedited picture. Those are treatments and they belong with a clinician. Nothing here is scored and nothing here is a verdict on you.

Lesson 1 of 6 · The feeling that arrives after the scroll

The twenty minutes after you put it down

You did not feel bad while you were scrolling. That is the part most writing on this gets wrong.

While you were in it, it was fine. Mildly interesting, a bit numbing, forty minutes gone. The feeling arrives afterwards, in the minute you put the phone face down and look at the room you are actually sitting in.

It is not quite sadness and it is not quite envy. It is flatter than either of those. It is closer to the feeling of having been measured, and having come up short, without anybody saying a word to you.