You’re listening to the Transform Your Life From the Inside Out podcast. This episode is titled Why You’re Afraid of Silence and Don’t Even Know It. You know, this episode was inspired by looking at the amount of people. I was walking down the street here in Sedona a couple of weeks ago, and people come from all over the world here. I mean all over the world to visit Sedona. And there were these people that were literally in a busy part of town, and half of them—literally, I’m not kidding—instead of just soaking in the beauty, they were on their phones. Literally, just face glued to the phone. Most people don’t think they’re addicted to their phones. And a lot are. But really, what they’re addicted to is avoiding silence. They’re addicted to avoiding themselves. And the way that we avoid ourselves is through the distraction of social media and our devices. I dug into some research, and actually I’ll cover this in the main episode. But I want to dig deep in the main episode about how we’re using our phones to avoid going deeper into our own self, our own self-awareness, and our own self-discovery. Keep listening.

Okay, so in this episode we’re talking about why you’re afraid of silence and you don’t even know it. In the intro I got a little long-winded there and talked about some research that I had dug into. It’s really interesting. This was done a couple of years ago at the University of Virginia, I believe. In this particular study it was found that people touch their phones about 2,617 times per day. Now, it doesn’t mean that you pick up your phone 2,600 times a day. What they factored into the study is that when they say touches per day, they mean if you’re texting—that’s multiple touches for a single message. But what they found is that we touch our phones about 2,600 times per day. In this same study, 66% of people dramatically underestimated how much they touched their phone. And many would just shrug it off as, “Hey, it’s not a big deal that I’m pounding on my phone 2,600 times per day.”

Now in this episode, as I said earlier, what I want to talk about and explore is how social media steals your identity. And what I mean by that—because you’ve often heard me talk for many years about identity—is that it steals your quality of life, both in the physical world and spiritually. It’s so pervasive and so habitual to use social media and our devices that we identify with the device. We identify with having that device in our life. And as we’ll talk about in a moment, that device is a complete distraction from the higher essence of you.

Before we continue, I just want to apologize if necessary. I’m pretty stopped up today. The weather in Sedona has been literally cold one day and warm the next. I’m very congested, so it’s affecting my voice quality. I apologize if for any reason I’m not coming across clearly.

So why are devices so unhealthy? What I want to talk about—many of you already know—is dopamine in the brain. Many of us think dopamine is a reward. We’re all told it’s a reward chemical. But actually, research has demonstrated that we release more dopamine in anticipation of the reward. Think about that: anticipation of the reward. I’ll talk about what the reward is in just a moment. This is why it’s habitual—we reach for our phones and we’re not even aware that we’re doing it. What we’re really seeking, brain-based and chemically, is the dopamine. We’re seeking the reward prior to having the dopamine hit. Then we also seek the dopamine hit when we’re doing the activity.

The brain calls this variable rewards. And the variable reward reminds me of Howard Stern many years ago. I haven’t listened to Howard Stern in probably 15 years. When I lived in New York City back 25 years ago, I would listen to him a bit—not a lot. I wasn’t a devoted listener. But I often wondered why so many people, including myself, would listen to Howard Stern. In some research done, what researchers found is that people would listen to Howard Stern because they never knew what he was going to say next.

This is important because it will help you stop the doom scrolling—if you choose. Think about doom scrolling on Instagram. And by the way, it’s all marketing. About 15 years ago on Instagram, when you saw the individual tiles, you would literally have to touch each tile to open the post. A marketing person at Instagram said, “Why don’t we just make it scroll so people don’t have to touch everything?” And that was the foundation of doom scrolling. The reason we get a variable reward from doom scrolling—which is why many people scroll and scroll and scroll—is because the brain treats it like a slot machine. We scroll because we do not know what is next. We know we’re going to hit on something, which gives a dopamine release, and we have the anticipation of hitting on a post or a video—kittens, dogs, something we’re going to like. We have the variable reward of not knowing what we’re going to land on if we keep scrolling. That’s exactly what keeps us scrolling. Then we get the dopamine release when we find something we like—a great post, a funny video, a cute animal, whatever it might be. The whole system is designed for anticipation and dopamine release in the brain to keep you addicted to the scrolling.

Now let’s talk about silence. Silence triggers the default mode network in the brain. That network is associated with self-reflection, things like anxiety, and even unresolved emotions. When we’re busy and doom scrolling all day long with our faces buried in social media, we don’t have to self-reflect. We don’t have to explore what in us—or what circumstances—are causing the anxiety. We don’t have to look at the unresolved emotions inside us. This is why part of the brain interprets silence as danger. Because if you go into silence, now you have to look at yourself. Most of us don’t want to do that, so we keep ourselves distracted.

A more tangible example is when someone goes through a painful divorce. People might say, “You need to rest. You need to heal.” But that person might say, “No, I have to work. I need to stay busy.” That is literally a lack of intimacy. Because if you break down the word intimacy, it means into me I see.

I remember seeing an Oprah episode years ago where Marie Osmond spoke about her son committing suicide. She was performing just days later. Many people judged her for that. But when someone is in extraordinary emotional pain, staying busy can become a way to avoid silence—because silence would force them to sit with the pain and experience it. We do the same thing, just on a smaller level, with social media scrolling. It’s a distraction.

Here’s something mind-blowing. In a 2014 University of Virginia study, people preferred giving themselves a mild electric shock rather than sitting alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes. The brain will literally choose pain over stillness. Think about that.

In the Transformational Coaching Program (TCP), one assignment is four hours of silence. No TV, no computer, no phone, no books, no paper, no pencil—nothing. Just sit quietly for four hours. Many people told me they were afraid to do that exercise. They said they were afraid to sit alone with themselves for that long.

So we distract ourselves all day long so we don’t have to sit with ourselves. When you’re in the noise—doom scrolling, social media, TikTok—you are not discovering your true identity. You’re living from the external world and the identity supported by the external world.

Every major spiritual tradition—Buddhism, Christianity, shamanism, Sufism—points to silence, not as a practice but as a natural state of being. Meditation is not just an action. It’s a state of awareness. When you’re constantly scrolling, you’re not in silence. Your mind is engaged the whole time.

Research from the Harvard Business Review found that the average person spends less than three minutes per day in genuine self-reflection, but 2.5 hours per day on social media. Let that sink in.

I’m not saying throw your phone away. Phones can be useful tools. I’m talking about recognizing your pattern: reach, scroll, repeat. Your pause becomes the practice. The next time you reach for your phone, stop for one minute before you scroll. Sit quietly for 60 seconds and notice what comes up. What you’re feeling in that minute is likely what you’ve been avoiding. And that is where transformation begins.

There’s a phrase I love: “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” When I stop digging and get quiet, solutions often appear.

So here’s the takeaway: you’re afraid of silence, which is why you doom scroll. You’re afraid of silence because you’re afraid of the power within you. The real power isn’t external. The real power is internal—connected to universal and divine mind.

The question becomes: do you want to be connected to universal divine mind, or artificially connected to X, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok? As with everything in life, the choice is yours.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll catch you in another episode. Bye-bye.