Nir Eyal’s pg. 24 of Indistractable:
“Distraction is an unhealthy escape from reality, a coping device that most people don’t want to admit. How we deal with uncomfortable internal triggers determines if we pursue healthy acts of traction or self defeating distraction.”
He defines it as this:
Traction – To draw or pull towards what you really want.
Distraction – Drawing away of the mind.
Distraction is the poor way out of managing our feelings.
Here’s a different topic covered by Author Becky Kennedy’s “Good Inside,” a book for parents raising children. It’s along the same vein and speaks on the core differences of ‘feelings’ vs ‘behavior.’
“Kids can’t learn to manage feelings that they aren’t allowed to have.
Think about what it means to manage a feeling. It means I’m allowed to have this feeling in my body. It’s a lot to live in my body.
If you don’t feel like a feeling is allowed to live inside your body, there’s 2 options:
You try to suppress it, or it comes out as behavior.”