Joan Soler Sucarrats: "My mother has the password to access YouTube, I can't have it."

BarcelonaDraw a grid of boxes that represent all the weeks of your life. Paint the ones you've already lived sleeping. Joan Soler Sucarrats (Olot, 1998), a psychologist and mental health educator who offers workshops and talks and has 55,000 followers on Instagram. His goal is to develop an app with emotional well-being tools to help us navigate the stressful life of the 21st century.

Why are we feeling unwell?

— Our biology hasn't changed much in the last 120,000 years, but society couldn't change more. You still have the same brain and the same body, but in a hyperstimulated environment. It makes perfect sense that we're addicted and hooked on all kinds of things—networks, sugars—because the brain is used to scarcity and has no way to put up barriers to that hyperstimulation. It's very easy to fall into these traps.

With what results?

— Stress and anxiety. Is there a book by Robert Sapolsky calledWhy don't zebras get ulcers? where he compares the stress a zebra can experience with what a human can experience. When a zebra is chased, it activates all of its stress systems. This causes its heart to beat faster, vasoconstriction, it begins to breathe heavily, hormones are released within the body that make it more perceptive, and all of this will allow it to escape. But this stress won't last more than thirty minutes. Compare it to a human: how many hits How stressed are you throughout the day? If you're always on the max glucocorticoids, this is worrisome.

What should I do?

— Think about how you build your life to make it more zebra-like. You shouldn't try to eliminate stress from your life, because it's a must-have and it's superb. In fact, illnesses that don't react to stress are horrible.

But the problem may not be mine, but rather the demands and expectations life imposes on me. To what extent can I change, and to what extent should I adapt?

— Here's my dilemma. Sometimes the problem is overmanaging things you shouldn't be managing. I don't have to turn you into a superwoman who can handle everything at work; maybe work is a daily sprint that doesn't make any sense. I'm a big fan of personal responsibility, but we have to be careful because if you want to change things, you may have to change jobs.

We are like a frog boiling in water, which adapts to the temperature until it is scalded to death.

— You have to constantly put up enough barriers to live this peaceful life and say: no this, no, no that. You have to shamelessly eliminate the sources of stress you can eliminate from your life.

But it's hard to discern what deserves effort and what deserves a...

— The black-and-white answer is very appealing because it gives you a really cool sense of security. I know I'm on the right side, I know they're the bad guys: this gives me peace of mind. On a physiological level, it's super cool. On the other hand, living in complexity, in uncertainty, constantly having to make decisions, is tiring and painful. Let's look for the answers instead of facing the suffering that comes from not having 100% answers.

And can this be trained? Because your project is to create an emotional well-being app.

— I base my approach on a principle: the more conscious people are, the less suffering we generate in ourselves and in our environment. Therefore, the premise is: How can I increase this level of consciousness? The goal is to make the best introspection tools available to as many people as possible.

Can there be general recipes?

— There are some basic principles. For example, how much time do you have in your day blocked off from doing absolutely nothing?

Me? I'm a working mother: none.

— Well, this is a basic principle. Don't we know that if we eat well, sleep well, and exercise, our lives will be better? It's the same. I can't tell you how much of each thing is good for me, but I know that if I have quiet time with myself, it's time I fill with my personal journal...

A personal diary?

— It's one of the most accessible and cheapest tools for introspection, because in the end, you're emptying yourself. And from time to time, I set aside certain times when I'll reread what I've written with the intention of looking for things in my life that I'm missing. Now imagine an app that helps you do this well. And when we find patterns, for example linked to overperfectionism, we'll have activities to help us address perfectionism, through reflections, games, and apps.

What does living consciously bring you?

— See things with less bias. That is, if you're angry now, your perception of me will surely be different. Or if you're hungry, or if you're cold, or if you have something wrong and aren't aware of it. Perhaps you'll be more tense and perhaps you'll judge me more. Just by being aware of this, many things will change, and you might even decide to leave it for another day. These small nuances of awareness are necessary to live a more peaceful life.

Our grandparents used to say, "We came here to suffer," and two generations later, we think, "We came here to enjoy."

— Buddha also said this: life is suffering. But he spoke about the nature of desire: every time you desire something, you make a contract with yourself to be unhappy until you achieve that thing. Therefore, I don't want to eliminate suffering. If I set myself the challenge of running a marathon, I'll have to pay a price to achieve it, but it will be a suffering I want. The problem is when you pay for suffering unconsciously. I mean, I don't like the job I do, and I go every day. This suffering is pointless.

The thing is, sometimes we don't believe we have a choice. If I can choose, I'll choose the things that require the least effort, right?

— Yes, we live in a society where enjoyment is within reach of any child at any time, on any corner, in any form: cell phones, pornography, addiction, you name it. It's very easy for me to find quick escape routes when I'm experiencing suffering and have a low tolerance for frustration. This is a vicious cycle in which it becomes increasingly difficult to accept any kind of suffering.

What can be done?

— Facing it with willpower is hopeless. You can't tell a child, "Go to the park and play with your friends; you'll have a better time than watching TikTok." It doesn't make sense. Because the stimuli they receive are very strong, very fast, and very instantaneous. My path is abstinence. I have a cell phone, but I don't have any social media, I don't have YouTube, because I know myself, I know I'm not special. I have the same addictions as everyone else, and I can't access these things because the nature and potency of this are very strong. It's like having an addict in front of them and saying, "Don't take cocaine." Willpower doesn't work. And we're fighting this ego of ours, of being guilty of not being able to control it.

But we can't avoid the mobile.

— Your phone is an essential tool, but it can get out of hand. I have a tracking app because I try not to let it get in the way of my daily life. I can log on to Instagram all day if I'm posting, but I can't log on to any social media until 5 p.m. if I'm consuming content.

You've put up a barrier. But you have the key to lift it.

— No, not me. My mother has the password to access YouTube, I can't have it. I know it sounds like a lot of junkie stuff, but it doesn't matter what the computer is, I can't. And I decided it. It's like deleting the number of the drug dealer who was supplying me with drugs and going to live in another city. You would do the same. Not because the drug dealer is bad, not because Instagram is bad, because I know that if I want to achieve certain things, I can't be distracted 24 hours a day. I can be there for three.

Are you telling me that I'll have to monitor my children's screens until I'm 30?

— It doesn't control me; it should never tell me the password. I know I don't have access. Because I've also been super disconnected for weeks, I'm getting incredibly frustrated and could kick myself for the instant pleasure I have at my fingertips, because I can go downstairs to get something to eat, because I can watch TV, because I'm not immune to these things. The more connected I am to my purpose, the more I can stretch my miles and not have that need.

This is a topic, the purpose of life.

— I made it up, the goal. I fully accept that perhaps there isn't one, that there isn't one answer, but I'm willing to play. And I think reducing suffering is a good goal, let's see what happens if we try. Not as something super ambitious, but in everyday life: being here, being present when you talk to someone...

I wanted to ask you how we can prevent our children from being kidnapped by cell phones, but...

— I'm very punk about this. If I'm suffering and I have a quick fix to stop it, I'll take it. Dig deeper into these things? Or solve them in a profound way?

Maybe it has to do with a lack of purpose, it's an age of doubt.

— But we think: in school, when do they talk about goals? I'm no longer talking about finding your passion, but about knowing yourself. When I give talks to young people, I ask them: tell me three things that you like, tell me three things that are your strength, and three things you think the world needs.

This is landing it, isn't it?

— It's practical. If you fill out a sheet of paper every day with three things that bother you and three things that motivate you, at the end of the week we'll see what frustrates you, and if it's someone at work, it'll be easier to think of specific communication tools. The best way to force yourself to become aware of this is to do exercises. For example, the list: make very long lists of things for which you only think you have four or five inputs. For example, tell me fifty of your life's goals. If you only spend 15 seconds thinking about it, it's super distressing; if you spend 15 days and calmly find nuances, it raises other questions.

The video about painting the boxes of time left in your life is also another exercise in awareness, isn't it?

— Yes. On the one hand, we all know that time is finite, but when do we remember and think about it? On the other hand, all the things you want to do in your life—goals, dreams, desires—it's an endless list. It's a math problem. How can you balance it all? If you try to do it all, you won't enjoy anything and you'll be stressed out. Solution: know what you want and prioritize the things on the list that will be important when you're 90. Make your time well spent.