Originally Posted on All Parts Substack on June 2nd, 2024

I’ve just finished the novel Wellness by Nathan Hill. It’s a pretty scathing and heart-wrenching review of the way we live; the exploitative nature of the wellness industry and capitalism as a whole, our modern obsession with self-improvement without healing and integrating past traumas, and the insidious nature of prioritizing being perceived as having the perfect life over actually just having…a life. 

If you’ve been here a while you’ll know that this type of criticism is right up my alley. 

Reading the book has made me return back to an idea I’ve had to personally navigate through that I’m curious to hear other people’s thoughts on: 

Do the cons outweigh the pros when it comes to wearable fitness/health optimization technology? 

In the book, a main character named Jack begins to use a wearable device that tracks everything, including the quality of his sex life. In some ways it feels like a dystopic, exaggerated version of an Apple watch or the Oura ring; in other ways it feels all too realistic of how these wearables can negatively impact our behaviors, thoughts, relationships, and emotions in ways we’re not even aware of. 

I’ve had my own journey with wearables. In high school and college I wore a fitbit on and off. After college I had a couple-year stint with an apple watch. Like so many women, I’ve also had my struggles with body image throughout my post-pubescent life. Each time I began wearing a fitness tracker, there was excitement and hope. In a way, each wearable promised a deeper connection to my body; a way to know things about my body that weren’t accessible to me otherwise. A way to change the relationship to my body with cold hard data and metrics.

Yet in reality, these wearables always ended up being gateway drugs into more disconnection, the burnout cycle, a need for control, and self-hatred/judgment. 

When it comes to healing from trauma and rebuilding a relationship with our bodies, I’ve come to believe that wearables are more harmful than helpful.

Here’s 4 reasons why:
#1 Wearables take us out of our internal experience. 
We humans are already really good at disconnecting from our internal experience. Why do we need to have something on our person 24/7 that further supports this distancing? One of the most imperative parts of trauma healing and nervous system recovery is learning how to listen to our intuitive body signals. The process of noticing butterflies in the stomach, a tightening in the chest, pins and needles in the hands and feet: these are all signals from our bodies- from our internal experience- that it wants to be heard. By getting back into our felt sense and building our capacity to stay curious about what these signals are connected to is the way back into trust and connection. 

Tracking devices focus on the external metrics, which inherently takes our attention away from our internal sensations and emotions. 

#2 Research shows that wearables can increase stress and anxiety. 
I have a sleep number mattress that I love. It comes with an app that tracks my sleep, which I don’t love. When I first got it, I would check my sleep score because, well, I was curious. 

What I found was that sometimes I would feel like I got a good night’s sleep, but the sleep score would be below my expectations. I would feel disappointed and stressed that I needed to ensure a better rest the next night. Me being me I quickly realized that this tracking technology was, yet again, taking me out of the felt sense of my experience. 

What’s worse, though, is that it was also actually causing me more stress because it was making me question my internal experience. Research has shown that health tracking wearables can increase one’s stress and anxiety. It can increase performance pressure, health anxiety, and ultimately lead to a loss of enjoyment in activities that should bring you joy and ease. 

What most people need when healing their relationship with their bodies is not more stress and anxiety. What most people need are tools to reduce cortisol levels in the body, connect back into joy, and not feel like self-care is another thing to add to their to-do list. 

#3 Wearables could lead us to further disconnection and dissociation, ultimately making it hard to unlearn these nervous system patterns
The hardest thing I’ve had to unlearn from my experience growing up as a national-level and collegiate hockey player was the whole “mind over matter” mentality. Although I understand that high-level athletes need mental fortitude and a capacity to push through physical pain, this way of being in relationship to my body transcended sport and led me to burnout at age 20; an age when most people are at their most energetic and resilient. 

Thinking about our physical bodies as merely a mechanical vessel that’s purpose is to lead us to any arbitrary end result is just…silly. This includes closing all three rings on an apple watch. This includes needing to complete 10,000 steps a day. 

When we are so hyper-focused on the end result we lose touch with our bodies in the here and now. We learn that how we feel now is unimportant. We learn to deny our Selves the love and attention and compassion we deserve for simply just being human and alive and getting through the day. 

#4 Wearables can trigger old stories of perfectionism and not enoughness
Often these lessons of denying our Selves present moment love and emotional validation are lessons we learned growing up, so these wearables run the risk of further solidifying our need to prove our worthiness, again and again and again. The problem, of course, is that the goal post is either forever moving farther and farther away the more we reach for it, or it is simply unattainable in the way we’ve unconsciously set up our lives.  

In Wellness, the author Nathan Hill spends much of the book exploring the childhoods of both Elizabeth and Jack, the two main characters of the book. It becomes evident that Jack’s use of the wearable technology is a part of his unconscious ploy to receive love and affection from his emotionally distant wife, Elizabeth; an unobtainable dance he learned early in life from his emotionally abusive and narcissistic mother. He’s desperate for a sense of security and love, and instead of seeking it in emotionally available women (i.e. not Elizabeth), which feels too unfamiliar and scary for him and his nervous system, he takes the responsibility on himself- through the use of wearable technology intended to optimize his health - to prove himself worthy of the love he seeks. 

The dance of trying to prove our worth to people who are not available to fully see it is so familiar for so many. I fear that our unhealthy use of wearable technology further exacerbates unhealthy and unhelpful ways of being in relationship with not only ourselves, but with other people. 

Wearables have been proven to enhance awareness around unhealthy behaviors for certain demographics. For sedentary middle-aged and older folks, wearing a tracker has shown to increase awareness around just how little they are moving and help motivate them to start taking more steps in a day. Similarly, my good friend Becca Crochiere, a health psychologist and professor at Williams College, told me that her WHOOP-wearing college students were surprised at how much drinking alcohol affected their sleep scores, causing them to think more critically about how much they are drinking. 

In these ways, wearables can be incredible tools to help support initial awareness into the effect certain behaviors have on our health and the motivation to start building new habits, but they do not address the root of what is causing these negative behaviors in the first place. 

These wearables don’t account for the impact traumatic memories have on our nervous systems, brains, and subsequent behaviors. They don’t consider the love and compassion needed for sustainable healing and growth from chronic dysregulation. They don’t invite a more intuitive way of being with our Selves, which is often the way back to our birthright as human beings: creativity, joy, connection, and flow. 

No piece of technology can help with any of that. Only we can do that. Only we can give that sort of love and intuitive connection to our Selves. Only we can ever really know of what it feels like to be in our own bodies, fully and wholly. 

The moment I switched from seeking outer knowing to more inner knowing was the moment my whole world shifted. I seek to not only listen to my body but to actually be led by my body. I no longer strive for certain steps and miles, but rather certain felt experiences and embodied connections that feel too sacred and expansive to put into words. 

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

What is your relationship to wearables? Have you found them helpful or harmful to your connection to your body? Would love to hear from you in the comments.

I’ll meet you there,

The ever so connected part