Two weeks ago, I left my phone in an Uber in Lisbon. Today, I got it back.
Being without a phone for two weeks was deeply unsettling—practically, yes, but also existentially.
At first, it was just annoying. I couldn’t use Google Maps. I couldn’t message my Airbnb host. I couldn’t order a taxi. I couldn’t even log into Uber on my laptop to report the missing phone—because it needed me to scan a code with the phone I no longer had.
Lesson learned: install Uber on multiple devices. And maybe... just use taxis?
The last time I lost a phone while travelling was in 2014 in Cuba, but nobody’s phone worked there at the time, so it was oddly freeing.
This time, there were a few moments when it seemed like not having a phone would have an upside too. Like when I was on the train to Porto, and noticed everyone else was staring at their phone. I felt oddly excited in that moment, like I was doing something strange and transgressive. Like I wasn’t a slave to a device like everyone else.
But those moments were few and far between compared to all the times my inner critic's voice crept in. “You’re careless,” the voice said. “You don’t deserve help. Or love. Or friends.”
When I got to Porto, the wifi at my Airbnb didn’t work, so even with my laptop I couldn’t get on the internet. That’s when the spiral got serious.
That night, instead of fighting the shame, I surrendered. I let myself sink into it until I felt a hot flush in my lower belly, a kind of unbearable misery that went all the way down into my genitals.
I was trying to follow the lesson I’ve learned with Existential Kink – that if I just let myself go fully into the sensations that come when my inner critic goes on a rant, if I feel around for the pleasure in those sensations, and allow that taboo pleasure to flow, it changes the energy and magically improves my mood.
So I let the feeling grow. It built and built until I was sobbing. I tried to feel for the pleasure, the aliveness -- but in that moment, there was nothing that felt good about it. I just wanted to vomit.
There was something familiar about that gut-wrenching shame, like a deja-vu from childhood. I couldn’t pin the age—four? fourteen? Questions bubbled up with the sobs: "What’s so wrong with me? Why can’t you just love me?" But I wasn't sure who I was asking.
Carolyn Elliott (who wrote the book on Existential Kink) says the method doesn’t work when we're trying to process a loss we haven’t fully grieved. That makes sense to me now. I couldn’t feel the pleasure because I hadn’t grieved the loss of my phone—or the deeper loss of connection and convenience it represented.
The next morning, I went to a café with wifi—still no luck. It was like my laptop was allergic to Porto. I watched an American woman connect effortlessly and thought, “Maybe I could ask her…” But then my inner voice cut in, saying “No help for you!”
When I got up to pay, I finally confessed to the server that the wifi hadn't worked for me. “I am good with computers,” he said. Thirty seconds later, he fixed it. When I got back to my Airbnb, it worked there too. Miracle.
A few days later—just minutes before boarding my flight back to Toronto—I got an email from Uber saying they found my driver and he had my phone. I was elated for the duration of the flight.
But then getting it shipped took another week. For much of that time, I moped. The critical voice that said “no help for you!” was set on repeat inside my head. My instinct was to isolate, to hide away from the world. And then I felt even more ashamed, because I was letting my shame spiral control me, because I’m “supposed” to be better at this—I’m a therapist!
Eventually, knowing the real cure to shame is connection, I started to reach out. I booked a therapy session. I saw a lover. I went to my group. Slowly, things began to shift.
Still, it wasn’t until I held the phone in my hand today that I really felt better. It’s like my inner critic lives entirely in the present—now that the phone’s back, it’s dropped all its accusations. My guilty record is wiped clean.
Anyway. I’m back. I’m glad. And I’m very much looking forward to texting, mapping, and not spiraling for a while.
Big gratitude to my Uber driver in Lisboa, who kept the phone safe, to the hotel staff at Jardim da Lapa who packaged it up for UPS, and to the café server in Porto who helped me more than he knows.
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If you experience shame spirals too, and you'd like some help shifting that pattern, I'd love to chat! If there's one thing I know it's that you don't need to suffer alone. Feel free to book a Discovery Call through my Calendly: