Stress & The Dark Side of Social Media - A Warning You Don't Want to Ignore

Social media is totally amazing, but it may also be the thing that's keeping you stuck in life. Join me as we explore stress and the dark side of social media. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Want to learn a crazy thing about stress it can actually be a good thing. My name is Crystal McLean. This is Creative Self-Care and together we're exploring new ways towards wellness so we can effectively care for the mind, body and mother-loving soul and live healthy, empowered lives, individually and collectively. If you appreciate what I'm doing here at CMC, want to support my work and gain a more personal experience, consider joining my friends at Patreon for the same price as a fancy cup of coffee. To learn more about our community and how we're making a positive impact, you can visit crystalmcleancreativecom. All right, let's get to it. Okay, so hear me out.

Speaker 1: 0:42

Stress is a signal which is to be used as a motivator. We've all heard the tired played out analogy of the tiger that walks into the room and triggers the stressful fight, flight or freeze response, right? Well, let's talk about what's happening here. Your brain is wired up to a bunch of sensory organs that are designed to detect changes in your environment, and if those changes are alarming, then your body goes through a sequence of chemical and electrical reactions that motivate you to take action. So if you smell smoke, you're going to look for fire. If you hear a crash, you're going to investigate the cause, and this information, or the smoke or the crash or the sight of the very unlikely tiger is preparing your body to either fight off or manage the threat, or to flee or run away from the perceived danger, or to play possum and freeze in the face of adversity, or to play possum and freeze in the face of adversity. And this freeze response is where most of us live, because the shit our brains perceive as danger isn't actually dangerous, at least not in a very obvious way like a fire, a burglar or the unlikely tiger.

Speaker 1: 1:59

A lot of the things that cause us stress in this modern world are a lot more subtle and complicated, like information overload. We live in a time of constant stimulation, connectivity and the pressure to keep up with unrealistic expectations, and it's coming from a cute shiny box in the palm of your hand. Now, I love social media as much as the next person, but can we get real here? We're on it way too much. I don't want to be the buzzkill bad news fairy, so let's just take a moment to acknowledge why social media is great. It's great because we can stay connected with our friends and our loved ones and even meet new people that make us feel seen, heard and validated, which is really important. It's also a great way to stay on top of current events and it's a fun and easy way to find recipes, cheap DIY hacks, makeup and hair tutorials and gardening inspiration.

Speaker 1: 2:59

But the average post is only between three and 60 seconds long and we are scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and bombarding our brains with information that is designed to grab your attention and make you feel things. We're going from cat memes to genocide, to recipes and politics, and we're checking and rechecking to see if we get any likes or comments on our own posts. We're getting high on dopamine when somebody interacts with us in a positive way, but then we're feeling threatened when a troll or a bot challenges us and meanwhile, thrown into this mix are advertisements based on personal algorithms targeting us while we're at our most vulnerable. This is exhausting for your brain. It simply isn't designed to process this much information and your emotions are being pulled in too many directions, overwhelming the brain's processing center, potentially causing you to fall into that freeze response and to operate from a very reactionary place. And here's the real kicker Just because you put your phone down doesn't mean your stress magically goes away. It can take between 20 and 60 minutes for a non-life-threatening stress response to subside, but the average person is checking their phone every 12 minutes or 80 times a day, which means we're reinforcing the stress response and keeping the brain hooked on empty dopamine. But, believe it or not, this isn't bad news. It's just information.

Speaker 1: 4:33

If you've been here before, you've probably heard me say the more you understand something, the better able you are at taking care of it and the more creative you can be with your self-care. That's why it's important to understand things like stress, where it's coming from and how it's affecting you. And that's what we're doing here at CMC. We're deepening our self-awareness so we can embrace and understand who we are, while improving our body literacy so we can make sense of how we function. Stress is just a signal that something needs your attention, and the more aware you become of all the sneaky ways that stress can creep into your life, the more prepared you are to manage it.

Speaker 1: 5:17

You're living in an ever-changing body in a very demanding, ever-evolving world that's always going to present you with new challenges. That means stress is a fact of life, but it doesn't mean you're doomed to be broken by it. You have the power to manage it in your favor and I want to teach you how. If you're a Patreon member, today's bonus content is a mood tracker and a social media detox guide. If you're not a Patreon member, but you'd like to support my work and score these bonus bits, joining Patreon is cheap and easy and there's never a commitment. You can always leave at any time. All right, my friend, I love you, I appreciate you and I'm so proud of you for showing up today. I'll see you soon.