Hi there, you're listening to Take Out Therapy, short lessons in popular topics about emotional health. This is your host, Rebecca Hunter. I'm a therapist by day, and we don't really tell people what to do.
We listen, we validate, and we focus on helping people reach their goals. But in the next few minutes, I'm just going to be straight up with you about what to do in certain situations, because sometimes we need some damn instructions. Clearly, this is not a substitute for therapy, but I guarantee you it might help.
Listen up. And if you have little people in the room, throw on some headphones, because I swear. Okay? I'm grateful you're here.
Thanks. Hi there. Welcome to today's episode.
Social effing media. That's what I'm going to talk about today. Social media.
What should we do about social media? Social media. Everybody. Right? Why do I want to talk about this? Because it's kind of important.
Right? Because we should really be thinking about our use of social media, just like thinking about any other behavior that we do in our lives. Right? We should be intentional. I'm saying should a lot.
Don't should all over yourself. Just understand that what I mean is it's a good idea, and good for personal growth reasons, to take a look at your use of social media. Okay? So I'll talk a little bit about what I mean.
I use, so for my life, I like Facebook. I have these sweet friends that are all the way across the country. John's family is across the country.
I have people that I know from high school that, like, I don't know if we're friends per se, but I care about these people. And so I guess the label isn't really important, but I like to keep up with what they're doing. I've really enjoyed seeing my classmates, like, have kids and go to beautiful places.
So I use Facebook. Recently, within the last, like, I don't know, two or three years, I started using Instagram because I love the pictures. Right? I love the pictures.
I started out, like, looking at a lot of dog pictures. And then I realized, look, there's people of my, pictures of my friends, too. So that's fun.
And so that's kind of what I'm talking about. I don't use any other social media, but I just want to tell you that this episode will help you just wrap your brain around social media. Social effing media.
I don't really want to say the F word. I'm going to try not to. Wish me luck.
Why is it important for us to look at our use of social media? Because research is staggering, you guys, about the effects of social media in our culture in this time. And also, can we just acknowledge that people are suffering in the world because of social media use? That's what the research is showing. Right? We have to stop pretending that certain things that we do are not harmful just because we want to do them.
Right? We just need to stop pretending, you guys, because it's not good for us. It's not good for the people in our lives. We have to just think through.
Right? We have to put ourselves first in our life. And that means that if something seems like it's a problem, then maybe there's work to do there. Right? That's just kind of being open to life's work.
Right? I'm so excited of this work of life of growing and learning and having good insight and feeling good, being healthy, having good relationships. So, I think it's really important when it comes to social media to create some intention. Meaning, like, why am I using social media? Like, why do I use social media? Right? So, I'll just talk about kind of this in my own life.
Like, I actually kind of just did. Right? I said, like, there's people that I really care about and want to keep up with. Connection is a big deal for me in terms of social media.
Right? I want to connect. I want to, like, generate feelings of friendship. Okay? Also, for me, because I have a business, I want to, I think one of my major intentions about social media is, like, I really like to be inspired on a regular basis.
If you guys know me, you know I have read a lot of self-help books. I love to think about things in different ways and to, like, have new ways of, like, my perception to be able to change my perception about things or to word things differently or to have different frameworks for growth. So, for me, like, social media, one of the intentions that I have around it is just, like, personal growth.
Okay? And so, and also, like, my business. So, obviously, my business is a place where people can find out more or, like, my presence on social media is a place where people can find out more about what I do and why I do it and who I am so that they can decide whether to work with me or not. Okay? So, yeah.
So, it's not really important, like, for me to be on social media except for all the things that it does for my life that I'm really intentional about. Okay? And so, being, having, and creating intention around our use of social media is, like, it gives us some more, it'll, like, free up some time for us because, basically, what tends to happen is, like, when we create intention and we live to our intention, we stop using social media in ways that don't feel good to us, meaning we don't use it as much or we mind our feed. And by mind our feed, I mean, like, when you start to think about your intention about social media, take a look at your feeds.
Are the people that you follow or the people that you're friends with generating the kind of feelings and thoughts and behaviors that you would like to generate, right? Or, like, if my intention is that connection piece, then do I feel connected? Or is there something else going on, right? So, make sure that your feed makes you feel good, right? And so, maybe your intention is to put positive stuff out there in the world, right? Obviously, that's one of my intentions is, like, hello, we are in trouble, people, right? There's a lot of negative shit out there. So, one of my intentions on social media is to just put goodness out, put information out, put some love out there, put some, like, positive vibes out into the world, right? Vibes, I don't know, whatever that means, right? Whether it's a cute picture of Lily, because hello, have you ever seen this dog, right? Or maybe it's saying something nice or helping somebody feel validated or connected, right? That's one of my intentions. And so, doing that, I can mind my feed, right? Meaning, like, I get rid of people that piss me off.
And that's not because there's something wrong with them, but they piss me off and I don't want to feel that way when I'm on social media. So, I'm like, okay, well, I'm going to take a little break, right? For whatever my own reason is. That's my business and my right, right? So, like, mind your feed.
Create an intention about why you're on social media and then clean up your shit, right? If social media makes you feel like everybody has it better than you do, mind your feed, right? Put on, like, follow some people that make you feel good, right? I love following people that put out really high, high inspiration content. You know, if you ever look at my stories, I just regurgitate from my own feed in my story because I'm like, oh, yes. Thank you for saying that.
I'm like, add it to my story, right? I just put that out there even more. And my stuff's not, like, you know, negative. I always spread positive stuff.
That's my intention. So, I mind my feed. I don't, like, follow anything that doesn't feel good to me and then I put it back out, right? And then also, when we start to take a look at our social media and we create some intention there, we need to think about how much time we want to spend there.
And so, yeah, like, hello, I'm sorry. I know I sound like your mother. But, like, mind your time.
Make sure that the time that you're spending on social media is how much time you want to spend. And I'll tell you, you're a grownup, so you get to decide. And even if you're a teenager, you get to decide.
But what's your intention, right? Is that a primary source of connection? Because if so, that's fine if that's what you want, right? But if not, if you're like, you know, I think I'd rather connect with people in person, like, mind your time. Spend less time on social media so that you can go and do other things that you want to do, like spend time with your friends. Does that make sense? And so, like, most people aren't kind of being really intentional about social media.
And may I just tell you why? Because they're stuck in it. It's kind of addictive, right? It's like push the button and, you know, it's almost like it feels like those gambling machines, you know, just like pull that lever and see what comes up. Like, it's so interesting sometimes, right? But if we're not paying attention, we just get totally sucked in, right? And we allow this to happen because when we don't use intention about social media, then we find that we're spending more time there and less time in our lives, right? And sometimes that's for good purpose because maybe, like, when you look around you, you're like, oh, my God, there's so much to do.
Like the laundry room in our house looks like it blew up right now. And so I'm like, well, I think I'll just like pause here and look at Facebook, right? So, like, I'm when I start to use intention around social media, I'm like, no, no, no, friend. Like, you don't have to do a laundry room, but don't do that.
That's not in line with your intention. Right. So it's good to think about, like, in terms of an intention, how much time do you want to be spending on social media? Right.
And it and coming out of social media gives you more time to spend in your life. Right. And if you're playing the comparison game on social media, be really intentional about that in your life.
Right. And whether that works for you or maybe it's like not working for you. Be honest about that.
Right. Being intentional about social media generally pulls us back from it a little bit and allows us to do some different role modeling for our kids. Right.
Even if the role modeling is like, oh, my gosh, look at this thing that came up on my feed. That doesn't feel kind to me. I think I'm going to unfollow this.
Right. Or like, you know, giving our kids a resource like there's people that do amazing work out there, you guys. There's a lot of therapists.
There's a lot of coaches. There's a lot of inspirational speakers that are putting stuff out there that if our kids can have access to, it might help them. Right.
Rather than this bullshit stuff that's out there that they have on their feed that is just like churning away at their ideas about who they are in the world and our own. Right. Because sometimes our lives suck.
I know this is so uplifting, but sometimes like when we don't feel good and we look at social media, we're like, oh, poor me. This sucks. Right.
Because social media convinces us that everybody has it good. And I promise you, not everybody does. Not even the most beautiful people.
And so that's another idea in minding your feed. Like if part of your intention is to become more aware of different kinds of people than you and be open to that idea, then follow some different kinds of people than you. Right.
And see if you can be open to allowing for other people's experience rather than comparing. Right. Or judging.
There's an idea. Right. So create some intention around social media.
Like, what are you doing there? Do you need to be there? Right. And what are some ideas about what you could be doing there? How much time are you spending? Right. Mind your time.
And then you guys like mind your feed. You know, so mind your own feed and mind who who's in your feed. OK.
And put your intention out into the world in a way that feels good and makes sense to you. And you will be role modeling that for other people. Right.
Because it doesn't have to be like this. I'm just telling you, it doesn't have to be like this. So there's little things that we can do along the way to just do our part.
And I think like social media, it's just a tiny little place where we can interact in a different kind of way. So that's my goal. Because, you know, we have a part in this.
Even you, my friend. OK. See you soon.
Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening. This podcast is meant to be helpful to help you learn some stuff and grow as a person.
And to help me fulfill my mission of opening the doors to the therapy office a bit wider so we can get rid of some of this stigma. Life is challenging and we need all the help we can get. This podcast is not meant to be a substitute for therapy, but I do recommend getting some professional guidance, whether you're struggling or not.
It can be a great way to learn about yourself so you can navigate life a bit easier. I'm really excited to be a part of some change. If you like what you heard today, head on over to my website at RebeccaHunterMSW.com or go ahead and follow me on social media.
I'm Rebecca Hunter and this is Take Out Therapy.
