Anxiety Around Social Media

Social media is a big part of all of our lives. For me personally, it’s a massive part of my job, of being an independent artist, of getting my music out into the world. It’s a big part of sharing these blog posts with people. And it’s a big part of keeping up with the lives of my family and friends. There’s some really good stuff there. But I also find it really hard; it causes me a lot of anxiety and when I’m in a fragile state of mind, it can contribute to my depression. And since this is the place where I talk about those things, I thought I’d write something about social media and some of the reasons I struggle with it. Maybe you guys will relate.

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• Seeing something upsetting – My anxiety, my depression, all of my emotions (which are powerful on a normal day)… they’re all very easily triggered and social media seems to be very good at that. One post, even if it’s not directed at me, can really upset me: scary political or society or world stuff that I can’t do anything about, harsh statements, unnecessary criticism of public figures I feel invested in (especially if it’s inaccurate, which it often is), and so on and so on. It’s so hard to climb out of the misery that one stupid post can cause that sometimes it feels safer just to avoid social media altogether.
• Seeing something good happen for someone who hurt you – Chances are that, even if you’re not connected with the person who hurt you, people you are connected with are and so you’ll probably still find out about what’s happening in their lives. And honestly, sometimes I’ve found it easier to remain following them on social media so at least these moments don’t come out of nowhere and pull the carpet out from under you. Even if you think you’re over it, even if you are over it, seeing something good happen to someone who treated you badly when you’re in a fragile place can be really hard to manage emotionally, turning a good day or week into a bad one.
• Seeing your ‘competition’ doing better than you – Even if you aren’t a competitive person, if you work in an industry that is, by it’s very nature, competitive, seeing someone do better than you (have success at something similar to a project of yours, get funding that you were hoping to get, etc) can trigger insecurity, even if you were in a really good, solid place before you saw it. Personally, I can only speak to the music industry. I want my friends and my peers to do well because I know how talented they are and how hard they work but, of course, I also want to do well. So while I’ll always feel pleased that they’re doing well, I can find it difficult as well, especially if I’m stuck in a rut, in a bad mental place, or having any other number of difficulties. It’s a complicated one. In fact, I think they all are.
• The posts of others making you feel limited – There are various ways you could interpret this point but for me, as a disabled person with mental health issues, it can be really, really hard to see other people out in the world, doing the things that you want to do but can’t because you’re limited by whatever symptoms you live with. I struggle with this a lot and I think part of it comes from being diagnosed so late: I spent twenty years believing that I should be reaching (and exceeding, if I’m honest, because I’ve always been a perfectionist) the same standards as everyone around me. It started to become apparent that I couldn’t and since then we’ve been assembling the puzzle as to why but that hasn’t completely changed things in my head. I know and I understand why I can’t necessarily do the same things as my peers but I’m still really hard on myself when I can’t. I know it’s a process but it’s one that seems to be taking an inordinate amount of time, regardless of how I try to realign everything.

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I’m pretty good at curating a mentally and emotionally safe social media bubble. It still allows healthy debate and differing views, of course, but I’m just really careful about where those views are coming from, i.e. not people who continuously rant and rage but people who share carefully considered thoughts and discuss them with equally considerate people. It’s obviously not that straightforward – it never is with social media – but it is possible to block out a lot of the negativity, the people who are being negative just to be negative. But even then, there are always posts that pop up out of nowhere and knock your feet out from under you.

It was a strange experience, researching for this blog post. While I’m usually writing about my own experiences on this blog (in this case with social media), I often read other blogs and articles to get a broader perspective, get more context, and making sure I’m not missing anything that would be important to include. During my reading for this post, something that came up a lot was the issue of presenting a persona online that isn’t quite the same as your own and to me, that was a surprise. I’ve honestly never felt the pressure to present as anything other than myself – although, I admit, snippets of myself rather than the whole experience (no one needs to know about this boring day or that book I never finished reading). I’ve always seen social media as a reflection of myself, the good and the bad. Maybe that’s an Autism thing – linked in with the commonly occurring need for and sense of honesty. So I can’t really speak to that; I’ll leave that to someone who has more experience with it (I wanted to add a link but I haven’t found one that I think is actually helpful beyond explaining the problem – I’ll add one as soon as I find one that offers something more helpful).

I don’t know what the answers are. But just because we don’t know what the solutions are, it doesn’t mean we stop talking about the problems. That is, afterall, how we eventually come up with the solutions. I need to use social media in order to work and I’m aware that I do get some real good out of it but the downsides can be really hard to handle. So, yeah, I don’t really know what to do. But writing out my thoughts has always helped me and maybe some of you out there will relate to this. Maybe you’ll have some thoughts about it; maybe you’ll just feel a little less alone. I hope so.