Therapist: Don't let the social media feed of others' perfect holidays get you down - it's all an illusion
IT IS A well-debated subject… the impact of social media on our mental health. Most would agree there are pros and cons. One con is the impact on our self-worth.
Who are you listening to? Social media influencers definitely step up the ante this time of year and even if you only follow a couple of them, you may already have had your feed taken up with pictures of beautiful people posing on beautiful beaches or posing with cocktails in exotic beach clubs. What we see on social media whether it’s Aunty Mary’s Facebook feed or an influencer with millions of followers is NEVER real. It is a snapshot, most of the time it’s a filtered and staged to the hilt snapshot. It’s important to start with that fact.
Comparison tends to feed our inner critic. That is when it really starts to get its claws into our mental health. We scroll through social media and subconsciously compare, when we come up short the thought patterns that follow tend to be self-critical and scathing, the emotions that follow are usually negative and uncomfortable.
A recent study from 2020 by a team of Dutch researchers who studied more than 200 subjects who reported low to moderate well-being before beginning a six-week program of daily 15-minute gratitude exercises showed that gratitude exercises significantly improved their sense of well-being and contentment and that these levels were maintained to a satisfactory degree upon a six month follow up.
A 2018 study of 50 Chinese college students is one of many studies which concluded that daily affirmations such as taking inventory of your strengths, qualities or areas of personal growth can significantly increase your sense of self-worth.
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