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Using Social Media to Mimic Face-To-Face Communication

March 26, 2020 in Social Media Guide

Everyone’s self-isolation and social distancing situations are different right now. You may be trying to navigate being around your roommates all the time, no matter how big or small your rented space is. You might be living at home with your family, possibly for the first time in months, even years. Your roommate might be a romantic partner, or you may be living completely by yourself.

Regardless of your living situations, you might be missing people in your life that you’re used to seeing frequently, but have abruptly stopped. They can be coworkers or classmates, but they might be people you use as a support system, whose presence can calm you and who are people you rely on and seek advice from. 

Social media, of course, makes communicating with people significantly easier, which is especially helpful for those who have support systems who are already distant. However, for those who have support systems or people close to them who they see frequently in-person, the change to only communicating with them virtually can be stressful, even if they were talking to them both in-person and virtually before.

The need for face-to-face communication is more important now than ever, particularly for those who are away from their support system, living alone, or living with others who can heighten anxiety and depressive symptoms. Texting can help, but having that visual reassurance can be even more powerful.

There has been a lot of research and discourse surrounding the effects of texting versus face-to-face communication, with evidence showing that despite the normalcy of texting and online communication, face-to-face interactions are more beneficial for your mental health.

With all this being said, face-to-face communication doesn’t have to be done physically. If you work or are in college, you may have already experienced Zoom meetings, and if you have a Mac product, you have more than likely used FaceTime before. There’s Skype, video messaging on Facebook, and Google Hangouts. Whatever it may be, video chatting can help recreate that face-to-face communicate many, if not all of us, are missing in some way, and may even need. Being able to see people that mean a lot to us and hearing their voice still gives us their presence in some way that texting can miss. 

While it may not have the same effect of physically having people around you (for example, you may be an affectionate person or may thrive off of tons of people surrounding you), physically seeing or hearing loved ones can have significant effects on you mentally. You can also try to recreate activities that you do with loved ones or your support system: you can all order delivery from a similar restaurant (support local places too!) and eat together, watch the same TV show at the same time, or even just sit in silence on video together as you work on homework or scroll on your phones. 

Whatever it is, hopefully you can find a way to keep your close ones around if they’re not there physically. Support and unity through all of this can have a major effect on how we feel, especially as we try to find normalcy and try to maintain as much of our old routines as possible.

Have you been able to maintain contact with loved ones who you aren’t quarantined with? Have you tried video chatting? If so, do you think it makes a difference?

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Finding an Escape

March 20, 2020 in LINKS

When things in real life feel overwhelming, one of the first things that we likely want to do is find an escape. It could be as idealistic as taking a vacation or as simple as going for a walk. However, activities to help us get out of our heads can be easier said than done, especially if depressive episodes or anxiety attacks make even the seemingly easiest of tasks feel impossible.

When it feels like all you can do is go on your phone and mindlessly scroll as a coping mechanism, you can still get an escape so you don’t slip into going onto websites and social media platforms that can continue to overwhelm and stress you out. If you’ve ever played a game Animal Crossing or The Sims, you may already know how games where you build communities and improve an avatar’s life can help you get out of your own head for a little bit and focus on a virtual character’s.

Apps like Oasis and Adorable Home help provide a similar kind of escape and refuge. While Oasis is based in nature and Adorable Home is more domestic, they both share an idealistic, calming escape where you can spend a good amount of time growing a space and making it beautiful with little to no stress attached. 

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Oasis helps you build, unsurprisingly, an oasis where you can collect animals (and accessories for the animals!) and complete small, stress-free activities to help your oasis thrive. These activities are as easy as repeating three-note songs and continuously tapping the screen to gain hearts. It’s purposefully designed as an anxiety relief activity; for example, there’s constant light, soft music playing in the background. Adorable Home, on the other hand, helps you build a home with your partner, and in order to do so, has you collecting cats and completing quick activities with them to gain points. 

Both are free and are Android and Apple friendly, though both come with ads that may briefly take you out of that relaxing state.

Do you play any similar games? What other kinds of games do you play to help you cope with stress or take you out of real life for a little bit? How do they make you feel?

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Monitoring Your Mental Health when Consuming Negative News

March 19, 2020 in Social Media Guide

Because of constant news coverage and social media, it’s hard to miss pretty much anything that’s happening in the world. This is accessible the second you turn on the TV and go to a news station or when you log on and see a retweet with an article link. Some of these can be silly and fun, while some can be more serious. And lately, it feels like the news has veered to more serious, more negative territory.

Focusing on and putting more weight on negative events and situations is a very human thing to do, known as a negativity bias. So it’s no surprise that every type of media – traditional, news, and social – is more likely to cover these type of events. Sometimes, it’s needed, but other times, negative events can be exaggerated or highlighted because news outlets and social media accounts know that people are more likely to pay attention to negativity, so focusing on them attracts more viewers and reactions.

All this negativity has its side effects too. Studies have found that overconsumption of the news has had effects on mental health, including fatigue, loss of sleep, and anxiety. It can intensify worries in everyday life, and can increase feelings of hopelessness, no matter if the news directly affects us or not.

And lately, between all the ways that we can access news and what’s happening in the news, it feels like negativity is around us more than ever, which in turn, can intensify symptoms of depression and anxiety. While we won’t get into too much detail about it, the coronavirus pandemic is the biggest example of something negative, and terrifying, and everywhere. Although it’s a physical illness, there’s growing concern over the mental effects simply reading about the illness can cause. Encountering retweets, push notifications, and even memes about the situation feel almost inevitable, overwhelming, and terrifying. Those who already exhibit anxious symptoms may feel triggered to even higher levels too.

So is there a balance between staying informed and managing your mental health? Fortunately, official organizations like The Center for Disease Control and The World Health Organization are also keeping mental health in consideration along with monitoring symptoms of the actual virus and have offered tips on how to check in with yourself. These include taking breaks from media coverage, finding and talking to a support system, and doing body checks to see how you’re feeling. NAMI also has some suggestions regarding access to mental health services when self-isolation is recommended during this time, such as therapy and getting medication.

Things can feel scary right now, and the amount of news we are exposed to, whether we like it or not, most likely doesn’t help. Continue to check in with yourself and others, and remember that your mental health is just as important as your physical health.

How much do you see news information on your social media feeds? How does it make you feel? What steps do you do to avoid feeling overwhelmed or stressed about the news?

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Conducting a Body Scan

March 18, 2020 in Educate Yourself

If you attend therapy or have delved into any sort of mindfulness practice, you may have heard of something called a body scan. If not, it’s exactly what it sounds like (though probably a little less medically intensive).

Think of it like taking a mental x-ray of your body when you feel like something feels off and you want to find the source of something that may be affecting you mentally. While mental health, of course, is concentrated in the mind, it can physically affect other parts of your body as well. Body scans give you the opportunity to pinpoint and focus on the pains in your chest, your shaking hands, or the headaches that might result when facing depression and anxiety.

While the timing of it can vary and seem long and daunting (some guided body scans can last anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes), there are ways to complete a quick body scan for just a few minutes. These can be particularly useful when you’re experiencing more heightened symptoms and emotions and need to ground yourself.

So how is it done? First, find a place where you can focus on yourself for a brief period of time. It can be sitting on your couch, in a chair, lying on a yoga mat, or even standing up if you’re able. Focus on the parts of your body that are in contact with something (like your back to the mat, or your feet to the floor). Use this time to center yourself and put your attention on the body scan.

Most, if not all, body scans have you take a tour of the body. Going from top down, focus on as many individual parts of your body as possible – your forehead, neck, hands, stomach, and so on. How do they feel? Is there tension? Pay attention to how they feel; can you feel the air on the back of your hands? Or the way your shirt is resting on your arm? After you focus on one part of the body, let that fade as you move onto the next part.

Of course, this is just a brief primer into how body scans are done. The links above go into more detail if you want to learn more or want to try doing body scans. Overall, they’re a great way to check in on yourself, especially in times when you feel extra moments of stress, anxiety, and/or worry.

Have you ever conducted a body scan? Is there anything you do to ground yourself, or try to ground yourself, during moments of heightened emotion and/or stress? Share your experiences in the comments!

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Weekend Reads: What is Hysteria?

March 6, 2020 in LINKS

March is Women’s History Month, with Sunday specifically being International Women’s Day. This is to pay tribute to and learn more about women and the history of women’s rights, as well as honor the movements that women are participating in today to make the world a better place in the future. Regardless of race, sexuality, class, and socioeconomic status, women have made great strides and efforts to do more with the opportunities they’ve had available to them.

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Women’s history has been, and continues to be, faced with many obstacles and battles. This includes mental health and how women’s emotions were perceived and dismissed by others around them. The most common instance of this is through the “hysteria” diagnosis during the Victorian era (although it dates back to ancient Egyptian and Greek times too – the word comes from the Greek word hystera meaning womb). Those who were biologically female were almost always the ones being diagnosed with the disease. The medical field was dominated by men, and if they were unsure what was wrong with a female patient or found them to be “mysterious,” they were diagnosed with hysteria. If a woman seemed to experience symptoms of anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses today, science back then claimed that it was because of something wrong in their womb.

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Though the hysteria diagnosis was removed from the DSM in 1980, it’s still worth learning more about its history and the stigma against women’s mental health. Although mental illness is often more associated with women and they are more likely to develop depression and PTSD (especially in adolescents), there is still a long way to go in the discussion of women and how to approach and treat their mental health.

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The stories below approach women and hysteria in different ways. The first gives an overview about the direct effects of the hysteria diagnosis on women in the Victorian Era, especially once they were given treatment through psychiatry (which often included institutionalization). The second explains how hysteria was an upper class white woman’s disease, and while they received treatment, women of color who had similar “symptoms” were often used as tools of experimentation. The final article talks about women’s mental health today and the issues with them – while fewer people today call women hysterical when they show emotion – mental illness in women was, and still is romanticized, dating the reasons for this back to when “hysteria” was at its peak.

How Victorian Women Were Oppressed Through the Use of Psychiatry (The Atlantic)
The Racialized History of “Hysteria” (Jstor Daily)
What Our Obsession with Tragic, Beautiful, Mentally Ill Women Says About Us (Vice)

How do you think girls and their mental health is handled today? Why do you think people were so dismissive about their mental health in the past? How has your mental health been perceived based off of your gender?

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Getting Better Sleep without FOMO

March 5, 2020 in Social Media Guide

Quite often, the first piece of advice we receive when trying to change our sleeping habits and to get a better night’s sleep is to put our phone (and all other types of screens and technology) away. Experts recommend that adolescents get at least 8-10 hours of sleep a night, and to ensure staying asleep, to avoid screen time at least 30 minutes to 1 hour before you plan to call it a night.

There are plenty of reasons to explain why you should avoid your phone, computer, tablets, and TVs before bed: the bright light keeps you alert and makes you less tired (but more tired in the morning), REM sleep (where memories are processed and has ties to problem-solving skills) is decreased, and of course, using screens delays sleep as a whole because you’re engaging with content in some way.

But like all habits, distancing yourself from your phone before bed is easier said than done. For a generation of youths that communicate online as much as, if not more, communicating face-to-face, putting phones away, along with the conversations, social media platforms, and friends that come with it, can be nerve wracking. 

We’ve talked about FOMO and social media breaks before. Because technology and social media is so crucial to how many youths communicate today, it’s easy to feel like anything could happen and that you can miss something important without your phone for just a few seconds, an hour before sleeping, and even longer than that. Not having your phone charging next to you means that you might miss a conversation in a group chat, an email, or even a notification about something you don’t care about at all. The excitement of social media, regardless of what the content is, and just the fact that there is always content to see, makes us want to stay on and makes us afraid that we’ll miss something important, even if it’s most likely not.

If you’re trying to get a better night’s sleep but are having a hard time parting from your phone to do so, just know that all that content will also be there in the morning. Most of the time, there isn’t anything groundbreaking that requires us to stay up expecting an alert at 1AM. Putting your phone away right before bed can also be the first step to take if you want to distance yourself from how much you use and rely on social media as a whole.

If anything, keeping your phone away may make it easier to get out of bed! If you use your phone for your alarm and have it far away from you, you have to get out of it to turn it off, instead of pressing snooze a bunch of times and/or staying in bed scrolling aimlessly on your phone, just like you did the night before, giving you a less groggy and grumpy start to the day.

Do you have trouble sleeping at night? Where do you keep your phone when you’re getting ready for bed? Have you ever considered keeping your phone away before bed? If you have, or do keep it away, has it made any difference in your sleep?

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Improving Sleep

February 28, 2020 in LINKS

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While it’s incredibly important to get a good night’s sleep, sleeping patterns and the amount of sleep adolescents get can get jumbled because of mental illness (for example, we’ve talked about “depression naps” and the effects that they can have). Overall, it’s difficult for adolescents to get the recommended amount of sleep they should be getting, and with higher rates of mental illness within this age group today, it can be even more difficult because of the ways that it can affect your sleep, such as depression napping and insomnia.

There are tons of resources available online and through app stores that offer ways to contribute to measuring and stabilizing your sleeping patterns, but we’ve pulled a few that you can check out below!

Flux You can install Flux on your computer so that your screen automatically adjusts with the sun. Screens emit brighter, blue lighting that can hurt the eyes, especially at night. Flux dims your computer to a softer, orange color at sunset, and you can adjust how strong the color and softness are.

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Sleep with Me This podcast is dedicated to help you fall asleep by telling bedtime stories. The host, Drew Ackerman, takes a comedic approach in his story choice and storytelling, but still does so in a way that helps the listener not feel like they have to pay attention and eventually drifting off to sleep. There are over 700 episodes too, so you don’t have to worry about running out of content.

There are also other podcasts available meant to help the listener sleep. You can check out some other lists for more info and ideas.

Pzizz Science-based and celebrity-backed (J.K. Rowling has tweeted about using it before), Pzizz uses soft music, voices, and sound effects to help you fall and stay asleep. It’s not just limited for sleeping at night, and includes options if you want to take a nap and to help you stay focused.

Do you use anything on your phone or computer to help you fall and stay asleep at appropriate times? If you nap (whether voluntarily or involuntarily), what have you tried to make sure you don’t interrupt your sleep at night?

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When Everything Seems to be Going Wrong

February 24, 2020 in Be Positive

It can be hard to focus on the good things, especially when it feels like the world is falling apart around you, and because of you. People are more likely to focus and dwell on the negative versus the positive – this is known as having negativity bias, and it’s nowhere near uncommon. Having good things happen to us feels great! But there’s a comfort to them that our brains can become complacent with, and when negative things end up occurring instead, they tend to have significantly stronger impressions on us, because we don’t expect, nor do we not want them to happen.

So when a string of negative events occurs, versus a positive one, they’re likely to have a greater effect on how we’re feeling too. No matter how minor or major, everything just seems terrible. The buildup of things like getting a bad grade, receiving a text that sounds cold from someone you care about, spilling your coffee, and banging your knee against a table can make it feel like everything is hopeless and that you don’t deserve anything good. This is particularly true for those with depression and anxiety, where you’re likely that much more vulnerable of feeling the intense feelings of negative events, which can lead to things like catastrophic thinking and the snowball effect.

It’s easier said than done, but when it does feel like there are only bad things that are happening and that you’re destined to only experience the negative, it’s important to take a step back, whether it be metaphorically or physically. Whether you’re in public and need to close your eyes and/or take a deep breath, or you’re in your room and can quite literally drop all your things, stand up, and take a few steps back, temporarily removing yourself from the negative, even for just a moment, can remind you that there’s more in your life than the terrible things that are going on.

If you can, physically remove yourself from anything that’s contributing to any negative event, such as pushing the coffee cup away from you, locking your phone and putting it away, closing your computer. From there, list as many things that have happened recently that brought you joy, no matter how few or how minor. You can write this if you can or want to, or you can just focus on this mentally. While our brains don’t dwell in the positive things compared to the negative, focus on these good things and ask yourself why they made you so happy. Think of times before when something similar has happened. Think about how it’s likely that these things can happen again, and when they might happen next.

You can also think about something that you’re looking forward to that’s coming up. It could be something significant, like the semester finishing, or even something small that makes you happy, like going to a movie that you’ve been waiting to see. Knowing that something good is coming up is a reminder that not all things are terrible all the time.

There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel. The sun is always there, but you may be only awake in the nighttime, where it’s not visible and you can only see the dark sky. Even if things seem awful now, the truth of the matter is, not all the things are, and even though our brains put more weight on the negative, making ourselves believe that the positive is worth our focus can make a difference, no matter how small.

Have you ever had a bad day? Week? What gets you through times when it feels like everything is falling apart? Share your advice below!

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Mental Health Resources for Black Youth

February 21, 2020 in LINKS

It can be difficult to find resources for mental health resources that feel like they’re targeted to you. This is particularly true for minorities and underprivileged groups. Racial and ethnic minorities have less access to mental health resources and services than white people, and when they do get access, it can be of poorer quality, feeling that the treatment they receive doesn’t fully suit them or that they feel like they’re experiencing discrimination.

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African-American communities are no exception. As we mentioned on Wednesday, African-American adolescents require different approaches when developing treatment, because they express their depressive symptoms differently, for a number of reasons.

The options below are just a start to what may be available online for African-Americans and African-American youth. A couple are sites dedicated to one gender, one is an app, and another is a podcast, but all of them have been created and are run by African-Americans, with the hope that seeing something created for you by someone who looks like you can have a more significant impact.

The Safe Place This is an app dedicated just for African-Americans and how they can learn more and think about their mental health. The creator, Jasmine Pierre, is a certified peer support specialist, and has the app offer a forum, statistics specifically about black mental health, and inspirational quotes. There are also self-care tips for things such as coping with police brutality, how to talk to black family members about mental health, and mental health in the black church.

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Fireflies Unite T-Kea – the woman named in the podcast’s full title of Fireflies Unite Podcast with Kea – releases episodes every Monday where she allows individuals to share their stories about mental health and the stigmas they face, especially as people of color. She is a mental health advocate dedicated to showing that mental illness can affect anyone, and is a suicide survivor.

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Therapy for Black Men The main focus of this website (run by mental health professional Vladimire Calixte) is to provide a directory for African-American men to access therapists who they can trust with offering services that will be beneficial to them. The search gives you the option to get more advanced beyond searching just by location, including therapists’ specialties, treatment options, and if they provide therapy remotely. The site also has a coach directory and a blog.

Therapy for Black Girls Dr. Joy Harden Bradford is a licensed psychologist who created this site specifically for African-American women and girls to have a resource to learn more about well-being and mental health. Like Therapy for Black Men, there’s a directory listing therapists nationwide who provide “high quality, culturally competent services” for African-American women and girls, letting you search by location and by insurance. The website also has its own weekly podcast hosted by Dr. Joy, where she talks and educates listeners about an array of mental health topics.

Do you have any recommendations? If you’re a minority, do you look for resources that are more specifically tailored for you?

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Posting About the Hustle

February 20, 2020 in Social Media Guide

It is incredibly easy to be busy nowadays. If anything, it’s encouraged. Our culture has told us that we should take advantage of all of the 24 hours in the day so we can be our best selves and as successful as we can possibly be. The time in between classes and/or work should be filled with time working out or learning a new skill or networking. Being busy is a good thing, and constantly being on that grind should be the goal.

And because we can’t avoid it nowadays, social media takes this to another level. Social media gives us several platforms to talk about how busy we are. It can be chronicling everything we’re doing that day on our stories, posting about still working on an assignment with a 3:00 AM timestamp, or even just texting friends long paragraphs about how much we need to do.

Letting people know how busy we are isn’t a new thing though. You may have had face-to-face conversations where a friend goes off for minutes on end about the millions of things they have to do in response to a simple “how are you?” Talking and showcasing how much someone needs to do is known as “busy bragging,” and while very rarely intentional, comes with a lot of unintentional effects.

Most of the time, when we want to talk about how busy we are, it’s because we just need a reason to let out everything we’re going through and getting it out in the open. However, there is some satisfaction and validation people may feel whenever they talk about how overwhelmed and busy they are and want to keep seeking that out. In turn, being on the receiving end of the busy bragging can make the listener feel like they’re not doing enough and need to be on the same level as the busy person.

Social media can heighten these feelings of incompetence, competition, and just generally bad feelings about yourself for not doing enough. While it can help by posting and commiserating in misery with others who are doing the same assignments and studying for the same tests, social media can also increase our desire for that validation when people respond or even just see how busy we are. By seeing posts about peers and friends getting ahead on assignments and activities – even if you’re not taking the same classes or in the same field – you may feel ashamed that you’re not doing the same amount of work, or that you need to work harder, or your lifestyle isn’t worth sharing about because it’s not as “productive.”

It’s totally fine to post that pile of books and papers drowning your desk and computer during finals week. It’s also okay to post progress pictures about things you’re passionate about or proud of, like being at the gym or that thesis that you’re so close to finishing. At the same time though, constantly posting about being busy can ironically make you less productive since it’s taking time away from what you need to do and can not only overwhelm you by trying to come up with the perfect way to talk about how busy you are, but can also overwhelm followers and friends you follow you who are possibly going through the same thing.

At the end of the day, balance is key whenever posting about anything. It’s also important to remember that you don’t need to force yourself to be busy all the time, and being productive and hustling also includes time for yourself and taking breaks where you need to. These breaks can include social media, where you hopefully don’t have to see a stream of posts about that paper you’re taking a break from and can relax with cute animals instead.

Have you ever posted about how busy you are online? Do you usually post when you’re busy? Do you see posting about being busy as a form of stress relief, or as something else?

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