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When I talk to my patients about social media, I like to think about it as neither good or bad. Social media in many ways is something that's here to stay and perhaps what's most important is all of us being aware of our relationship to social media and how we are using it. This can often start with doing a check of how we feel before we engage with social media and how we feel after we use our social media. This can be a really helpful barometer of sorts to assess how social media in particular is affecting our emotional wellbeing. A couple of other factors to consider: How much time are we spending on social media? Oftentimes we can go down rabbit holes and spend more time than we intended to and we are trading that time. In essence, we're not doing other things like engaging with family or friends, practicing hobbies or interests that are enjoyable to us if we spend a great deal of time on social media. The other thing to consider is whether social media is giving us a sense of connection or if we're noticing a sense of F.O.M.O. (or fear of missing out.) Oftentimes, social media can be a great tool to connect professionally, personally, with people from all over the world that we never would have met before. Sometimes, though, we can recognize that people tend to present the highlight reels of their lives on social media and we can all sometimes find ourselves in a place of comparison or fear of missing out. So the most important thing is not necessarily defining social media as good or bad, but really understanding how it impacts us in particular, and then managing our use accordingly.
When I talk to my patients about social media, I like to think about it as neither good or bad. Social media in many ways is something that's here to stay and perhaps what's most important is all of us being aware of our relationship to social media and how we are using it. This can often start with doing a check of how we feel before we engage with social media and how we feel after we use our social media. This can be a really helpful barometer of sorts to assess how social media in particular is affecting our emotional wellbeing. A couple of other factors to consider: How much time are we spending on social media? Oftentimes we can go down rabbit holes and spend more time than we intended to and we are trading that time. In essence, we're not doing other things like engaging with family or friends, practicing hobbies or interests that are enjoyable to us if we spend a great deal of time on social media. The other thing to consider is whether social media is giving us a sense of connection or if we're noticing a sense of F.O.M.O. (or fear of missing out.) Oftentimes, social media can be a great tool to connect professionally, personally, with people from all over the world that we never would have met before. Sometimes, though, we can recognize that people tend to present the highlight reels of their lives on social media and we can all sometimes find ourselves in a place of comparison or fear of missing out. So the most important thing is not necessarily defining social media as good or bad, but really understanding how it impacts us in particular, and then managing our use accordingly.
If you're in school, you know that it's a stressful time because in addition to the academic pressures, you're dealing with many other pressures including your own and other people's expectations, financial pressures, maybe even worries about the future career that you might have. So this is a critical time for you to develop healthy habits and practices in coping with those demands. It's important to set good boundaries around the activities that you know help you to feel healthier and more at ease. So this includes things like taking time to tend to your physical health and your relationships and your mental health. But striving to find more balance in your life can also tend to feel like another obligation, so just remember that sometimes it's okay to unplug just for the sake of unplugging. Now, speaking of unplugging - social media is a way that many of us keep in touch with the people who matter to us (and that's really important) but social media also has a downside and that is that the more time we spend on it, the more we can feel stressed and anxious - especially when we're seeing depictions of other people's lives that make them seem so much happier and better off than we are. Also, too much social media use can impact your grades, studies show, so try to engage in social media in moderation. Also, consider trying mindfulness meditation. It's a practice of paying more attention to your present moment experience and as a result, worrying less about the future. Now, some amount of worry can be helpful. After all, it's probably worrying about how you'll do on your final that causes you to study harder for it. But if you practice mindfulness meditation, there'll be more focused and attentive to what you're doing so that you can use your energy in a productive way rather than wasting it on excessive worry.
Many of us spend half or more of our waking hours at work, so it contributes disproportionately to our sense of stress and anxiety in the rest of our lives. One thing that contributes to stress and anxiety in the workplace is disorganization. One quick way that you can begin to get your arms around the duties that you have and feel less stressed by them is simply to become more organized, which can be as simple as keeping a daily to-do list or being more diligent about entering your upcoming appointments in a calendar so that you know exactly when things will be happening. This reduces the unknown that often gives rise to anxiety. Something else I recommend is to take frequent breaks throughout the work day - so something you might try is something I call the "50-10 approach." Work hard for 50 minutes and then take a 10 minute break each hour and use that 10 minutes to get up and go hydrate or go for a walk or do a quick meditation while you're sitting at your desk and then go back to work for the next 50 minutes. What a lot of people find is that doing it this way, they end up more productive during the working 50 minutes than if they just try to push through an entire work day nonstop. Now that being said, in your quest to be a productive successful worker - make sure that you're being realistic about what you're trying to achieve within the time limits that you have available. Furthermore, you need to really pay attention to your whole life wellbeing. So guard your personal time and as much as you want this to succeed at work, make sure you're devoting equal time to your physical, social, and psychological health so that you're not only a successful worker, but a successful and happy human being.
Home is supposed to be our refuge, so when stress and anxiety crop up there - it can be especially distressing. One thing to pay attention to is whether you might be inadvertently contaminating home with stress from work or school or some other area of your life. It's often helpful to compartmentalize parts of our life to some degree so that we leave work at work and school at school and maybe perhaps don't return emails in the evening, etc. And instead allow ourselves the ability to savor the non-work or the non-school parts of our lives. Now at the same time, it's also important to let people in when we're experiencing distressing thoughts or feelings so that we don't feel that we're shouldering that burden all by ourselves. So if you open up to the people around you, you're accomplishing a couple of things at once: one, you're alleviating some of that stress and anxiety, and two, you're cultivating intimacy with that person. So it's important to try to find a balance between these two. Compartmentalizing and sharing and being open with people about the struggles that you face. Also consider carving out some time every day, even if it's only 30 minutes for you - for self-care activities for you. So what is it that you like to do to take care of yourself? Do you like to take a bath? is there a hobby you like to do? What is it that calms and soothes you? Just you. Some time that you can claim for yourself because taking care of yourself can relieve stress and anxiety and also help you show up more for the people in your life. So it's a win-win situation. And finally I'd recommend considering starting a mindfulness meditation practice. This is a practice of orienting more toward our present moment experience and letting go of the future oriented thoughts that tend to worry us. So again, this can produce direct improvement in stress and anxiety, but notably empathy and compassion also naturally arise when we practice mindfulness meditation. And so the practice can help you be a better family member too.
There are several factors to consider when we look at how to manage stress. The first is to be aware of when we're going through difficult times. It's important to remember that even positive life changes can be stressful, so things like moving, getting a new job, getting married, even those can be stressful and it's important for us to be aware of that. The second thing to note is: what are your personal signs and symptoms of stress? Do you tend to have a difficult time falling asleep? Do you get sick more frequently? Do you notice pain in your neck and shoulders or stomach upset? Knowing how you in particular respond to stress can help you be aware when you're actually under stress. The third step is to practice really good self-care. This starts with physical practices like being conscious of our nutrition, exercise, sleep, hygiene, and then also considering other practices such as meditation, journaling, and making sure that we're connecting with family and friends. And the fourth thing to be aware of is to know when we get really overwhelmed that that's when it's important to reach out for professional support. Looking for a therapist, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, or even your primary care doctor to get additional support and resources when you're starting to feel really overwhelmed.
If you find yourself constantly consumed with thoughts that failure is looming around the corner, you're probably living in the land of "what-ifs" as opposed to living in the land of the here and now. The very important way to combat this tendency is to engage in mindfulness. Mindfulness is a skill that involves a lot of different parts, but the core of it is that you're focusing on noticing your thoughts and feelings as they come and go without judging them, and then bringing your attention back to the here and now: the physical sensations in your body, what's going on around you and your environment, things that are actually happening. That takes us away from the anxious cycle that we tend to go down otherwise. Other important ways to combat those fears of failure include engaging in positive affirmations, so telling yourself "I'm going to do this, I'm going to be great", focusing on your strengths, writing them out even at times and visualizing success - so when you're going into something, visualizing what it's gonna look like for you to be successful. Having all of those strategies helps you have a positive mindset and combat those fears of failure.
Making life decisions is naturally anxiety-provoking and stressful. However, you can feel more secure in your life decisions by taking a few steps: the first step that's important to start with would be to hone into your own personal values. Think about the values that guide your life and think about how this decision can fit with those values. Maybe you get a new job opportunity in a different state, but that would take you further away from your family and you really value being around your family. That's an important value to consider in this decision-making process. Second, it's very important to think about all the different options that you could possibly take when making a decision - even the ones that feel dumb or that you're definitely not going to do - consider those. Then list out all the pros (the positives) to making a certain decision and the cons (the negatives) to making a certain decision. You can look at all of these laid out and that can make you feel more comfortable that you're really thinking through this decision thoroughly. Lastly, it's very important to remember that there's no perfect decision in life ever and that every decision is going to come with positives and negatives. Having some compassion for yourself and making decisions is challenging but it really helps you to feel more secure and understanding of yourself when you're having some trouble making decisions in life.
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