 It really, it's very bold in its directions. Hello everybody, welcome back to another Recovery Monday. Today we're gonna talk about social media and anxiety recovery, kind of the pros and the cons. We'll wait for folks to show up. It says I'm live, let's see. I don't see the counter, here we go, now I see the counter. As you pop in, just somebody let me know that you can hear me. I'll put the chat overlay up as usual. I have a ceiling fan going, so my hair is blowing all over the place, hanging in there with me. Don't judge, I'm having a bad hair day. Every day is a bad hair day for me. Anyway, today we're gonna talk about social media and the pros and the cons of using social media and your anxiety recovery. Thank you, B, appreciate it. I think I should have the technology down at this point. At least I hope I do, but you never can tell. And yeah, we'll chat about that for a little while with some Q and A, all of that stuff. So you guys have questions or comments. As always, just pop them in the chat. You can talk to each other, as is the standard thing that happens around here. I always love when you guys are in your own conversations while I'm blabbering on at you. We'll wait for some more folks to show up. We've got about 23 people in the room. Usually we have anywhere between 80 and 100 and somewhat people in the room. So hello, Sharice, hey, Julie, hey, B, Rebecca's here, I see. Who else is coming? Where's everybody from today? How's everybody doing today? It is hot and steamy in New York. You know what, I shouldn't complain. It's not as hot as it is in some parts of the world, but it's summer here. Stupid amounts of humidity. Hey, Kathleen, what's going on? Good to see you. So what, Viva la Vegas nerve. Why do I feel like this could be the same person just making really like witty screen names? That is, I'm sorry, this is just a great name, Viva la Vegas nerve. Denise, you're in the chat. How do you join the chat? You're in the chat right now. So just so you know, like if you see on the screen, your comment just popped up there. Hey, Katya, how you doing? Hello, Carol. Hey, Maura, how you doing? Sorry, you see a Facebook user that means you're in the Facebook group and maybe very good. Well, I admire your creativity in calling yourself Viva la Vegas nerve. That's very good. If you're in the Facebook group, Restream is only gonna show me your name as Facebook user. I'm sorry about that, but that's just sort of the way it works. All right, so let's get into it today. Let's talk about social media pros and cons. Now, in the Facebook group, somebody pointed out, oh, this is kind of timely, given that a new app just launched. So like, yes, Insta, Metta, which is the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, just launched the Threads app. And yeah, it's totally, this particular topic was completely prompted to the fact that Threads was launched publicly last week and it's created just not a furor, but a bit of a frenzy and everybody's talking about threads and threads and all the influence are rushing in there. Their influencers are rushing in there. Everybody's stampeding in to make sure they get attention. Look at me, look at me. And I popped on over to Threads. I made an account. Like, if you have an Instagram account, you kind of automatically have a Threads account. And if you want to pop over to Threads from Instagram, you'll automatically follow me. That's fine. And I posted a couple of times to test that to see how it works. It's essentially Twitter. It's kind of an underdeveloped Twitter. You can have your arguments as to whether Threads is better than Twitter or not. It doesn't matter to me in the end, whatever. You could be on Threads only because you hate Elon Musk and don't want to be on Twitter anymore, whatever, that's fine. But yet another social media platform where people like me are stumbling over themselves and trying to use all the usual tricks to try and get plenty of attention and make sure they're sticky and they have an audience and they're building their brand. And I just heard a lot of just ridiculous nonsense about like, oh, it's about conversation again. No, it's not. We know it's not. It's about conversation this week. And then next week it'll be the same old, same old. So anyway, the idea that we need another social media platform. And I'm not saying that we don't. Everybody gets a decide, but yeah, whatever. So yes, it did prompt this. Because one of the things that I discovered pretty quickly was not only do people like me on the content creation side suffer huge amounts of FOMO. FOMO is fear of missing out. Like, oh my God, I have to be on threads or like I might miss out or the other popular thing among people on my side of the content to creation side is, well, it's a brand new platform. So this is my opportunity to be a thread star because I couldn't give me an Instagram star or Twitter star, so I'll be a thread star. So there's FOMO on my side of it. I don't really suffer from FOMO myself, thankfully. But, and then on the other side, like you guys what I find is there's FOMO fear of missing out and like I have to be on threads and I have to scroll there too because what if somebody says something that I need to hear? So how many people feel that? Like, how many, you know, how many people feel like I need to be on those platforms because, you know, what if Drew says something that I might miss or what if Josh says something that I might miss or what if Kim says something that I might miss? So I discovered right away that I posted, I guess Wednesday night when threads was launched. I'm like, hey, I'm over on threads. I'm gonna answer some questions. Let's try it. And I almost immediately regretted doing that to be completely honest with you because asking you guys to go over to yet another platform for me for why I'm not sure that I understand. But okay, so to me that FOMO points out the need to talk about social media. So forget threads for a second. Let's talk about social media in general. What are the pros of social media? I think the pros of social media, and by the way, I'm gonna read the comments. I swear, let me, let me blabber at you for a few minutes and then we'll go through the comments and we'll discuss it more than me just talking to you. So social media has its place and it can be really useful. A lot of people in this community, we all know how hard it is sometimes to access therapy or counseling. You might be able to get to a therapist, but that therapist knows nothing about anxiety disorders. So that doesn't really work out for you or you may not be able to get to a therapist at all or the waiting list is two years long or it's too expensive and you can't afford it. So there's a lot of reasons why people can't afford professional help. And sometimes there are a lot of resources in social media that can help you kind of do it alone. I'm a huge fan of professional help, appropriate professional help, well-targeted professional help if you can access it. But if you can't, we cannot argue with the fact that social media can provide us with resources that we can sort of lean on if we have to do it ourselves. There's 100%, I can't argue that, that's true. In fact, I would like to think that I contribute to those resources, right? The content that I produce is hopefully things that people can use, whether they're working with a therapist or not. So that is definitely one benefit of social media. Another benefit of social media is that you're not alone thing, but that could be a double-edged sword. So the fact that you are not alone is important for everybody to know. So many people in this community, especially when they're sort of new, they just sort of come into the podcast, you see them for the first time on one of these live streams or in the comment section somewhere, they'll hear me talk about a thing and they'll say, oh my God, I thought I was the only person in the world that felt that or I thought I was the only person in the world that ever experienced that. And so stumbling on to social media accounts, maybe like mine, where you see other people or you see somebody like me talking about the thing that you're struggling with that you thought was unique to you and thought made you sort of broken and hopeless, that can be a really powerful thing, especially when you can be interactive with other people, like my Instagram subscriber group is very interactive, especially on Fridays when we do our group chats. And it's really helpful. Like there's no doubt about that, that understanding that you're not uniquely broken or beyond hope, and that so many other people have the same problem is a hugely helpful thing. It can really lift you up when you need to be lifted up sometimes. The flip side of that is that at some point, when you spend a lot of your time in anxiety circles on social media and you are continually surrounded with people who are experiencing the same things that you have and you see that every day, at some point the idea that I'm not alone is a given. We cannot keep falling back to, well, it's great because then I know I'm not alone. Well, at some point it becomes a given. There's so many people around me talking about this that I know I'm not alone. Once in a while, a reminder of that is not a bad thing, but we have to be careful about justifying a compulsive reliance on social media streams with that. Well, it's good to know you're not alone. If you're brand new, it's very good to see for the first time that you're not alone. If you're kind of new, you need that a little bit. Even people who have been at it a little while need a reminder once in a while if you're not alone, nothing wrong with that. But let's not rely on that as justification for continually scrolling all day. I think another reason why social media is a reasonably useful tool in recovery is that you don't necessarily always see people like me sharing, although I'm sharing not only as somebody who, I mean, nobody knows more about the mechanics of an anxiety disorder than I do. I mean, and I'm proud to say that actually. I spent years actually educating myself and that's sort of being validated even the training that I'm doing. But I know a lot about the mechanics of these things and I can teach you theory and I can teach you all that stuff and rely on the science, but I'm also coming at it as a recovered person. So you get to see people who came before you who might be a little further down the road in recovery and you can hear them say things like, oh man, like I never thought I could do this but now look, I'm doing it and that can provide some sort of hope. It can provide encouragement. When you feel like I'm never gonna be able to do this, it can be really helpful to see people who did do it and to hear that they once thought that they would never be able to do it. So to me, I think that use of social media to find sources of encouragement, of inspiration, of empowerment can be really great, right? You see other people who came before you, some of them are really, they're great and they try and share the journey and they're, hey, look, I did it, you could do it too, we're rooting for you. That is so hugely helpful. And many people, hey, listen, when I went through the bulk of it, there was no Instagram, Facebook had just started. My social media support was a small group of people that I met on YouTube and we would exchange videos. So I didn't nearly have what you had and people who were older than me didn't even have the internet. So my first go around with panic disorder and agoraphobia was, you know, back, I had to go to the library and get books. So in a way, there's a lot of really good stuff. And I guess I'll ask a question to sort of get the chat involved. Let me close this window real quick. Tell me, like, what else do you think is helpful to you about social media? It's great, let's throw it up in the chat and let's have it talk about that. Because I'm sure I did not corner the market on the positive things about social media. So if you have something that you think is really helpful about your use of social media and recovery, throw it out there. So those are some of the pros, right? And let's see what everybody else has to say. Everybody in the room has to say about that. Let's talk about some of the cons or some of the pitfalls or the traps of social media. One of the traps that I find on social media is it quickly becomes a distraction and then it becomes a distraction tool so that your intention, and I see people using the word intentional, I'm just talking about that in a little bit. But it might be that your intention is not to distract yourself when you scroll endlessly on social media, but it does become a default distraction tool, right? So you have to be kind of mindful of that. If you in fact find that the minute you feel any sense of discomfort, you grab your phone and you start scrolling through Instagram or Twitter or TikTok or whatever it is that you do, that's usually a red flag. I'm trying to distract myself intentionally to get away from how I'm feeling. So when social media becomes a distraction, which here's news, it's literally designed to be. So when I say silly things that sound like I'm complaining about social media, like turn off your phones and go away for the day or unfollow me if you have to, I'm literally trying to combat what social media is designed to be. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, all of them, they only exist to keep your attention. They need your attention because if you spend more time on the app, you can be monetized to a greater degree. And I'm sorry, but I'll also tell you that from a content creator's point of view, those platforms want to partner with me to help me keep your attention on the app. So in certain instances, some platforms will monetize, help us monetize. If I wanted to, I could join the TikTok Partner Program and if I can keep your attention on the TikTok app, they'll pay me. So it's really important to understand that social media can become a distraction because it's designed to be that way. And distraction is not the primary tool we wanna use the minute we're anxious. So that's one drawback to that. Another drawback to social media, I think is, I mentioned when we talked about the, you know, it's good to feel you're not alone, that sort of default argument. The other thing that I think is a drawback about social media is it can feed into or we can use the word community way more than we should use the term community because we have to be really careful what we mean by community. If you are trying to find yourself in a social media-based community or build your own where you can find sources of inspiration and encouragement and empowerment where that community is cheering for you and rooting for you to stand up even when you think you can't stand up, that could be a really powerful community. But very quickly, very, very quickly, and this is nobody's fault, this is human nature, those communities tend to devolve very quickly into does anybody else get this symptom? Does anybody else ever get that? How do you handle nausea? How do you deal with racing hard? How do you deal with short of breath? What do I do about intrusive thoughts? And then the cycle just snowballs and then you become embroiled in a community where everybody is literally just talking about how hard it is, how difficult it is, how impossible it is, how this feels, how scary it is, and you get very little empowerment and encouragement and inspiration and cheerleading and just a lot of commiserating or co-ruminating. You have to be really careful about that because community in social media circles in terms of an anxiety recovery community often becomes just a co-ruminating space. And it really takes effort to not turn it into that. And those of you who have watched my Facebook group change over the years, grow over the years and then change to what it is now, which is essentially silent until I contribute something. I had to do that because that space, no matter how hard we try, can quickly become a co-rumination space and that does not help you. I know that the term community is a very positive connotation and people will say, but community, but we need that community. If your community is doing nothing but rehashing the same things back and forth all the time and it's a temporary soothing thing, but it doesn't actually lead you anywhere, that's not helping, it's actually hurting. So that's another thing that's a little bit tough about social media. And the last thing that I'll throw out there, and then I wanna hear what you guys have to say about this because I see the discussion is lively here, which is good, is that social media can also, since it is designed to keep your attention and the platform operators want me to post all the time often compelling content, I cannot tell you how much instruction Instagram gives people like me to make creative content and engaging content. They will bend over backwards to tell me what the trends are, what sounds should I use, what videos, what effects should I use every day? I get those tips every day. So when social media is designed to keep your engagement, it can feed into a compulsive need to gather resources and this might be the thing, but what if today Drew says something about the thought that I'm having or Kim says something or Jenna or whoever, you know the usual suspects that keep saying the same names all the time, it can be really difficult because then you just confine yourself compulsively scrolling all the time to try and find somebody like me or some other mental health person who is talking about the thing you're afraid of right this minute because you just want somebody to, you wanna hear something about it as opposed to navigating through it, you just need to hear some words about it in that moment to soothe you and that can become very compulsive and it can also be a substitute for the actual doing of the work. I'm not saying that every time you fire up Instagram or TikTok, you're avoiding, that's not true, but often it can and social media, which I'm using as a noun right now, if social media was a person, social media would be more than happy to substitute for your recovery. So it can be all too easy to get stuck in that compulsive cycle of resource gathering and researching and checking and seeing what people like me have to say every day and hanging on her every word and hopefully today maybe Drew will talk about the thing that I'm afraid of today, that's not terribly helpful. In the beginning, everybody looks for resources, everybody gathers resources, everybody wants information, everybody needs psycho education, which is really on producing, but when that becomes a long-term strategy to just scroll, scroll, scroll all day long and look for the magic post, the magic words, the magic thoughts, the things that'll keep you safe today, that becomes problematic. And again, the platforms are designed to encourage you to do that. And I think the other thing that starts to happen, and I just noticed the word algorithm scroll by here, I'm not sure who mentioned it, but I'm gonna go through the comments in a second, is that the algorithms are based on affinity. So the more you look for mental health and the more you look for anxiety and the more you look for OCD, the more you're going to see of that. And especially if you're dealing on Instagram and you're also on Facebook, that's the same company. So those things are gonna follow you through. If you're on YouTube searching for anxiety videos, you're in Google land, and then your entire Google search results and stuff will be dominated by ads for mental health things and anxiety things and cures and fixes and meds. And you have to be careful about that because the affinity algorithm will say, this person wants more of that, more of that, more of that. So my answer to that is, you almost have to really carefully curate your feed. I'm not gonna follow 75 anxiety accounts because the social media platforms will think that is my entire life and then it's hard to retrain it otherwise. All right, so those are some of the cons that I see in social media, including the new app, Threads. And I'm kind of curious to see what you guys have to say. So let's check it out. I'm gonna go through and scroll back. This is the time when you watch Drew scroll back through old comments. This is always the exciting part of the video. Let's see here. I'm an artist every time I post artwork. Okay, so this is cool. Let me go through. I see some interesting comments here. I would thought we were finally giving, sewing it's due, but no, it's not the kind of thread. It's Threads does sound like a sewing SEW, social media platform. Let's see here. Pros, infinite at your, okay, let's throw this up here. Just because I also wanna get Viva LaVegas nerve because it's just a funny screen name. I'm sorry, I'll stop saying that, I'm obsessing. There's great content like yours. Thank you, I'm glad you appreciate or think that my content is great. Thank you for the feedback. Infinite info at your fingertips. But the word infinite is important in this. Infinite is not a good thing. Do we need an infinite amount of information? I would say that you do not. And we're gonna talk about intentional use of social media in a few minutes. But I think it's really, you have to be careful. It's an infinite amount of information. Nobody needs an infinite amount of information about anything. That's it, plain and simple. I'm gonna die on that hill. I do not need infinite information about Stratocaster guitars or mountain bikes or powerlifting or anything. You do not need an infinite and never ending amount of fire hose of information about anxiety and anxiety recovery. You do not need it. In fact, it probably will make things worse. So thank you for using the word infinite because it brought up a good point. This is also good too. I should have brought up this con that I didn't. Mental health content out there is not geared for anxiety disorders. And the algorithms will try to keep you in gross in the same sphere, you're 100% right. Let's talk about that first point. It's a really good one. So much social media content that would be called mental health content, and I'm not saying it's not, is simply not, and I'm gonna start using a term anxiety disorder informed. It's not. So I think most people in the room have probably heard the phrase trauma informed because it's become prevalent in the last few years in social media circles and mental health circles. It's fine because we do need trauma informed content. We need trauma informed care. We also need anxiety disorder informed content and anxiety disorder informed care. So let me give you an example. So on my threads account, I have already restricted probably no less than 25 people who have, so if you guys look at the few things I have posted on threads, you're gonna see that there's a few replies on some of them. There are actually way more replies than that that you just can't see because I've had to restrict people because for whatever reason, they see my posts because the algorithm shows them. I don't know, I have a blue check mark. I don't know what it is. They're in the mental health or personal development or self-help space, so they rush in to comment on what I post because they see that I already have 7,000 people or whatever I got over there, I don't know. And they try to game the system, but their comments are so unhelpful because they're just not informed on the mechanics of anxiety disorders. And when you're dealing with things like panic disorder or agoraphobia, health anxiety, OCD, social anxiety, the tact we take is almost entirely backwards from what anyone not trained in these things would ever think to do. It's a thing I see all the time even in my master's program. I'm one of those people that's gonna be branded as a, you know, he's an anxiety dude. You bring your people with panic disorder to him because he doesn't sound like the rest of us. He wants to argue with all of us all the time, but in that sphere, he's right. And we've had a lot of jokes. Me and my people, my colleagues in the cohort and even the professors, we've joked about some of those things. So if you find somebody who has the problems that guy's talking about, you send them to people like him. Even though you think he's crazy, he's right. So they don't mean to hurt anybody, but they just have no idea in many instances what they're talking about. And that's a problem. That's a problem. And that's when you see, you know, I don't have a problem saying this stuff. I'm not telling you that Mel Robbins is terrible, but Mel Robbins is peddling information about anxiety that she should simply stop, especially that she hooked up with another dude that beats the like all anxiety is childhood trauma. No matter what you say, only he knows it's true. You have to be so careful about that stuff because it's not advice that was geared to you. Is there anybody who talked to me solo? The answer to that is pretty much no, sorry. But this is okay. So I like the way Kathleen is talking about this. Kathleen is an artist, right? Ex-talented artist, as a matter of fact. And every time you post artwork, you get new jobs. So social media is not a bad thing for people, right? If you sell shoes, you wanna put your shoes out there and sell shoes. That's cool. I think part of the issue too, that sometimes, and this is me on a mini rant a little bit for another minute here, yeah, that's the dude. But I think, you know, one of the problems also is that I believe very strongly, this is my opinion, but I'm gonna die on this hill too, that addressing people's mental health is not the same. People addressing people's mental health have a little bit more of a responsibility, just like people who would be addressing people who have chronic illnesses or disease or any personal sensitive thing. For me to leverage your mental health by using standard social media marketing techniques like brand building and stickiness and keeping you stuck to me and keeping you engaged with me is just, I don't think right. But unfortunately, we also have a lot of mental health content providers or content creators who didn't get that message or don't care or just don't know that what they're doing might not be terribly moral or ethical. And so they will use those same sort of influencer tactics in the mental health sphere. And that's not cool. I don't think it's cool. I think it's, this is a vulnerable population. And when you try to make people stick to you by virtue of using some of those same tactics that somebody might use just because they're a fashion influencer or a fitness influencer, you have a bit of a problem. But there's a lot of that out there. So you have to be careful. So let's see here. Yeah, this is what I'm talking about here a little bit. I've noticed on, thank you Aurora for saying this. A lot of mental health advocates are posting anxiety advices, distraction, ice pack mints. Yeah, I get it. I mean, and that's fine. They're allowed to post whatever they want. Clearly I'm not the content police. I mean, on my threads I am. I will police my own content for sure. And people are allowed to pick whatever they want. So if people wanted to use ice packs, they're allowed to use ice packs. I'm not gonna try and stop anybody. God, she says she's too old to join at least platforms. This is good. I always miss stuff cause I just try to live. Like, I'm a big fan of that. So let's talk about that for a second before we get into more comments. I'm about a third of the way through. I'll try and catch up. Let's talk about intentional use of social media. And by intentional I mean, what am I trying to find when I fire up my app, Twitter, Instagram, threads, whatever, I don't care, whatever it is, Facebook. What am I looking for today? Are you looking for something specific? And if you can't answer that, what am I looking for? I am wondering about XYZ. If you can't answer that question and you're only gonna scroll Instagram just to see what might be there, if you are in the early stages of this journey, that makes sense and I get that. If you've been at this for months and months or longer than that and you still scroll every day just to see what you might find, even though you don't know what you're really looking for, that is something we have to think about, right? So is this helping me to do that? And if you can identify, I am looking for information about, awesome. If you ask the same question every single day for four and a half weeks and you're hoping that today is the day you'll get a different answer to that question in your scroll, that's also something to really think about. I've seen 62 posts about fear of suicide or fear of depression in the last seven days. What am I gonna get from the 63rd or 73rd or 103rd post that I haven't already seen in the first 62? So you have to be careful about that because it kind of feeds into the whole, that whole thing of like compulsive resource gathering. So be careful about that. Intentional use to me is, yes, I've lost the chat ability. You're in the chat right now, Carol. I could see your comment. You're making comments and you're in the chat. So you didn't lose the ability, it's still here. So be careful about that. Intentional would be, I know what I'm looking for and then I'm going to give myself X amount of time to find that. I'm gonna go to the resources that I know I trust, see if they have anything to say about that. If they don't, I'm out. I'm gonna have to go and do my recovery as best as I can. That would be a good way to do that. Nobody can post in the group, by the way. And if you're in the Facebook group, posting is off. I can post, the admins can post, that's it. There's a reason why we did that. So you can't post in the group because we turned that off about two months ago. So that's intentional use of social media. I'm looking for a specific thing. I have a specific issue that I'm looking for information on. I'm going to resources that I trust and I'm gonna limit my time. If I don't find it in those 20 minutes, I'm done. I'm not gonna just scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, just be careful about that too. That was what I would call intentional use of social media. And you could apply that not just to anxiety recovery, but almost anything. So let's see here. Denise also says, I don't know what threads is. To be completely honest with you, if Instagram wasn't hammering me about threads and like making it almost automatic to make an account, okay, and I'll also be completely honest with you. Yes, I have a threads account and I will probably use it here and there. I don't know if it turns out to be a useful tool that I can use to be helpful and not just another place for me to do a land grab and get people's attention. Maybe I'll use it more, I don't know. But I don't see that at least for me as a content creator. I'm not gonna automatically run to threads and then compulsively post every 47 minutes so that you see me. That's a tough one. And to be honest with you, I am seeing people in the mental health space do that for almost a week now. Came out on Wednesday night and I see therapists that are posting literally every 40 minutes to 90 minutes all day long until I go to sleep. And I don't know about that. That seems tough. This is fair enough. You know what? I didn't like Twitter either. I was not a Twitter user. I had a Twitter account. I used to like echo my podcast posts to Twitter. And then even this live stream would go to Twitter and I was like, I'm out. I just, to me, Twitter wasn't helpful at all. So I get it. Maybe threads will be better than Twitter. I don't know. We'll see. Let's see here. This is fair. Bet says too much of anything can be too much. That is true, especially for people who are prone to get compulsive about this sort of thing. Or urgent. If you feel that your use of social media is urgent, then you're sort of in that little bit of danger zone. You know what I mean? If that makes sense. Let's see here. Okay. So this is an interesting thing. Let me peer over the top of the comment. Hello, Denise. Social media is good, but some people trigger my anxiety if they answer something the way that scares me. Let's talk about that for a quick second. I would ask you guys, well, I get triggered by answers if they say something that scares me. Remember that when we talk about recovery the way we do, and at least if you're in this room, you're in a room with my name on it. So I'm sort of setting the agenda. That's true. We don't talk about triggers. We don't shy away from triggers, right? We actually go toward triggers. So if you get triggered because somebody says something that scares you, that's a clue. To us triggers are roadmaps. They're not landmines. I know that might sound unusual or like something that maybe nobody has said to you before, Denise, I don't necessarily recognize your name. I don't know if you're new to the community, if you are welcome. But triggers are a roadmap. They're not landmines. Those are things that tells me, oh, I have to work on that. Let me follow up on Denise's comment on another sort of con or bad thing about social media sometimes. Sometimes social media becomes a place for, well, welcome. I'm glad you're here, Denise. I hope you do find this all helpful. So I understand that what I just said that you go toward triggers probably sounds like, what the hell is this guy talking about? Trust me on this one. Go listen to all the original podcasts or go listen to Disordered, the new podcast to do with Josh Fletcher because there's only 17 of those so you can binge those real quick and we're covering all the basics in the beginning episodes. So one of the things that sometimes happens in social media is people go to social media to get validation that they're doing it right. How many people do that? Show of hands in the comment section. How many people go to social media so that they can get approval for the way they're doing recovery? Which often means you're doing it sort of the way I write about or the way I talk about or my usual collaborators and friends, you know all the usual suspects, you're doing it sort of the way they talk about it. And so you go to get validation of that method or that approach. I get that, because you're a little bit unsure of it, right? And then when you hear people say something in the comment section that doesn't jive with what I say or goes against me or sometimes you hear somebody say something personally to me because they don't like me or they don't like what I say and you immediately have to jump in and counter that argument. You can step away from that. It's okay. You will never find agreement on social media with the way you're doing it, right? So I have come to peace with the fact that people, me and people like me, we are a niche in mental health and we get raked all the time by people who not anxiety disorder informed. We think we're crazy and we shouldn't have a platform. So you're gonna see people who disagree. When you see, sometimes you'll see it on my posts. If people get really belligerent and nasty, sometimes I will delete those comments but I will let people disagree with me in the comment section like on my Instagram. You see it fairly reasonably. I'll usually point out that like, well, this post wasn't for you or if I'm upsetting you should unfollow me but you're gonna see social media, anybody that can follow me or can be on it. So keep that in mind. If you do not get validation that this is the right way to do it, you might not know that day if you're doing it right. That's okay. Like that's okay. Let's see. Let's keep going here. Let's more scrolling through the comments. How we doing 31 minutes? I can deal with this. It's sometimes, okay, this is an important thing too. Ready? It's sometimes makes me feel more alone or hopeless when I can't find the cure from all those platforms and people struggling. So, hey Denise, thanks for the comment. I will, let me give you my perspective because I'm one of those platforms you're here in my live stream. So I guess why I'm one of the platforms are people, right? I'm never here to give you a cure. Like what we are talking about here is a process that takes a long time. It's counterintuitive. It doesn't happen overnight. You don't change the way you feel all the time. So sometimes when you are looking for a cure, it means I can't find something that makes me feel different quickly. And so therefore I feel like there's no hope because I just wanna feel better, which I totally get. I understand that you wanna feel better. But none of my platform is about here are ways that you can feel better. What I'm teaching is here are ways that you can learn that you don't have to fear how you feel. Come on, cure me. If I could, I would, trust me. If I had an anxiety, you know what? If I told you that I had a cure, by you, I mean the Royal U, all of you guys. If I was out there beating the drum about an anxiety cure, I'd certainly be making a whole lot more money. But I can't do that. And luckily there's not a lot of people who do that. We understand. So we're trying to be realistic. So just be careful. Like again, intentional use of social media. Am I scrolling to try and find a magic cure? If I am, then I gotta stop scrolling because it doesn't exist. But that doesn't mean, that's like me saying, I feel terrible, like I'm never gonna learn how to play stairway to heaven. The forbidden riff, by the way. Any guitar players, if you play stairway to heaven riff in a guitar story, they're kicking you out. But if I say I'm never gonna learn to play stairway to heaven, but I'm actually playing a harmonica, you would be like, of course you're not learning. Like that's never gonna work. It's never gonna, you're never gonna learn to play the guitar if you're playing a harmonica. So it doesn't mean I'm a bad guitarist or we'll never learn. It means I'm just not even in the right place. So it's okay if you can't find a cure. And if all of those cures didn't work, it doesn't mean anything. It has nothing to do with you. It has to do with the cure. Keep that in mind. It doesn't mean you're hopeless. It means you're the wrong cure. I'm primarily on YouTube now, unless I want my mom to yell at me, then it's Facebook. That's accurate. That is oddly accurate. Anyway, it's pretty good, pretty solid too. I've had to totally revamp and refine the way you social media. Oh, this is good too. Let's put this up, Beth says. I had to totally revamp and refine the way you use social media. It takes a lot of self-discipline. I gotta tell you, like social media, like I said before, it is designed. And by the way, this is not meant to be like tin foil hat conspiracy guy. It's not that. I mean, they're trying to make money. They couch it on what we're changing the world. You're not changing the world. In fact, in many instances, you're changing it for the worse. But you keep telling us, Zuckerberg, that you're changing the world and you claim the high ground, even when there's problems, but they're meant to hold your attention. So it is hard to break that habit. It is hard to break that habit. Like every adult human walking around is barely got their face buried in the phone all the time, it's really hard. So it does take self-discipline and it does take a concerted effort to break that habit. It really is. And especially if you're feeling, you know, badly and you're just trying to find a way to not feel badly, sometimes not scrolling feels like you're doing the wrong thing. But what if I miss something? Like I need something to make me feel better today. But I think it takes away from, I'm not gonna get into too much of a rant outside of recovery, but I do believe that feeling like you must scroll to get better is short changing yourself. Like what did all the people do before social media? No one ever recovered from an anxiety disorder before social media. I mean, I kind of did. I didn't have things to scroll. So just be careful about that. No stairway denied. It's a running gag. And I don't claim to be part of the guitar community because I don't play nearly well enough to claim that, but it's just a running joke. If you walk and do a guitar store, pick up a guitar and start playing the stairway to have an intro, you're gonna get kicked out. And rightly so. It's a good song, but you know. All right, let's see here. Okay, this is good. So Ben says, I have a terrible habit of scrolling Instagram for an hour or two as soon as they wake up. What happens if you break that habit? Like try to break that habit tomorrow. Be a good idea, right? Try it, see what happens. Like anything else when you try to break these habits, it's gonna feel wrong and you're gonna be bad at it. You're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna go back to the habits. Okay, like try it. Let's see here. Cat videos are a pro, definitely a vicious cycle looking for the answer. That's true. I'm a grandma that loves Pinterest. You can still share photos of your breakfast there. Some of these comments are killing me here. You can still share photos of your breakfast there. Remember when social media was pictures of food? I'm sure it still is. I just don't see pictures of food anymore. I'm loving the Vegas nerve description. My conversation, my Vegas nerve is very calmed right now. So good. Let's see here. Recovery involves training our focus and attention. This is good. Recovery involves training our focus and attention. So I think that crosses over to our social media usage. As crazy as it sounds, and I think I'd have to look, I believe sometime Friday or Saturday, I did post that on threads. Like distress tolerance is one of those key things in recovery where learning to tolerate a state of distress that we think we should never tolerate. And FOMO, fear of missing out or like just breaking a habit will generate some distress. It could be a mild level of distress, but it is a really good way to practice distress tolerance. If you're in the habit of scrolling for six hours a day, which some people are, try scrolling for five and a half hours and be uncomfortable for that last half hour. Let's see what happens. So let's see, let's keep going. Took me two years to stop following you. I had to trust myself, this is good. Let's throw this up here too. Everything is good. I'm very excited about the comments as you can see because every comment is good. It took me like two years to stop following you. I had to trust myself that I was okay and didn't need to do the anxiety group stuff anymore. That happens sometimes, that happens. Again, it's like taking a chance, right? So some people feel like I can't unfollow or what if something goes wrong or what if something goes wrong? It's a tough one, but you're taking a chance, taking a chance. Looking for assurance in the community, big no no. So let's clarify this real quickly. Looking for assurance in the community. That's when we go back to the difference between assurance and reassurance. Assurance is learning. So assurance is good psycho-educational material. If you started therapy tomorrow with an anxiety specialist, they would be a lot of assurance in those first few sessions at least. That's a psycho-educational part. It's the part where you keep asking again and again, that's reassurance. That's the part that we gotta stay away from. Let's see here. Okay, social media is full of people who are seemingly doing better than you. It can be depressing. It makes you think you should be, I get that, dude. I get that. Ben, I assume you're identifying as male. I don't know if I'm wrong, I'm sorry. But I get that. That's a bit of a thing that especially young men I think are dealing with. That's a tough one. I had a conversation with a very smart person this morning and we talked about that too. Well, sometimes I hate social media because I hate seeing people do, not you hate seeing people do well. I know nobody has that malicious intent. But if you're struggling, it can be really hard to see people posting their highlight reels on social media. And if you ever feel angry at people who are not struggling or resentful over those people, know that you're not a bad person. That's actually pretty normal. A lot of people don't wanna talk about that, but it's pretty normal if you have those feelings. Just understand that. Doesn't mean you're horrible if you feel that. Recovery is not found on social media. That is true. I am fond of saying that recovery is not in the scroll and will never be. Let's see here. Yep, so Shona is talking about like sort of the pity parties that you can find on social media. At first that might feel really great. If you feel isolated alone and you find a group where everybody's like, nobody understands, I get you. I feel that I have that too. It's horrible, it's so hard, it's okay. That feels really good because then you know, like, oh my God, I'm not the only person like these people get me, they're my people. That's a thumbs up. I'm cool with that. It's just when that becomes the only thing that you engage in, that's problematic. I see somebody talking about how their therapist will refuse to provide reassurance. Yes, anybody who's ever seen me answer somebody's desperate comment with, that's what we're doing. That's what you do. Like I know, here's the way I try to look at it. I know you guys may have heard me use this analogy before. I like to use it, use the flight attendant analogy. So imagine that you're on a plane, like I will fly, but I don't like it. So I'm a little bit of a nervous flyer. I'm a lot better than it used to be, but I'm still nervous about flying. Nothing to do with panic attacks or anything like that. So what I would do is if it got really bumpy, I would look at the flight, the cabin crew, right? So I would look at the flight attendants. You guys have probably heard me say this before. If they're just chilling out, I'm good. I can take my cue from them. And that is what your therapist is trying to do. And that's what people like me on social media will try to do. So when you rush in and you are desperate, you just, Drew, can I, if I could just talk to you for an hour about my fear of harming myself, I know it'll be better. No, what you really want me to do is tell you again that that won't happen, right? Or you want me to tell you again why anxiety isn't harmful. You want me to tell you again that your heart is gonna be okay. And I won't do it. I will try to give you a confident shrug of my shoulders that says back to you, I know you're safe. So now you're gonna have to go find out for yourself that you're safe. I'm not gonna help you feel that way. And Denise says that she loves and hates her therapist. That's also sort of a running joke and the thing that I do and therapists who treat anxiety disorders, sometimes you're gonna hate us a little bit and that's okay. If you don't, eh, it's a little bit like we're not doing it right. So let's see here. A health anxiety page that initially comforted me to became a space where everyone was miserable all the time. Thank you, Ann. I appreciate that comment. That can happen. Again, if that is a thing that people, if that's something that somebody chooses and they think that's the way they're gonna manage their anxiety, I'm not judging. Everybody gets to pick that. It's just not a lot of progress to be found in that. That's all. Communities more than congregating to commiserate. That's a hundred percent true. I started to follow your Instagram before you got a smaller community and managed to answer the questions. You know what? Thank you, Katya. I appreciate this. This is, again, I gotta look over the top of a big comment. This is something that I try to maintain. I really do. So I actually kind of personally appreciate you pointing that out. I try to maintain that. You'll notice that very little of my content is about me. Yeah, I'll make reels. I'm on camera, but you rarely don't very, very, very rarely. I've posted thousands of pieces of content. Will you ever see a selfie from me? You're not gonna see a picture of, you know, a video of me walking toward the camera while I put captions over it. I don't feel like it's about me. I really try hard to make it about the issue, the problem, the principles, the whatever you wanna call this, the approach, the theory, whatever. It's not about me. That's another thing that, this is my personal opinion. I'm not attacking anybody because everybody has different personalities, including the helpers, some of which I think put out really good information. But I always, I cannot imagine making everything I post about me. Like look at me, look at me doing a selfie while I give you some sort of caption. I don't understand that. Wouldn't that sort of make it more about me than you? And I kind of want it to be about you. So I don't know. Thank you for saying that. That's what I'm saying. Appreciate it. Compulsively scrolling. Yep. If you're compulsively scrolling, Mr. Chicken is the best thing on Instagram. I'm gonna, now I'm gonna have to check that out. I'm gonna have to check that out. Mr. Chicken. Let's see here. Videos of a 20 for your role, like how to make a million dollars a day while all work in two hours. Yeah. I hear you on that, man. I hear you. This stuff kills me, but it is there. I used to see a lot of that. I've basically groomed my social media feed. I don't see any dude bros anymore. I see no hustle culture. I see none of that stuff. And if you are a young, a younger man, it is so hard to avoid that sometimes. That's makes like, what are they talking about? Let's see here. Let's see. I never thought to check social media for anxiety advice. I searched on Spotify and found, okay, interesting, a lot of people don't. Don't think that social media is a recovery. You know what? If you don't think social media is a recovery tool, then you might not even be in this room today. And that's totally fine. I think the podcast, to be honest with you, the best tools that I make, but actually, believe it or not, if you ask me the best content that I think I've ever made, I'm sort of making it now. The anxious morning that I wrote last year, the newsletter that I wrote last year, which is about to become two books, by the way, that might be the best work I've ever done. And I think disordered, the podcast that I'm doing with Josh, it's the podcast that we both wish we had done when we first started our podcast. So there's a lot of that. But I think podcasts, longer form content is better. It's really, really hard to teach recovery lessons in Instagram posts or tweets or even worse. So another thing that I'll say about social media that sometimes people fall into the trap of is, I will follow people on Instagram and then they talk about anxiety. So when they talk about, you know, when somebody posts about whatever, I'm afraid of breathing or it feels like you can't breathe, I'm gonna pop in and ask the question, how to overcome? I get that all the time. Sometimes the language barrier, I get that, that's fine. But the comment will just be, how to overcome? How to overcome this? How do you overcome that? And that answer is huge. It's really big. It's not a complicated answer, but it's a big answer. And you can never ever, nobody like me will ever cure your anxiety. No one will ever teach you how to recover in one post or even 10 posts, no matter how many comments we answer. So keep that in mind. You will never learn how to recover from a series of random disjointed Instagram posts stitched together in your head. That's why I like the longer-form content, like the podcast. That's just me. Let's see. I get stuck on social media. It did help for a while, but it doesn't help in the long run. These are hard things, you know, I get it. Let's see here. What is Denise is talking about? I see the letters L, C, S, W, hoping to be recovered by then. Good for you. I hope that all works out for you. We need more helpers. So I appreciate what you're doing. How do you decipher taking your anxiety from something that is a part of your life to a full on, I'm guessing there's career obsession. Oh, okay. So there's a second part to that. How do I take it? How do you decipher between taking your anxiety? Okay. The answer to that is I can do what I am doing because anxiety is not a thing for me anymore. It does not make my choices for me. It influences nothing in my life. It doesn't restrict me in any way. I'm not afraid of it. I don't think about it. I think about it because you guys keep me connected to my own struggles and my own recovery experience. And I appreciate that because it helps me, but I can think of it, I see anxiety. You're not, you're today, Denise, where you're still afraid of your anxiety. Drew that used to be afraid of his anxiety could not do this, but now that I'm not anymore, I can. So the answer to that question is I can do this because I have a completely different relationship with anxiety now. So I could spend an hour on this video talking about anxiety. I could write books about anxiety. I could do, I could study in school. I could do all those things. And then I turned it off and I go away and I'm not thinking about anxiety. So when this camera goes off, I stopped being Drew from the anxious truth. And I'm just Drew like, cause anxiety doesn't play a role anymore. So that's how I can do it. I hope that makes sense. And I appreciate your intent to try and be helper. I love it. Thank you. Let's see here. You can drown in information and say, it's like you can, you 100% can. Thank you, Sonny. This is a really good, accurate thing. Sometimes drowning in information, what that looks like is first of all, you get, you want all the information and when you get it, you're overwhelmed. You're completely and utterly overwhelmed. And I think in certain instances too, even people who sound similar, and I'm not gonna name any names here, but if you're following me on Instagram, I would almost get, I would almost say that I am pretty sure of at least 15 or 20 other people that you probably follow. Some of which sound exactly like me, some of whom sound kinda like me, but will also offer things that maybe you look like they get you off the hook a little bit. I know there's some folks out there that are talking about like, you don't always have to do exposure. Sometimes it's about finding your inner child and like that might be better. And then you have conflicts between us. That can be really tough. That can be really tough. So just notice that then you get overwhelmed because there's so much information and some of the conflicts or you get, you drown in it because you try to just use, excuse me, I'm not finishing a sentence here. You start to drown in it because you start to substitute consuming information about recovery for recovery. So that's a thing. Let's keep going. It's important to why are you listening to the podcast? Ooh, let's put this up because I'm digging this comment. At some point, you know the information already. Now you have to do the work. In my case, I had read the title of a particular podcast episode and pretty much, I'm guessing you're gonna say, you pretty much knew what I was, what I was gonna say already, right? So in the end, that's a really, really good point. Why are you listening to a podcast episode? Why are you watching a YouTube video? If you're using it as a soothing tool, that's not a good idea. If you already know what I'm gonna say about this and you know people say me say all the time, like, hey, can you talk about blah, blah, blah? And my answer a lot of times these days, because I produced so much content already, is what do you think I'm gonna say about that? And a lot of times I'd be like, yeah, I know what you're gonna say about that. So then why do you need me to say it again? Oh, because I'm really nervous right now or I'm afraid right now and I just want, I guess I wanted some reassurance. So just be careful about how you're using it. So let's see here. Why are you listening to a podcast? Really good. I wish it could be a fly at a wall in my class. It's interesting, you know? So there's a lot of really interesting discussions that go on. I am very, very grateful for having the experience that I'm having and getting my degree. Let's see here. Maybe I had a Zoom group. I do not have a Zoom group. No, I do not. I mean, we have, I have an Instagram subscriber group that is true and I will say that for sure, because it's a smaller group, I do interact more in that group. So those of you who kind of miss interacting with me and on the Facebook group where there was like 10,000 people and I would literally wake up every morning to 15 people at least every morning. And that's even with the admin team helping me, wanting me to answer their questions. My Instagram subscriber group does get a whole lot more interaction with me. I'm not trying to sell you on being an Instagram subscriber, but in that group, it's much smaller by default and I can interact a little bit more. So I do do that there, but no, there's no like one-on-ones with me. Let's see here. The best thing on social media is Grease Belly Garage, period. Sure. If you want to know car stuff, I would go follow Jay, for sure. Some of my anxiety is not going to do with my career. Some is fear of fear. Well, you know, not knowing what to do with your career is like regular anxiety, right? So I'll put this up for you. That's life anxiety. Like that's anxiety that all people have, especially young people, right? That's just part of developing. So that's true. Like there is going to be regular life anxiety, for sure, that happens. Oh man, I'm on board with you Ben, really in a big way, the explosion of alpha male content that dismisses mental health as weakness and it's extremely toxic. I'm gonna just say it, I know the guy has eight bazillion followers, but David Goggins has nothing to do with recovering from Paddington disorder. He just doesn't. Nor does Joe Rogan. Nor does, well, you know what? Forget it, I'm not gonna go on too much of a rant. Let's see here. I scroll because of my symptoms. Yeah, but to scroll, everybody starts this way, Denise, but I scroll because of my symptoms. What are you hoping to hear about your symptoms? So if you're new, that's normal to do that, but after a while, like that's not really helping you. I literally could tell you nothing about your symptoms that would help you anyway for more than about an hour. So if you're really struggling with your symptoms, and I saw you mentioned breathing before, I'm not gonna talk about that. Generally speaking, if you ask me about a symptom, I'm gonna point you back to a piece of content I've already made that says you don't need to talk about that symptom because they're all the same. But if I were to talk about your breathing, it might make you feel better for 10 minutes or an hour or maybe till tomorrow, and then you're gonna want it again. So that's why I don't go there, I don't do that. Let's see, trouble posing the group yet because nobody can. I'm gonna scroll down to the bottom because we're gonna hit the 52 minute mark very shortly and I got a boogie. No, no, no, no, no, let's see here. I'm gonna keep going. Are you calling yourself? Are you dissing the noble calling of keyboard war here? I totally am. This is good, I'll put this up on the screen. Don't get me started on that guy. I'm really getting tired of people who have earned the title doctor. I'm not saying they haven't, but I'm tired of people who are chiropractors that use the term doctor to imply that they have like advanced medical knowledge, which is not true. And I'm tired of people using their doctor credentials and then going totally off the rails, totally off the rails. So that dude, Jason just mentioned, he's like the next doctor Oz. And yes, this book is something I would highly, highly, highly recommend. That is the book that taught me the first things that I ever learned about recovery. So let's scroll to the bottom. I'm sorry guys, I can't answer all of them, but let's see. Yeah, body hacks. It's not about body hacks. It's not about ice baths. It's not about any of those things. It's not about, I saw one the other day, again, threads. And this is why I'm kind of hating threads. It was that guy and it was something about facing the sun. Like it's not only get out and like maybe get some sun, which is good advice. I would tell you guys, try and get outside. It does help your mood, but it was very specific. Like you could see it was a definite neuro body hack that specifically when to face the sun and at what angle. Like, Kenny gets it. That's right. Kenny gets it. That was a very popular reel, by the way, which I had a really good time doing. I'm gonna do another one soon. That's an anxiety press conference. I need a little more time to do it. I think sometimes making reels is just me like indulging my frustrated filmmaker side. If I wasn't, I always said, I used to say, if I wasn't in technology, which I used to be in and I'm getting out of now, I would be a filmmaker. Is I really wanted to do that? I guess I wanna do that. And so I'm not going into filmmaking. I'm going into mental health, but then I get to make little 90 second films. So sometimes I'm just having a good time doing that. I will admit. I think we're good, man. I think I'm good. I'm trying to get them all, but let's see here. Chilling is a hot mess. Let's see. Exposure is more than uncomfortable for me. It's supposed to be uncomfortable. Let's see, let's keep going. Somebody's returning to Judy. Hey, Judy, haven't seen you in a while. I don't see you, but oh, maybe you're in the group. That's why I'm glad to see you're here. Anyway, all right guys. So let's see, what did I have up here? They should restream, change the layout on me. So let me put my caption back up again. Throw that up there. Why not? So that's it. If you guys wanna come back, thanks for hanging out by the way. These are always fun hours for me. I do this one that I do every other Monday and then every Friday I do a live stream for the Instagram subscriber group. These are like two of my favorite hours that I spend making content. I always liked the interaction. I love the comments. I love you guys talking to each other. So you can always come back and rewatch these at any time. My suggestion would be you do that on YouTube because it's easiest to find them there. These all go on a playlist on my YouTube channel called Recovery Monday. So you can always go back and rewatch this if there's something that you wanna hear again for some reason, don't be compulsive about it. What else can I tell you? That's about it. New podcast from the anxious truth will come out on Wednesday. This order comes out on Fridays. I'm doing an acceptance workshop with Kim Quinlan. So I posted about that on my stories yesterday. I'm gonna say more about that very shortly. That's gonna be great. We're doing that on July 28th, I think it is. So anyway, that's it. Thanks for hanging out. Thanks for the questions, the comments. We'll see you not next Monday, but the Monday after with some new topic. Don't be compulsive about your social media consumption today. Until I see you next time.