Social media is such a mixed blessing. I have found tremendous community in the short time I’ve been on Instagram with Inkwood and am grateful for all the wonderful folks I have and am yet to meet. I set up that account with intentionality after struggling and finally banishing FB from my life, and applied the lessons I learned so I could be there with less internal pressure, guilt, and depression. And yet. I still get stuck and end up feeling guilty or sad around what I am or am not doing, and generally avoiding it when I’ve been away for more than a day or two.
When my health tanks (which it’s doing a lot of lately), social media posting is the first thing to go, so that I can still get other work accomplished. And I’ve gotten better about not beating myself up for having such a spotty posting record – I can only do so much. But. The longer I’m away the harder it is to get back. It’s like this stream that keeps flowing, and I’ve jumped out, and now when I go to get back in – I’m in the same place, but that stream has kept going without me. I will be entering something new. Again. Which is daunting.
So what to do?
First, it’s important to recognize when social media is taking a toll on your mental health. Not all my social media breaks are due to my physical health. Take time periodically to evaluate how you’re truly feeling when you scroll through your feed.
Second is giving yourself permission to step away, with or without saying so online. I try to keep social media in perspective: it’s an important tool for my business, and I enjoy connecting with like-minded folks on there, but nothing really bad is going to happen if I need to disappear for a few days or even a week or two. It’s not ideal from a business connectivity perspective, but if I don’t tend to my needs, my business is going to suffer beyond just online connections.
It’s also worth remembering that those we build real relationships with online will still be there for us when we come back.
Third is to develop techniques to help you overcome barriers to getting back on social media and to distance yourself from anything that doesn’t serve your highest good. There is no reason to have posts showing up in your feed that regularly make you angry or sad. Unfriend or mute (my favorite social media tool!) people with toxic streams.
In terms of getting back to social media after time away (which is my particular challenge) I employ a few different techniques. One is to not go directly on IG or Twitter but to craft a light, easy article (even if it’s not super topical) and post that first. Once a new article is posted, for some reason that makes it easier for me to get back into the stream.
Occasionally even that’s not enough. I post and hide, lol. This of course makes me feel guilty because I do care greatly about you, Beloved Community, and want to be there to support you, just as you support me. But I recognize that sometimes this is a necessary step, and I know that I’ll be back to viewing your work and connecting with you soon.
A trick I use quite a bit when I’m stuck with any task is to come at it sideways. I might start a different, much easier task, knowing that it will spark creativity or generate ideas and lead me back to posting or whatever task it was that I was stuck on. In that vein, I often find that I might wrestle a challenging task by putting off something else – like house cleaning or napping (seriously).
A final technique is to break down whatever it is that I’m stuck on into very easy bits, with no expectations of doing anything else. For example, for an IG post, I might take a few un-staged pics to see if something grabs me, or I might jot down a quick thought or two that gets me ruminating. I can walk away whenever I’m done and know that I’ve taken a step in the right direction.
No one else can dictate what makes you feel good or bad – how we feel is genuine and we need to own that. The trick is to pay closer attention to your gut feelings, and that little voice of your truest self than to the noise created on social media.
