ï»żEp 66 - I'm addicted to social media, can EMDR help me?
Welcome back to the EMDR doctor podcast. I have managed to tear myself away from the kitchen today to do a bit of podcasting - now to tell you the truth I am not someone who really loves the kitchen nowadays, I tend to be very simple with meals and no fuss so long as I get some protein and veggies in to me most days! Whilst I love to watch cooking shows, (and also, secretly, dating shows) I really donât love the process of cooking. But this week is different, because I am making a very special engagement cake for someone I am close to. I used to be a bit of a baker and really enjoyed the decorating of all the kids birthday party cakes, I have made dragons, teddybears, cats, doll cakes, fairy cakes, the works, but never made a really professional looking celebration cake. So this week has been about youtube videos and cake crumbs and sugar up to the elbows! Which as been really fun. I might share a picture of the cake in my newsletter next weekâŠ
And aside from the fun, another really great result of doing this, is that I have spent a lot less time on social media, a lot less scrolling and watching and (Iâm a bit ashamed to say) impulse buying. And I have noticed a bit of a change in myself as a result of less social media - I am a bit more focussed, less distracted, and I am more able to keep my own goals in mind, rather than being distracted by all the shiny things that people want me to look at, be involved in and buy online.
And alongside this, this week I have had a couple of people telling me that social media has become problematic for them, that they wake up in the night to maybe go to the toilet, then get the phone out and scroll overnight for a couple of hours, which of course is going to make any issues with insomnia worse, with the influx of the bright light on the eyeballs, which makes our brain think it is daytime, and makes it much harder to go back to sleep at 3 or 4 in the morning. Then we wake up tired, find it hard to get out of bed, procrastinate, kid ourselves that we are just checking the weather, and find ourselves straight back on instagram or facebook again. It is so addictive! Our brains are craving that novelty, colour and movement and fun exciting things to look at, it is so available, almost impossible to resist.
For some people who have a creative job or pastime, social media can feel like looking for inspiration, enjoying the creative input of other people. But if we are always looking to others, getting hooked on their output, then it is really hard for our own creativity to have enough space to flourish and bloom. If we are to put out creative work, then we need breathing space, quiet time, reflection, time to âbrewâ those little tealeaves of ideas into something magnificent.
So why is something so fun, so bad? Of course itâs not bad if its not impacting our lifestyle. If we have many hours to spare, if it doesnât matter if we sleep well or not, if we donât have other tasks we need to do, it might just be a lovely pleasant pastime. But how many of us are actually in that position.
And there are actually some more sneaky ways that scrolling harms our brains. The rapid fire new information makes our attention spans shorter - we are less able to concentrate for longer periods. We may be more prone to anxiety, especially with the abundance of bad news we a re bombarded with. We might find ourselves with a bad case of comparisonitis - we only see the very best, collated or even created moments in other peoples lives, so the temptation is to compare ourselves with those other very attractive moments, so our self esteem suffers. The more information we are fed, the less we think for ourselves, so our cognitive skills will diminish, at the same time as our brains get tired from collating so much new information and trying to assimilate it all at once, so our cognitive abilities decline. We might exercise or play or socialise less, so become more isolated and unfit and joyless. And if we are looking at things that are exciting, which most posts are designed to be, then we get a rise in cortisol, the stress hormone, every time we pick up the phone, leading to higher stress levels and maybe further fatigue and irritability.
Most people know if it is a problem for them.
And most people know what to do about it - no phones in the bedroom, or at the dining table or on your work desk, have a sm free hour before bed, keep it for âtreatâ time, a bit like chocolate, after dinner in small amounts it is absolutely fine!
Sometimes, more radical action is needed, remove the apps from the phone, stop posting in sm, and have a sm cold turkey detox. And that works for some.
But what if that addiction feels too hard to break?
Like all addictions, often the need for it is underpinned by the amount of stress and anxiety we have in our lives - if we are distressed, and not coping, then we look for ways to distract our selves from the distress. And social media is very very good at that! And possibly not as harmful as some other addictions.
So from an EMDR perspective, if I was talking to a client about social media addiction, we would look at the underlying issues, the past traumas or difficult memories, resolve those with EMDR, settle down the distress that is experienced from those old memories, make sure there are some good healthy coping strategies in place, possibly do some âstandardâ psychology work around say boundaries, relaxation techniques, maybe some positive event scheduling, then we could use an addiction protocol, which might target the impulse or the need or desire to do the scrolling, alongside the triggers for scrolling and possibly the negative beliefs about ourselves ie Im weak, Iâm not good at xyz, my work doesnât matter, whatever it may be, process those beliefs, triggers and urges and then do some success work with a future template.
This is really similar to how we would approach say, a gaming addiction, or a binge eating issue, or more serious substance use addictions. Of course a social media addiction does not have the same safety concerns as other addictions, but I am guessing that it is really really common, and not going away anytime soon!
If this has resonated with you, maybe trial some of those simple strategies I spoke about earlier, set some small goals like âno sm after dinnerâ or just removing the app from the phone, and see how you go with those initial, straightforward strategies. If it is more of a problem and needs some further intervention, have a chat with your local friendly EMDR practitioner and do some work on it so that you can lead the best life for you, without being tied to a colourful shiny appâŠ
Now just in case you are not sick of the sound of my voice by now, I will let you know that in June I am going to be doing a bit of a webinar about Shame, so if you are a clinician and would like other about how to treat Shame in clinical practice, then soon on my website I will have a link to book in for the webinar. 4th June, 7 pm. Then later in July I will be speaking about Dissociation, and in August, I will be hosting a webinar with my friend Cate Bearsley-Smith all about DID , which is such a fascinating topic, I canât wait to bring you that one too.
I hope this has been helpful to you, please feel free to reach out to me via my website emdrdoctor.com.au or my email address [email protected] and if you have enjoyed this podcast, please do like, review and subscribe, or leave a comment or a request for a podcast topic, I love to hear from you all, and I will talk to you again next week, in the meantime take good care, bye for now.
