Truly being yourself now days is a constant battle, and a lot of times it inhibits our true potential in life.
When you add opinions from others, generational religious beliefs, stigmas of all sorts, or blatant hate into the picture, you can see why mental health illness is such an epidemic in our day in age. Many will have their own theories for why it has come to be, and I would like to share mine with you in this four-part blog called, Mental Health Illness- Cause & Cure.
I believe there’s an undeniable dynamic between the Cause and effects of our daily lifestyle and the Cure that is administered that sometimes not always formulated or executed properly…leaving more and more people in a spin cycle for the rest of their life.
Daily life for most consists of extreme stress, expectations, disappointments, and very little joy. We emphasize our trials in life so much that we take very little notice of the happiness that we encounter. Where our attention is spent the most on a daily basis is what will trigger good or bad thoughts and feelings.
Our brain is one of the most powerful parts of our body…of course, we need our heart to keep us alive ultimately, but what I’m referring to is the impact our brain has in setting the stage for our day to day life, interpreting feelings appropriately, etc. The magic that can be done by just thinking of something great and wonderful, the goosebumps you get when you go to a concert and hear your favorite song live, the tears of happiness you shed on your daughter’s wedding day. These are all feelings and emotions that start and manifest in our brain.
Think positive, be positive! So cliche, right? It sounds really simple and easy, but for some because of their past experiences and or current situations, that way of thinking is very foreign. Honestly probably excluded from consideration because they just don’t believe in anything going right for them or do not want to think positively because it seems so bad.
One thing that we may not even consider to be an issue in today’s modern age is Social Media. We all love waking up to notifications that 50 people liked your Instagram picture you posted of what you ate last night at your favorite cantina in San Diego. Or the comments we get on our Facebook page about who’s going to your 20 years high school anniversary. These are all fine and dandy, and in a perfect world, that’s all it would be. Right? It’s not!
We all know we can’t have the good without the bad. Maybe we have caused some of that bad in some fashion. The stress and anxiety associated with dealing with the negative impact of social media can cause one to become consumed and engulfed in their online personas, that it takes away from us being happy in real life. Those endorphins we feel from 100 likes are just as real as the emotional breakdown from an argument or debate we have on about things on social media that didn’t go our way.
Over time all we are doing is playing a game on a daily basis of good vs. bad feelings by loading up our social media guns. All we are doing is taking shots at each others posts, and giving our opinion regardless is if hurts someone feelings and don’t even realize it most times because we love the feeling of being right or the bearer of information. We all deal with life differently and have our individual ways of thinking about certain touchy issues, so what you perceive as innocent may really be negative to someone else.
Now don’t get me wrong, I understand there are useful and genuine posts that are intended to help someone who is going through a hard time or motivational memes that brightened up your day, but let us be honest..after awhile no one wants to see or hear that all day long. We want drama, bad news from around the world, gossip over meaningless reality shows, video clips that enrage our souls, and a platform to stand upon and give your own two cents. That’s what Social Media is for right?
But don’t you think after all of the back and forths and rights and wrongs, that it has a negative impact on your mental health in some manner? I think so and it is just the beginning of how I feel technology is being used against the good of humankind because we are too overly informed about every subject in the world you can think of, and we want the information right now!
The American Academy of Pediatrics has warned about the potential for negative effects of social media in young kids and teens, including cyber-bullying and what they call, “Facebook depression.” But the same risks may be true for adults, across generations.
In a previous blog about Social Media and Mental Health, you can see how bad of an influence it can have on our child’s lives even though it a very familiar way of communication for kids nowadays. This is something that I believe will not get better going forward, as big businesses and users now know how to target and track each person’s online activity, making it extra hard to avoid desired or unwanted feeds on social media.
These are just a few examples of how social media can negatively affect your overall mental health and maybe it’ll just make you more aware of your own usage of how and what you’re doing on your social media platforms.
Next week I’ll be talking about how another Cause that I feel contributes to the Mental Health Illness epidemic that is hindering some from being truly happy. Stay tuned!