November 8, 2021 • 40 mins
It has finally arrived! Kat's summary of her Instagram experiment! Kat (@kat.defatta) unfollowed everyone on her Instagram page for 30 days and this episode talks about what she learned along the way. Very often it can feel like we are working for our social media accounts rather than they are tools that work for us... and Kat wanted to figure out how to help us take our power back. If you are someone who struggles with comparison, losing time scrolling social media, and struggling to stay present in your life then this episode may have a lightbulb moment or two for you.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hi guys, and welcome back to another new episode of
You Need Therapy. My name is Kat and I'm the host.
And if you're new to You Need Therapy, welcome, always welcome,
even if you're not new. Just a quick reminder up
top that, yeah, I'm a licensed therapist, and no, this
is not therapy itself, but what we talked about here
(00:31):
may at some point lead you to go and experiment
with some therapy of your own. So most of you
guys have heard my spiel where I talk about how
I'm a licensed therapist, but I am a human just
like you, and I want to start this episode off
with that, just because I'm going to be talking about
(00:51):
something that I did and this is an experiment I
did in my life. So I'm coming to you as
a human being and not so much a therapist, more
of like a human that happens to be one, because
I just assume I'm making a big, gross assumption out
there that what I did and what I am going
to be talking about today is something that you might
have um some ties to and some feelings too, and
(01:13):
might relate to a lot at a human level and
not as me as an expert level. So I did
this thing. And if you're a regular listener or follower
of mine, then you know what I'm talking about when
I'm I say I did this thing, because I've been
talking about it for a month, and let's talk about
(01:33):
what I did. I unfollowed everybody on Instagram on my
cat dot de fata account, so I actually used to
have like way too many Instagrams. I used to get
made fun of it a little bit more often than
I didn't get made fun of it because I had
a personal Instagram that I had a work Instagram, and
then I had the podcast Instagram, and it was very
(01:55):
hard to keep all this separate. And eventually what I
did is I just I didn't delete my personal Instagram
because it has all those pictures and great things on
it that I want to keep, but I just don't
use it, not even logged into it. If people tag
me or send things to me, I don't get them,
and I put up my last post says that like,
I'm not going to be using this. So I just
have my cat dot to fid Instagram, and then I
(02:17):
have my podcast one and my cat dot to fid
a Instagram. I'm just gonna call it my Instagram. It's
very different than my other one. Like I I post
quotes and stories, and I might put a picture up
every now and then from my life, but I don't
have this pool to like constantly post what I'm doing
in the moment, and I really like enjoy the story
(02:39):
aspect of that, where I don't feel like everywhere I
go and every experience that I have, I'm like reaching
from my phone to post about it. I post on
that account more from a place of really me, the
therapist podcaster type human, not my personal life, which feels
really good to me and actually probably changed why this
(03:00):
Pagram experiment, um, I felt things differently than I thought
I would because I already don't have as much I
still do. I don't have as much of a pool
too in the moment tell everybody what I'm doing with
my life all the time at all. I do like
post own stories and creating conversations and stuff like that.
And then I do have like a close friends group
(03:21):
on there where I might post more personal stuff like
if I do go to some event or some of
you might be familiar with my niece Addie. UM I
post a lot more of videos with like my family
and stuff like that with my nieces on my close friends,
because I just don't think that I always need to
(03:42):
share my whole life with everybody on the internet all
the time, which we'll get to. I'm not getting so
far ahead of myself. I can't help it, because I
wanted to make this episode literally the week after I
started this experiment, because it didn't take long for me
to come up with all of these lessons and and
figure out all these things. It took a couple of
day as really, and I did say it was going
(04:03):
to journal every day, and I will also say that
I had good intentions to I journal. At one time.
I took some notes down and I like wrote things
randomly in my phone as I noticed them, But I
really struggle with journal. And I also told myself I
was going to start keeping a diary every single day
because I found one in my grandma's house in January
(04:24):
where I found a bunch from like this woman from
like the twenties, like a long time ago, and I
thought it was so cool to go back and read them.
And then I was like, I'm going to do that,
and I bought two journals and I did it for
a probably probably a month I did to get back
into that. I would love to get back into that.
You know, I'm a big fan of journaling, but uh,
I do struggle. I do struggle to be consistent. Anyway,
(04:45):
the point of me saying that, as I said, I
was going to journal about this, I did once and
then I took some notes. Also a side note, a
very very great lawyer told me one time, there's really
no point of us talking about what you wish you
would have done and what you wish you wouldn't have done,
because we can't change the past. All we can talk
about and all we can do is work on the
future and what we can do with what you've already done.
(05:06):
And I was like, okay, cool that, I'm going to
take your advice. So let's like get into this. Um
So I unfollowed everybody, and a couple of things influenced
me on following everybody. If you're like why did you
do that? And also like, don't people like deactivate their accounts?
Isn't that what people do when they want to like
cleanse or figure things out? Maybe they do. However, I'm
(05:27):
not a huge fan of this like all or nothing
black and white thinking, and I knew I was going
to have Instagram again, So rather than going on like
this hiatus where I don't post or see anything or
anything like that, I wanted to do things a little
bit differently, and I wanted to see how I would
show up and what would change about how I use Instagram.
(05:49):
If I wasn't seeing everybody else's content, I could still
create content and I could still show up on there.
I could still connect with people through messages and comments
on my stuff, but I wasn't getting in you dated
by everybody else's stuff all of the time in that month.
So a couple of things influenced me wanting to do this.
One was an incredible conversation that I had with Nabiha
(06:09):
Sayed who um was on the podcast a couple of
months ago, and you can listen to that episode. It's
called Taking Power Back over the Internet, and we just
had an awesome conversation about how Instagram kind of like
takes our power away and we actually have a lot
of power and agency over it. We just forget that
and we have to remind ourselves. So that was the
first thing that got me thinking about it, because she
(06:31):
told a story about somebody who had done this, and
I was like, oh, that seems great, like I want
to try that. And then I experienced something in my
personal life that I was just feeling like sad about.
And I kept getting like deeper like pangs of sadness
every time I opened Instagram because I was seeing something
that um and I bet some of you guys have
had these experiences. I was seeing something that I wanted
(06:55):
that a lot of other people had, and it didn't
feel good. And so I was like, Okay, well, I
need to stop hurting my own feelings because I'm the
one that keeps opening up my phone and seeing this.
And if this is not a good time to stop
looking at the highlights of everyone else's life when else
would be a good time. So that's why I did it,
and that's why I did it. Now, now, before we
(07:18):
get into it, I would like to say I love
social media. None of this is about like bashing social media.
I didn't do a bunch of research about like the
behind the scenes and like conspiracy theories of all that.
This isn't like a Social Dilemma episode, which that was
(07:38):
a very good documentary. But this isn't that. This is
not about convincing people to not like social media or
not use it, because I like it and I use
it and I'm going to continue to use it. It's
more about how do we figure out ways in which
social media isn't helping us, and then ways in which
we do enjoy it, and how do we fure out
(08:00):
ways where we actually are controlling how we're using social
media versus social media is controlling us, and there are
ways to do it. I'm here to spread the good news.
The hope is that you don't have to be controlled
by your Instagram. You don't have to be controlled by
the content on Instagram. You just have to figure things
out and what is controlling you and why. And it's
(08:22):
helpful to gain some evidence of Okay. Yeah, I hear
people say that it's not helpful to see this, this
and this. I hear people say it's not helpful to
follow these kinds of people. But until I really experience
and I really know inside me why that's not helpful,
I have less buy in to do it. It just
feels like a nice concept, you know. So thirty days,
I gave myself thirty days and follow everybody. Also, this
(08:44):
is funny. The day that I decided to do. This
is the day that, like the next or the next
days when Facebook and what's happened? Instagram like got shut
down and all that stuff happened, and I thought it
was me. I was like, oh my gosh, Instagram is
locking me out of my account because I followed too
many people. No, it was not a personal attack on me.
(09:04):
And then also they make it really hard, and I
don't know why I didn't look into it. You can
only do so many things within like a certain amount
of time on Instagram, so I could only on follow
like two people at a time, and I was following
a lot of people, and so it took me like
probably two days to actually unfollow everybody, which I feel
like it should be easier to do that. You should
(09:26):
be able to select all, but you can't. So maybe
on the next update they'll allow us to select all.
Who knows. So now that you guys know, I mean,
I love I love Instagram. I love social media. I
think it can be a great and helpful, fun tool.
At the same time, I think that through the evolution
(09:48):
of it, things have gone from a helpful way to
connect right and express and stay in touch with people
and into this addictive program that kind of steals our
time and our self esteem. So this experiment was to
give me space really just to see how I can
identify how I can find a way to use Instagram
for good in a way that doesn't encourage me to
feel bad about my life. And before this experiment, I
(10:10):
would say that Instagram was using me like I was
like and I felt like an employee of Instagram, and
I was a very good employee in the sense that
like they were controlling and telling me what to do
without me even knowing. Now, before I did this, how
I believe I was using Instagram. I was using it
for a bunch of different ways. I was using it
for work, so as a marketing tool, I was using
it for fun um watching videos, reading funny memes, all
(10:32):
of that entertainment um. I was using it as a
distraction in a way to dissociate when I was overwhelmed,
like I wanted just wanted to break instead of just
like laying and like meditating or like breathing, I don't
Instagram and scroll and dissociate that way and and take
my mind off of like actually what's going on, which
didn't actually take my mind off of We'll get into
it um and then I use it as a means
(10:54):
of self regulation in terms of self esteem. So it
was like a marker, right, based on followers and likes
and what other people are doing, what other people looked
like in other people's weekends and other people's vacations. So
I used it as a way to either boost or
attempt to boost my self esteem at times, which feels
so ichy to say. And it wasn't a conscious thing
(11:15):
that I was doing. I wasn't like, oh, this is
going to help boost myself a steam. It's something that
just I noticed that I was doing. And then I
used it as a way to connect, like a way
to stay in touch with friends, and a way to
stay in touch with acquaintances or people who aren't really
in my life, but like I would like to stay
in touch with you maybe like people that have had
conversations with on the podcast, right, Like those people aren't
(11:38):
going to be in my life every day, but oh
I had this connection and this experience it's with them,
and I I'd like to stay in touch, So not
just friends, but with like acquaintances, and then like also
like random people that I would never have met at all.
If it wasn't for the Internet. And then I also
was using it as a way to kind of like
spy on people or like I we say, stock people
(12:01):
from my past or people I'm just curious about. So
I used it as a way to get information about
people that I wouldn't otherwise not have access to. And really,
how I want to use it and how I wanted
to use it is for work, Like I think that's great.
I want to use it for a connection, and I
(12:21):
want to use it to maintain contact with close friends.
And this is one of the things that I learned
is that, like I think, I want to use social
media to help me stay connected with like family and
close friends, maybe some like acquaintances, but I don't need
to stay in contact with every single person that I've
ever met in my life or every person that I
think like is cool or not cool, you know what
(12:43):
I'm saying, right, And then I want to keep using
it for fun because I think that is like an
exciting part of social media is that it it's entertainment
and then inspiration. So I think that social media can
be a way to find inspiration, whether it's for work,
whether it's for just your um emotional mental health life,
whether it's for projects or decor or style. I think
(13:08):
that's a really cool way to find inspiration, and I
want to keep being able to do that. So I'm
going to talk about three main things that I noticed
and and this, so I will I will say and
I think I said this earlier. What I thought I
would feel and find was a little bit different than
what I did, like and it wasn't bad. And I
attribute this to the fact that my old personal Instagram
(13:30):
I kind of like preemptively did this work on accident,
like last year when I stopped using this account, because
I follow followed way more like people from throughout my
life rather than like people I met through the podcast
or um the therapy world, and just like the industry
mental health and stuff like that. It was more, I
(13:51):
guess you could say, everyday people. And then I posted
and I curated my life a little bit differently over
there because that was my person and all like me.
And I look at my Instagram now as a mixture
between like my work and and me. It's like a mixture.
It's not just my work and it's not just me.
(14:12):
It's a combination. This is what I learned Nuver one
what I noticed is I was following way too many
people that I did not care about. I Um, I
feel kind of icky saying that, because like, as a human,
I care about all humans, but like I don't care
to know everything that you're doing all the time. Like
(14:32):
I just noticed that as I was on following people,
I'm like, what in the world, why did I think
that I needed to know everything that this person is doing?
And it just felt like kind of strange as I
was doing it, because it just felt like this normal
thing that we all do is we just like follow people,
and I think I want to remind us that it's
like not normal to know that much about people's lives.
(14:52):
And it felt like it was some unwritten rule that
like you have to follow people who follow you, and
like not following people can be seen as I mean
like when actually it can literally mean nothing, right, And
I have to admit I've said things like they don't
even follow me, or they didn't follow me back or
stuff like that, and like what is that? Like why
(15:14):
does that matter? We take it so personally when there's
so much more in that of why somebody would follow
or not follow you, and nobody owes us a follow,
Like that's saying, like, you you better be interested in
looking at everything I put on the internet, and like,
we don't have to be interested in that for multiple reasons.
It doesn't have to be I literally don't care about you.
(15:36):
It just could be like I don't want to see that.
There's a million reasons, and I just don't think that
people should feel obligated to no random things about our
lives or the content we're putting out right, So, like
I write a lot on my Instagram page, and I
think it's totally okay for people to be like she
writes too much, and like what is she talking about?
And I don't agree with her and I don't want
to follow her. That's okay. You don't have to follow me,
(15:58):
you don't have to read my post, you don't have
to watch my stories. Like it's totally okay for you
to say not for me. Yeah, social media is just
very weird, and if you think about it and about
the way that it's currently used, like our brains and
our eyes have constant access to what people are doing
all of the time, what kind of we have access
to what people want us to think they're doing, and
(16:19):
what people want us to see and it's a very
curated expression of life. And we know this, but we
also don't know at the same time, like we know it,
but we don't feel know it, if that makes any sense.
And I don't think our mental health and our brains
and our psyches are equipped to handle this much information
about other people. In my opinion, it's like overload, and
(16:40):
I think that we're being normalized to have an overload
of information. It's okay to not want to know what
certain people are doing. It doesn't mean you don't care
about them necessarily. It just means you don't want a
constant stream of available comparison at your fingertips. Maybe maybe
that's your reason for me, that's my reason. So this
is also why I want to continue to you is
it and follow my actual friends because I'm followed back
(17:03):
a lot, not a lot of people, but I followed
back people, and I'm going to continue to follow back
people as I remember and and see stuff. But I
do want to keep following my friends and the people
in my life. And that feels different than following like
an acquaintance or somebody I was friends with ten years ago,
or somebody I met once or something like that, because
(17:24):
I don't just see my friend's highlight reels. I see
their insides too, so I get to see the celebration
of things they post, and I also know that that
isn't the whole story. And again we know that, like
we know that, and we know this about everyone and
what people post Like this is something that's talked about
on social media all the time, but it's hard to
actually feel, No, it's hard to actually like feel an
(17:47):
experience that and believe that inside of you when you
only get one side of the story. Still, and this
is also part of the reason I think that we
need to be a little bit more honest with ourselves
about comparison, because even if we say we try not
to pair ourselves, we do. It's natural and it's a
human reaction to seeing something. It doesn't always mean that
it's bad, but it's a knee jerk reaction and it's
(18:09):
kind of programmed into our culture. And I think they're
like seems to be this like strange imaginary scale that
we measure the goodness of of life on, or the
goodness of us on, or just goodness in general on.
There's just like scale, and Instagram helps take that scale
and makes it tangible, right, so now we can actually
measure goodness or value or whatever onlis and comments and
(18:32):
follows and d m s and all that stuff. I
just don't think that, um, it's necessary because this strange,
imaginary scale that now we have tangible measures for, like
isn't even real if we really think about it, because
we're measuring certain parts of people's lives, not people's lives.
That was one of the first takeaways, Like, we just
tend to follow people and think that we have to
(18:55):
follow people that we don't need to follow. We don't
have to follow, and I just want take the obligation out.
So and I even say that with like you can
un follow me, like you don't want to see my stuff,
Like that's totally cool. I'm going to try really hard
not to take it personally because I feel that way
about other people and it's not always personal. And even
(19:15):
if it is personal, it's okay if somebody doesn't like us,
it's okay. I feel like I'm beating a dead horse,
but like, it's okay for somebody to not want to
follow along with your life, and it's okay for you
to not want to follow along with somebody's life. It's
okay if you don't want to see it, which leads
me to number two. It feels very good to not
know what other people are doing. There was an initial
(19:38):
couple of days where I was like, oh, like, I
don't know what's going on, Like I don't know what
my friends are doing. I don't know, like I think.
I texted Amy something about like I miss see pictures
of Maggie, her cat, and so she sent me a
bunch of pictures of Maggie, I think, in her Halloween
costume or something in the very beginning. But like there's
this initial of like, oh, this is how I used
(19:59):
to like o people and what they're doing all the time, obviously,
and so for a second I was like I feel
a little bit left out. And then I started to
feel just really good. I felt so free, like free,
and I wish I could find accurate words to express
the freedom that I experienced, like not knowing what anyone
else was doing or saying or thinking. And it was
(20:19):
like an ignorance is bliss type thing, like it really was.
In the last thirty days, I got to be obsessed
with what I was doing, where I was, what I
thought I didn't have thousands of things to compare my
Saturday night too, or my pictures from my night out
with my friends on Halloween. And I wasn't just knee
jerk reacting opening up my phone and scrolling while I
(20:42):
was places like I was present and I got to
be so present, and again I was still posting, but
I also had less of a desire to post because
I was like, oh, like, I just get to do
this when I want. There's no competition here. I'm not
seeing what they're posting, so I have to post it.
I'm not getting an idea to post this because they
(21:03):
posted that. I'm not feeling less than so I have
to get some like a shot of dopamine, so I
need to post this. Like I was posting more of
just really what I wanted to and what I wanted
to and it felt very good to be able to
be obsessed with what I was doing, and I think
that's a good thing. I want more of us to
be obsessed with our own lives rather than the lives
(21:23):
of other people. And people wanted to know like what
did your feed look like? And my all my feed
was like my posts and then adds, so there was
no interest in me scrolling through that, so it was
very cool. It was just me. And when you get
to compare yourself to just you and your your baseline
and you like yourself, you simply get to keep liking
(21:44):
yourself without any extra work. Like, oh my gosh, I
just I don't have the right words, is what I'm
trying to say. Also, it is so so, so so
so nice to find out things about people in person
and to have intimate conversations where someone's telling you about
their vacation or their new relationship or hard day at
work or promotion or you know what I mean. Like,
(22:06):
I didn't know as much about people's lives and I
probably have missed some things. And that's totally okay. It's
okay not knowing everything about people. Like I'm totally cool.
I did not die. I'm not suffering anyway, Like, and
it's okay not knowing things about pop culture. It's okay
not knowing everything about the news. Like we can stay
informed to an extent, and we can be in charge
(22:28):
of when we want to be informed and how much.
So if I want to see what's going on with
Kim Kardashian, I can go look up. The news is Instagram.
I can go look at her Instagram. I don't have
to follow it, and I don't have to have it
in my face all the time. If I want to
know what's going on in the news in the world
and politics, I can go Google that and find that out.
I don't have to have a constant stream of that
(22:50):
on my feed. That is encouraging me to keep cooking
and keep scrolling and keep doing. And like I said,
when it comes to my personal life, I didn't know
as much about people and what they were doing. Like
I missed things. I missed birthdays, I missed I don't know,
like announcements of things, I missed, people going on trips.
But it fostered more space for me to enjoy my
(23:11):
life and be in my own life. And then with
that also it created a deeper opportunity to connect with
my people. So I found myself calling people more often,
and I do not like talking on the phone. I
found myself texting people and more often, which takes more effort, yes,
but it feels better to me, and it felt more real,
and I felt more connected as a human and to
(23:31):
an extent, I felt a little bit more special because
I was having intimate one on one conversations or group
conversations in person, rather than finding everything out about these
people who are my friends on the internet. I'm gonna
like the side track for a second. It kind of
(23:52):
reminds me of this experience I had in high school
where oh my gosh, Okay, So this guy was having
a party, and I think it was the theme. I
had a theme, and I want to say it was
like CEOs and office host, which one like bar if
I could go on about the problem with that theme
in general, and the theme for a party of like
a bunch of sixteen year olds. But however, the day
of the party, or like the week of the party
(24:14):
or something, some time around the party, I was told
that was canceled. No big deal. I didn't really drink
much in high school, and at that point I wasn't.
I didn't drink at all. Like if I would have
gone to that party, if that party would have happened,
I wouldn't have been drinking. However, I found out that
the party was actually not canceled. They told me and
another one of my friends who also didn't drink, that
it was canceled because I guess the inviteless got too
(24:37):
big and we would just be like, quote unquote a
waste of space since we were going to be drinking.
And again, you guys, you might be like, oh my gosh,
you have to remember, like, these are sixteen year old,
seventeen year old, eighteen year old brains. So I'm not
mad at these people at the time. Yes, my feelings
were very hurt, but these aren't adults that are doing this.
These are people who don't have a fully developed brain yet,
(24:58):
and so the empathy isn't really fully there. So don't
be too hard on these people. Not a nice thing,
but we're not still mad. My point in telling the
story is that until I actually knew I wasn't invited
to the party, everything was fine. I was actually working
at the mall. I was working to shift at Limited
two when I found out, probably like stalking the candy
(25:19):
shelves or something, because I was like, one of my
favorite things to do is organized the candies very weird
or fold close in the back where I also loved
breaking down boxes and taking them to the recycling because
it took like an hour to do that and then
I didn't have to talk to anybody. Also, like r
I P Limited two is gone, so I missed that store.
I would like it to come back anyway. So I
was fine until I found out, Like, I only felt
(25:42):
sad and hurt and angry when I discovered that I
wasn't invited the party um that all my friends were at.
And this is the essence. The reason I bring this
up is because this is the essence of how social
media can be. You are constantly seeing all the things
you weren't invited to. Literally and figuratively, yes, the parties, yes,
all of the parties that you see on all of
the events, and all the social things, but also the
(26:03):
engagements people are having, the pregnancies, the job promotions, the
weight loss journeys, the the weddings, the vacations. Like you
get the point, You're seeing everybody else's stuff, and like,
I'm okay, and I like love my life and I'm
like doing the thing. I have some sadness about things
I don't have, but that's all right. But I don't
get super super super bummed out until I see how
(26:24):
everybody else, it looks like, is getting that stuff except me.
Everybody else's quote unquote being invited to the party of
whatever it is that thing that you want, whether it's
to be included or to have something. So you're fine
until you see that over and over and over again.
We're seeing over and over and over again all the
things we do not have and the things that other
(26:45):
people do, and we don't see the things that those
people don't have. And I just don't think that's necessary.
I just don't think it's necessary for us to like
have in front of us all the time. Now, can
we completely get away from that? No, But we can't
find ways to have less of shoved in our face.
So Number one I noticed was following way too many
people that I actually just didn't care about in the
(27:07):
sense to know everything about their life and not care
about them as a human being. And then also it
felt very good to not know what people are doing.
And I think that I thought I was going to
feel more left out, but really I had that initial
like a I don't know how to function without knowing,
and then I was like, wait a second, this is
nice and it's actually helping me connect more with the
people that are really important to me. Okay. And then three,
(27:30):
so this is the hardest one for me to admit.
I almost didn't keep this in here, but I just
felt like it would be doing a disservice and not
telling you because I think a lot of people might
relate to this. And this is probably one of my
favorite parts in my favorite takeaways of this experiment. The
one time I journal this is kind of what I
was journaling about. And it was in the first couple
(27:51):
of days, and I had this initial like weird feeling
about like this feels so egotistical that I'm like on
following everybody, but I still want people to follow me,
Like I had a fear of like, oh no, At first,
I was like what if people on follow me because
I'm on following them? And then oh man, what was
going to happen to my community of followers and my
numbers and my blah blah blah. And I hate saying that,
(28:14):
Like I really do hate admitting that I do. I
really do. I want you guys to know that, but
it did matter to me at that point and through
me kind of digging into like why am I worried
about this? And like this feels egotistical? Where is my ego?
How big is my ego? What's going on? Like I
wanted to pay attention to that, like where is my
narcissism showing up? And it came down to this idea
(28:36):
that like, I really want people to think I'm important,
and that's just me being very honest. And again I
noticed this the first couple of days. It started with
the people are going to unfollow me. Then like this
is egotistical, Like this experiment feels narcissistic. And then I
was like, wait a second, Like I want people to
think I'm important, now I do also think some of them,
like I don't want to lose My whole following is
(28:57):
rooted in the podcast, in the community and and being
able to grow that and promote that and using this
as a marketing tool. But there is a part of
it that's rooted in the desire for people to care
about me, which I just talked a lot about how
like it's okay to not care about people, but also
it's okay to want people to care about you. To me,
that feels very real and there's just nothing wrong with it,
even though it seems a little tough for me to
(29:20):
to say, like I need people and I need attention,
I need validation just like the rest of you. And
that's what I'm saying, when I'm coming to you today
as a human and not so much as as a therapist,
what I want us to look at, if you're kind
of grabbing onto this idea as well, is to look
at our relationship with the constant contact and followers and
our ability to identify love and care in that. I
(29:43):
think what social media has done in my brain is
create an endless cycle of more is better, and if
more is better, than even more is even better, and
it's hard to shift into a quality over quantity mindset
in the space. And going back to what I was
talking about earlier is like an obvious reason you may
come up with of why somebody is following you as
that they care about you, they care about what you're doing,
(30:05):
they care about what you have to say, and that
feels really good, and why that may be partly true,
that could be true for a lot of people. We
don't necessarily always know that. That's not always why somebody's
following you. That's not always why somebody's watching your story,
it's not always why somebody's liking your post. And I
was talking to my own therapist a couple of weeks ago.
She's very good at challenging me kindly because you know
(30:27):
I can come off as you know, I know it all,
and I'm fine in therapy as a therapist. And in
the past we've wrestled this this idea of like I
love myself, yet I still need X y Z, and
I spent a lot of time on that in my
past working with her. Then recently I made a comment
about part of my life being unfair because I worked
(30:47):
so hard at this one thing and I still can't
seem to get what I want. I still can't seem
to get that one thing, but I worked so hard
at it, and I also know that I deserve it,
and so we were talking about that, and then we
started talking about out working hard and what I've done
to get my needs met in my life. And then unexpectedly,
lightbulbs and like watery eyes came in. It didn't cry,
(31:10):
but it's really also because we ran out of time.
But what came out of that conversation is we went
back to this idea and this truth that I didn't
feel very important growing up. I didn't and it wasn't
because my parents didn't love me or they weren't present
and available and good parents that as that's not why.
It's because I had a lot of experiences that didn't
(31:32):
feel so great, and I created conclusions and made up
stories about those experiences to help me make sense of them.
And what I came up with was I wasn't very important,
I wasn't very wanted. I wasn't We're not going to
go all into it, but that that's some of it.
And I guess what, Creating content that people care about
and seem to care about and want to see and
(31:52):
want to hear and want to watch has been a
great way for me to feel important. It's been a
great way for me to call that not heal that
old wound from when I was really young. And maybe
for you, it's like posting pretty pictures or creating carousels
of vacations and parties and evenings that people you and
are at in your comment section. Maybe if people wanting
(32:15):
to know where you shop or where you gotta pair
of shoes, like Instagram gives us all this monetarily free,
like this free tool that helps us get a manufactured
version of a basic and justifiable need, this need to
feel important, which, when we narrow it down, can be
another way to feel cared about and to feel cared for,
(32:37):
which I mean, are you full circling this right? How much?
How many times have I said like care in this episode?
And I realized that I looked at Instagram as a
way to prove something, you know, like to prove something,
to prove that I'm important, And actually I have nothing
to prove like I really don't like I know, and
I can no feel that I am important and I
don't have to have this tool to give me that.
(32:59):
And if no one liked my content and if nobody
followed me, then I would still be the exact same person,
with the exact same heart. It doesn't change me, It
doesn't change my importance, doesn't change my values and change
my worth, and my Instagram is not a full reflection
of me, so it's kind of like cheapening my importance
as well. So one of the biggest takeaways I've I've
(33:21):
had from this experience is that social media has this
opportunity to bring us the idea that people really do
care about us or they don't like. We assume if
somebody is watching something or following us or liked our picture,
we assume that they are paying attention. And if they're
paying attention, then we're important. And if I'm important, then
people care about me. And if if people care about me,
(33:43):
then I have value. And if I have value, I'm worthy.
And if I'm worthy and I am good and I'm good,
I will get the things I want. We can keep
going and that that stream might be different for you.
But here is where social media, specifically Instagram, manipulates us,
and that it helps us manipulate ourselves. We create false
nare If that helped put band aids, these are this
is band aid on a wound rather than heal the wound.
(34:05):
If I can gain more of a following than I'm
more important, more people watch my story than I'm more important,
more people comment on this post, I'm more important, and
more people like this, I'm more important, and more people
dm me I'm more important. And if I'm more important,
that means that I'm cared about. And if I'm cared about,
I'm worthy. And if I'm worthy, I'm going to be wanted.
Don't we all want to be wanted? The problem is
I can create the biggest following in the world, and
(34:27):
maybe the part of me who felt alone and not
important and maybe unwanted gets covered up right. The issue
here is that at what expense does this thing get
covered up? At what expense? What is it going to
cost us? Because do I now have to curate content
to be wanted? Is that what makes me important? My content?
My pretty picture from my vacation, my bikini body, Like,
(34:49):
what is it that's making me important? What are these
people seeing? And what do I have to keep producing?
And we may have covered up a wound, but are
we tending to it and are we caring for it?
Probably not? So then what we've done is we've created
this monster we have to feed. And because Instagram wants
to stay on Instagram for as long as possible so
they can send you more ads, you can buy more things,
(35:11):
so they can sell more ads, so they can make
more money, and all of that, they're going to help
you feed the monster as well. So here's where I
am now. Because I want us to heal the wounds.
I don't want us to cover up the wounds. I
don't want us to dissociate from the wounds. I don't
want us to ignore the wounds. I don't want any
(35:31):
of that. I want us to be able to heal them.
And so part of that is just being honest. Right,
So part of being able to heal something is acknowledging it. Right,
can't help something you are refusing to acknowledge. And if
we can step back from what we're doing and how
we're manipulating Instagram, we can look at, okay, how are
you be using this an unhealthy way? And then what
(35:52):
do we actually need to do in that area of
our life? So here's what I'm doing. I'm going to
allow myself to be very picky about who and what
I follow. It again seemed to me that I had
to follow everyone because if I didn't, I as rude
or mean or something like that. And it's not like
there's really nothing. I keep talking about this, but there's
really nothing else to say. It's just not mean to
not want to follow somebody. And I'm also okay if
people want to follow me, like I really am. I
(36:14):
wondered if that would feel different. I wondered if that
would shift or change, And like I also wonder if
that would feel different if I still had that old account.
I guess we don't know, and we don't have to
know because I don't have it. But I'm okay if
people don't want to follow me because it's not a
reflection of how important I am or how cared about
I am. I'm also just not watching as much on
Instagram and I'm not watching as many stories and I'm
(36:36):
not scrolling as much. And I actually started enjoying not
having content to look at because I still don't follow
as many people. I follow people now, and I'll probably
follow more as I like again be like, oh my
best friend, I forgot to re follow you, but I
don't have as much to see on my feed and
so there's not as much content to take in. And
also through this experiment, I really, I'm telling you guys,
(36:57):
is shifted the way I feel. I really just don't
hair as much about knowing everything. And then I'm also
the third thing, I'm not following a lot of influencer
and educational type accounts. I'm following some, but I picked
a few that I really liked, and then that's that.
And of course, like as time goes on, I might
find new ones, but I don't need to follow every
therapist and every meme account. It's already hard enough and
(37:20):
to be in innubated with like six hundred different posts
about attachment and trauma and this and that, and I
just don't need it all, and it gets to be
that simple, and you don't need it all either, Like
there's just such a thing as information overdrive. And if
I want to look at something, I can go search
it and I can google it, or I can find
them on Instagram if their account is public, I can
(37:40):
look at it when I want to look at it.
But we don't need to have just a constant scroll
of information, or I don't need to have a constant
scroll of information like that. I don't have it in
me to see that all the time. And so, in
kind of a conclusion of this, remind you that this
all came from a place of wanting Instagram to be
and continue to be a good fun thing. Instagram is
allowed to be fun. It is fun. It's allowed to
(38:02):
be helpful. It is helpful. It's allowed to be an
amazing tool to help grow a business and promote your
people and celebrate your people and celebrate things. It's allowed
to be all of that. But we have to find
agency in power within ourselves. And so to find agency
in power within ourselves, we have to find where we're
getting our power taken away. And for me, part of
My power being taken away was because I felt like
(38:25):
I needed to produce and be a certain way based
on what I was seeing out there to continue to
feel and keep up with the joneses and be important.
So we have to remember that we're in charge of
how we use it, and to do that, we also
have to deconstruct these unconscious messages that Instagram in the
world has kind of like put inside of our brains.
One being that knowing what everyone is doing all the
(38:45):
time is normal, it's not. Also the idea that I
need to know what other people are doing you don't.
And then lastly, when people don't follow me and means
that they don't care about me. If they don't follow me,
that means something negative about me. Those are all ideas
that we just got to deconstruct. And then we can
construct these ideas. We can like our lives without anyone
(39:05):
else liking them. We can have fun without anybody else
knowing about it. We can have experiences that people don't
know about and they're still meaningful. And it's more important
for us to do it for ourselves and do it
for the Graham. That's a huge one. Now. I hope
that you guys decide to do whatever you want to
do with your Instagrams that feels right for you. This
was just something that I wanted to do for me
(39:27):
um and something that's been helpful for me. But I
hope that we can all just put out content that
we like and that gets to be enough. I'm starting
to look at my Instagram page like a little love
letter to myself, and that might sound weird, I know,
but I mean it in this way that I'm going
to post and say and show things that I think
are important, regardless of the world, because I think I'm
(39:47):
important and I know I'm important, and that feels so loving,
and the feedback that I get or I don't get
doesn't get to change my mind, and what other people
are posting doesn't get to change my mind about how
I feel about what I'm putting out there. So there,
you guys have it, my Instagram experiment now. As always,
I hope that this episode was helpful to you, and
it's a lot to be helpful in different ways. I
(40:09):
think different people might get different stuff out of this,
but I hope you get what you need, and with that,
I hope you have the day that you need to
have and you create the content that you need to
create for you, and I will see you on Wednesday
for cotch Docs
Hi guys, and welcome back to another new episode of
You Need Therapy. My name is Kat and I'm the host.
And if you're new to You Need Therapy, welcome, always welcome,
even if you're not new. Just a quick reminder up
top that, yeah, I'm a licensed therapist, and no, this
is not therapy itself, but what we talked about here
(00:31):
may at some point lead you to go and experiment
with some therapy of your own. So most of you
guys have heard my spiel where I talk about how
I'm a licensed therapist, but I am a human just
like you, and I want to start this episode off
with that, just because I'm going to be talking about
(00:51):
something that I did and this is an experiment I
did in my life. So I'm coming to you as
a human being and not so much a therapist, more
of like a human that happens to be one, because
I just assume I'm making a big, gross assumption out
there that what I did and what I am going
to be talking about today is something that you might
have um some ties to and some feelings too, and
(01:13):
might relate to a lot at a human level and
not as me as an expert level. So I did
this thing. And if you're a regular listener or follower
of mine, then you know what I'm talking about when
I'm I say I did this thing, because I've been
talking about it for a month, and let's talk about
(01:33):
what I did. I unfollowed everybody on Instagram on my
cat dot de fata account, so I actually used to
have like way too many Instagrams. I used to get
made fun of it a little bit more often than
I didn't get made fun of it because I had
a personal Instagram that I had a work Instagram, and
then I had the podcast Instagram, and it was very
(01:55):
hard to keep all this separate. And eventually what I
did is I just I didn't delete my personal Instagram
because it has all those pictures and great things on
it that I want to keep, but I just don't
use it, not even logged into it. If people tag
me or send things to me, I don't get them,
and I put up my last post says that like,
I'm not going to be using this. So I just
have my cat dot to fid Instagram, and then I
(02:17):
have my podcast one and my cat dot to fid
a Instagram. I'm just gonna call it my Instagram. It's
very different than my other one. Like I I post
quotes and stories, and I might put a picture up
every now and then from my life, but I don't
have this pool to like constantly post what I'm doing
in the moment, and I really like enjoy the story
(02:39):
aspect of that, where I don't feel like everywhere I
go and every experience that I have, I'm like reaching
from my phone to post about it. I post on
that account more from a place of really me, the
therapist podcaster type human, not my personal life, which feels
really good to me and actually probably changed why this
(03:00):
Pagram experiment, um, I felt things differently than I thought
I would because I already don't have as much I
still do. I don't have as much of a pool
too in the moment tell everybody what I'm doing with
my life all the time at all. I do like
post own stories and creating conversations and stuff like that.
And then I do have like a close friends group
(03:21):
on there where I might post more personal stuff like
if I do go to some event or some of
you might be familiar with my niece Addie. UM I
post a lot more of videos with like my family
and stuff like that with my nieces on my close friends,
because I just don't think that I always need to
(03:42):
share my whole life with everybody on the internet all
the time, which we'll get to. I'm not getting so
far ahead of myself. I can't help it, because I
wanted to make this episode literally the week after I
started this experiment, because it didn't take long for me
to come up with all of these lessons and and
figure out all these things. It took a couple of
day as really, and I did say it was going
(04:03):
to journal every day, and I will also say that
I had good intentions to I journal. At one time.
I took some notes down and I like wrote things
randomly in my phone as I noticed them, But I
really struggle with journal. And I also told myself I
was going to start keeping a diary every single day
because I found one in my grandma's house in January
(04:24):
where I found a bunch from like this woman from
like the twenties, like a long time ago, and I
thought it was so cool to go back and read them.
And then I was like, I'm going to do that,
and I bought two journals and I did it for
a probably probably a month I did to get back
into that. I would love to get back into that.
You know, I'm a big fan of journaling, but uh,
I do struggle. I do struggle to be consistent. Anyway,
(04:45):
the point of me saying that, as I said, I
was going to journal about this, I did once and
then I took some notes. Also a side note, a
very very great lawyer told me one time, there's really
no point of us talking about what you wish you
would have done and what you wish you wouldn't have done,
because we can't change the past. All we can talk
about and all we can do is work on the
future and what we can do with what you've already done.
(05:06):
And I was like, okay, cool that, I'm going to
take your advice. So let's like get into this. Um
So I unfollowed everybody, and a couple of things influenced
me on following everybody. If you're like why did you
do that? And also like, don't people like deactivate their accounts?
Isn't that what people do when they want to like
cleanse or figure things out? Maybe they do. However, I'm
(05:27):
not a huge fan of this like all or nothing
black and white thinking, and I knew I was going
to have Instagram again, So rather than going on like
this hiatus where I don't post or see anything or
anything like that, I wanted to do things a little
bit differently, and I wanted to see how I would
show up and what would change about how I use Instagram.
(05:49):
If I wasn't seeing everybody else's content, I could still
create content and I could still show up on there.
I could still connect with people through messages and comments
on my stuff, but I wasn't getting in you dated
by everybody else's stuff all of the time in that month.
So a couple of things influenced me wanting to do this.
One was an incredible conversation that I had with Nabiha
(06:09):
Sayed who um was on the podcast a couple of
months ago, and you can listen to that episode. It's
called Taking Power Back over the Internet, and we just
had an awesome conversation about how Instagram kind of like
takes our power away and we actually have a lot
of power and agency over it. We just forget that
and we have to remind ourselves. So that was the
first thing that got me thinking about it, because she
(06:31):
told a story about somebody who had done this, and
I was like, oh, that seems great, like I want
to try that. And then I experienced something in my
personal life that I was just feeling like sad about.
And I kept getting like deeper like pangs of sadness
every time I opened Instagram because I was seeing something
that um and I bet some of you guys have
had these experiences. I was seeing something that I wanted
(06:55):
that a lot of other people had, and it didn't
feel good. And so I was like, Okay, well, I
need to stop hurting my own feelings because I'm the
one that keeps opening up my phone and seeing this.
And if this is not a good time to stop
looking at the highlights of everyone else's life when else
would be a good time. So that's why I did it,
and that's why I did it. Now, now, before we
(07:18):
get into it, I would like to say I love
social media. None of this is about like bashing social media.
I didn't do a bunch of research about like the
behind the scenes and like conspiracy theories of all that.
This isn't like a Social Dilemma episode, which that was
(07:38):
a very good documentary. But this isn't that. This is
not about convincing people to not like social media or
not use it, because I like it and I use
it and I'm going to continue to use it. It's
more about how do we figure out ways in which
social media isn't helping us, and then ways in which
we do enjoy it, and how do we fure out
(08:00):
ways where we actually are controlling how we're using social
media versus social media is controlling us, and there are
ways to do it. I'm here to spread the good news.
The hope is that you don't have to be controlled
by your Instagram. You don't have to be controlled by
the content on Instagram. You just have to figure things
out and what is controlling you and why. And it's
(08:22):
helpful to gain some evidence of Okay. Yeah, I hear
people say that it's not helpful to see this, this
and this. I hear people say it's not helpful to
follow these kinds of people. But until I really experience
and I really know inside me why that's not helpful,
I have less buy in to do it. It just
feels like a nice concept, you know. So thirty days,
I gave myself thirty days and follow everybody. Also, this
(08:44):
is funny. The day that I decided to do. This
is the day that, like the next or the next
days when Facebook and what's happened? Instagram like got shut
down and all that stuff happened, and I thought it
was me. I was like, oh my gosh, Instagram is
locking me out of my account because I followed too
many people. No, it was not a personal attack on me.
(09:04):
And then also they make it really hard, and I
don't know why I didn't look into it. You can
only do so many things within like a certain amount
of time on Instagram, so I could only on follow
like two people at a time, and I was following
a lot of people, and so it took me like
probably two days to actually unfollow everybody, which I feel
like it should be easier to do that. You should
(09:26):
be able to select all, but you can't. So maybe
on the next update they'll allow us to select all.
Who knows. So now that you guys know, I mean,
I love I love Instagram. I love social media. I
think it can be a great and helpful, fun tool.
At the same time, I think that through the evolution
(09:48):
of it, things have gone from a helpful way to
connect right and express and stay in touch with people
and into this addictive program that kind of steals our
time and our self esteem. So this experiment was to
give me space really just to see how I can
identify how I can find a way to use Instagram
for good in a way that doesn't encourage me to
feel bad about my life. And before this experiment, I
(10:10):
would say that Instagram was using me like I was
like and I felt like an employee of Instagram, and
I was a very good employee in the sense that
like they were controlling and telling me what to do
without me even knowing. Now, before I did this, how
I believe I was using Instagram. I was using it
for a bunch of different ways. I was using it
for work, so as a marketing tool, I was using
it for fun um watching videos, reading funny memes, all
(10:32):
of that entertainment um. I was using it as a
distraction in a way to dissociate when I was overwhelmed,
like I wanted just wanted to break instead of just
like laying and like meditating or like breathing, I don't
Instagram and scroll and dissociate that way and and take
my mind off of like actually what's going on, which
didn't actually take my mind off of We'll get into
it um and then I use it as a means
(10:54):
of self regulation in terms of self esteem. So it
was like a marker, right, based on followers and likes
and what other people are doing, what other people looked
like in other people's weekends and other people's vacations. So
I used it as a way to either boost or
attempt to boost my self esteem at times, which feels
so ichy to say. And it wasn't a conscious thing
(11:15):
that I was doing. I wasn't like, oh, this is
going to help boost myself a steam. It's something that
just I noticed that I was doing. And then I
used it as a way to connect, like a way
to stay in touch with friends, and a way to
stay in touch with acquaintances or people who aren't really
in my life, but like I would like to stay
in touch with you maybe like people that have had
conversations with on the podcast, right, Like those people aren't
(11:38):
going to be in my life every day, but oh
I had this connection and this experience it's with them,
and I I'd like to stay in touch, So not
just friends, but with like acquaintances, and then like also
like random people that I would never have met at all.
If it wasn't for the Internet. And then I also
was using it as a way to kind of like
spy on people or like I we say, stock people
(12:01):
from my past or people I'm just curious about. So
I used it as a way to get information about
people that I wouldn't otherwise not have access to. And really,
how I want to use it and how I wanted
to use it is for work, Like I think that's great.
I want to use it for a connection, and I
(12:21):
want to use it to maintain contact with close friends.
And this is one of the things that I learned
is that, like I think, I want to use social
media to help me stay connected with like family and
close friends, maybe some like acquaintances, but I don't need
to stay in contact with every single person that I've
ever met in my life or every person that I
think like is cool or not cool, you know what
(12:43):
I'm saying, right, And then I want to keep using
it for fun because I think that is like an
exciting part of social media is that it it's entertainment
and then inspiration. So I think that social media can
be a way to find inspiration, whether it's for work,
whether it's for just your um emotional mental health life,
whether it's for projects or decor or style. I think
(13:08):
that's a really cool way to find inspiration, and I
want to keep being able to do that. So I'm
going to talk about three main things that I noticed
and and this, so I will I will say and
I think I said this earlier. What I thought I
would feel and find was a little bit different than
what I did, like and it wasn't bad. And I
attribute this to the fact that my old personal Instagram
(13:30):
I kind of like preemptively did this work on accident,
like last year when I stopped using this account, because
I follow followed way more like people from throughout my
life rather than like people I met through the podcast
or um the therapy world, and just like the industry
mental health and stuff like that. It was more, I
(13:51):
guess you could say, everyday people. And then I posted
and I curated my life a little bit differently over
there because that was my person and all like me.
And I look at my Instagram now as a mixture
between like my work and and me. It's like a mixture.
It's not just my work and it's not just me.
(14:12):
It's a combination. This is what I learned Nuver one
what I noticed is I was following way too many
people that I did not care about. I Um, I
feel kind of icky saying that, because like, as a human,
I care about all humans, but like I don't care
to know everything that you're doing all the time. Like
(14:32):
I just noticed that as I was on following people,
I'm like, what in the world, why did I think
that I needed to know everything that this person is doing?
And it just felt like kind of strange as I
was doing it, because it just felt like this normal
thing that we all do is we just like follow people,
and I think I want to remind us that it's
like not normal to know that much about people's lives.
(14:52):
And it felt like it was some unwritten rule that
like you have to follow people who follow you, and
like not following people can be seen as I mean
like when actually it can literally mean nothing, right, And
I have to admit I've said things like they don't
even follow me, or they didn't follow me back or
stuff like that, and like what is that? Like why
(15:14):
does that matter? We take it so personally when there's
so much more in that of why somebody would follow
or not follow you, and nobody owes us a follow,
Like that's saying, like, you you better be interested in
looking at everything I put on the internet, and like,
we don't have to be interested in that for multiple reasons.
It doesn't have to be I literally don't care about you.
(15:36):
It just could be like I don't want to see that.
There's a million reasons, and I just don't think that
people should feel obligated to no random things about our
lives or the content we're putting out right, So, like
I write a lot on my Instagram page, and I
think it's totally okay for people to be like she
writes too much, and like what is she talking about?
And I don't agree with her and I don't want
to follow her. That's okay. You don't have to follow me,
(15:58):
you don't have to read my post, you don't have
to watch my stories. Like it's totally okay for you
to say not for me. Yeah, social media is just
very weird, and if you think about it and about
the way that it's currently used, like our brains and
our eyes have constant access to what people are doing
all of the time, what kind of we have access
to what people want us to think they're doing, and
(16:19):
what people want us to see and it's a very
curated expression of life. And we know this, but we
also don't know at the same time, like we know it,
but we don't feel know it, if that makes any sense.
And I don't think our mental health and our brains
and our psyches are equipped to handle this much information
about other people. In my opinion, it's like overload, and
(16:40):
I think that we're being normalized to have an overload
of information. It's okay to not want to know what
certain people are doing. It doesn't mean you don't care
about them necessarily. It just means you don't want a
constant stream of available comparison at your fingertips. Maybe maybe
that's your reason for me, that's my reason. So this
is also why I want to continue to you is
it and follow my actual friends because I'm followed back
(17:03):
a lot, not a lot of people, but I followed
back people, and I'm going to continue to follow back
people as I remember and and see stuff. But I
do want to keep following my friends and the people
in my life. And that feels different than following like
an acquaintance or somebody I was friends with ten years ago,
or somebody I met once or something like that, because
(17:24):
I don't just see my friend's highlight reels. I see
their insides too, so I get to see the celebration
of things they post, and I also know that that
isn't the whole story. And again we know that, like
we know that, and we know this about everyone and
what people post Like this is something that's talked about
on social media all the time, but it's hard to
actually feel, No, it's hard to actually like feel an
(17:47):
experience that and believe that inside of you when you
only get one side of the story. Still, and this
is also part of the reason I think that we
need to be a little bit more honest with ourselves
about comparison, because even if we say we try not
to pair ourselves, we do. It's natural and it's a
human reaction to seeing something. It doesn't always mean that
it's bad, but it's a knee jerk reaction and it's
(18:09):
kind of programmed into our culture. And I think they're
like seems to be this like strange imaginary scale that
we measure the goodness of of life on, or the
goodness of us on, or just goodness in general on.
There's just like scale, and Instagram helps take that scale
and makes it tangible, right, so now we can actually
measure goodness or value or whatever onlis and comments and
(18:32):
follows and d m s and all that stuff. I
just don't think that, um, it's necessary because this strange,
imaginary scale that now we have tangible measures for, like
isn't even real if we really think about it, because
we're measuring certain parts of people's lives, not people's lives.
That was one of the first takeaways, Like, we just
tend to follow people and think that we have to
(18:55):
follow people that we don't need to follow. We don't
have to follow, and I just want take the obligation out.
So and I even say that with like you can
un follow me, like you don't want to see my stuff,
Like that's totally cool. I'm going to try really hard
not to take it personally because I feel that way
about other people and it's not always personal. And even
(19:15):
if it is personal, it's okay if somebody doesn't like us,
it's okay. I feel like I'm beating a dead horse,
but like, it's okay for somebody to not want to
follow along with your life, and it's okay for you
to not want to follow along with somebody's life. It's
okay if you don't want to see it, which leads
me to number two. It feels very good to not
know what other people are doing. There was an initial
(19:38):
couple of days where I was like, oh, like, I
don't know what's going on, Like I don't know what
my friends are doing. I don't know, like I think.
I texted Amy something about like I miss see pictures
of Maggie, her cat, and so she sent me a
bunch of pictures of Maggie, I think, in her Halloween
costume or something in the very beginning. But like there's
this initial of like, oh, this is how I used
(19:59):
to like o people and what they're doing all the time, obviously,
and so for a second I was like I feel
a little bit left out. And then I started to
feel just really good. I felt so free, like free,
and I wish I could find accurate words to express
the freedom that I experienced, like not knowing what anyone
else was doing or saying or thinking. And it was
(20:19):
like an ignorance is bliss type thing, like it really was.
In the last thirty days, I got to be obsessed
with what I was doing, where I was, what I
thought I didn't have thousands of things to compare my
Saturday night too, or my pictures from my night out
with my friends on Halloween. And I wasn't just knee
jerk reacting opening up my phone and scrolling while I
(20:42):
was places like I was present and I got to
be so present, and again I was still posting, but
I also had less of a desire to post because
I was like, oh, like, I just get to do
this when I want. There's no competition here. I'm not
seeing what they're posting, so I have to post it.
I'm not getting an idea to post this because they
(21:03):
posted that. I'm not feeling less than so I have
to get some like a shot of dopamine, so I
need to post this. Like I was posting more of
just really what I wanted to and what I wanted
to and it felt very good to be able to
be obsessed with what I was doing, and I think
that's a good thing. I want more of us to
be obsessed with our own lives rather than the lives
(21:23):
of other people. And people wanted to know like what
did your feed look like? And my all my feed
was like my posts and then adds, so there was
no interest in me scrolling through that, so it was
very cool. It was just me. And when you get
to compare yourself to just you and your your baseline
and you like yourself, you simply get to keep liking
(21:44):
yourself without any extra work. Like, oh my gosh, I
just I don't have the right words, is what I'm
trying to say. Also, it is so so, so so
so nice to find out things about people in person
and to have intimate conversations where someone's telling you about
their vacation or their new relationship or hard day at
work or promotion or you know what I mean. Like,
(22:06):
I didn't know as much about people's lives and I
probably have missed some things. And that's totally okay. It's
okay not knowing everything about people. Like I'm totally cool.
I did not die. I'm not suffering anyway, Like, and
it's okay not knowing things about pop culture. It's okay
not knowing everything about the news. Like we can stay
informed to an extent, and we can be in charge
(22:28):
of when we want to be informed and how much.
So if I want to see what's going on with
Kim Kardashian, I can go look up. The news is Instagram.
I can go look at her Instagram. I don't have
to follow it, and I don't have to have it
in my face all the time. If I want to
know what's going on in the news in the world
and politics, I can go Google that and find that out.
I don't have to have a constant stream of that
(22:50):
on my feed. That is encouraging me to keep cooking
and keep scrolling and keep doing. And like I said,
when it comes to my personal life, I didn't know
as much about people and what they were doing. Like
I missed things. I missed birthdays, I missed I don't know,
like announcements of things, I missed, people going on trips.
But it fostered more space for me to enjoy my
(23:11):
life and be in my own life. And then with
that also it created a deeper opportunity to connect with
my people. So I found myself calling people more often,
and I do not like talking on the phone. I
found myself texting people and more often, which takes more effort, yes,
but it feels better to me, and it felt more real,
and I felt more connected as a human and to
(23:31):
an extent, I felt a little bit more special because
I was having intimate one on one conversations or group
conversations in person, rather than finding everything out about these
people who are my friends on the internet. I'm gonna
like the side track for a second. It kind of
(23:52):
reminds me of this experience I had in high school
where oh my gosh, Okay, So this guy was having
a party, and I think it was the theme. I
had a theme, and I want to say it was
like CEOs and office host, which one like bar if
I could go on about the problem with that theme
in general, and the theme for a party of like
a bunch of sixteen year olds. But however, the day
of the party, or like the week of the party
(24:14):
or something, some time around the party, I was told
that was canceled. No big deal. I didn't really drink
much in high school, and at that point I wasn't.
I didn't drink at all. Like if I would have
gone to that party, if that party would have happened,
I wouldn't have been drinking. However, I found out that
the party was actually not canceled. They told me and
another one of my friends who also didn't drink, that
it was canceled because I guess the inviteless got too
(24:37):
big and we would just be like, quote unquote a
waste of space since we were going to be drinking.
And again, you guys, you might be like, oh my gosh,
you have to remember, like, these are sixteen year old,
seventeen year old, eighteen year old brains. So I'm not
mad at these people at the time. Yes, my feelings
were very hurt, but these aren't adults that are doing this.
These are people who don't have a fully developed brain yet,
(24:58):
and so the empathy isn't really fully there. So don't
be too hard on these people. Not a nice thing,
but we're not still mad. My point in telling the
story is that until I actually knew I wasn't invited
to the party, everything was fine. I was actually working
at the mall. I was working to shift at Limited
two when I found out, probably like stalking the candy
(25:19):
shelves or something, because I was like, one of my
favorite things to do is organized the candies very weird
or fold close in the back where I also loved
breaking down boxes and taking them to the recycling because
it took like an hour to do that and then
I didn't have to talk to anybody. Also, like r
I P Limited two is gone, so I missed that store.
I would like it to come back anyway. So I
was fine until I found out, Like, I only felt
(25:42):
sad and hurt and angry when I discovered that I
wasn't invited the party um that all my friends were at.
And this is the essence. The reason I bring this
up is because this is the essence of how social
media can be. You are constantly seeing all the things
you weren't invited to. Literally and figuratively, yes, the parties, yes,
all of the parties that you see on all of
the events, and all the social things, but also the
(26:03):
engagements people are having, the pregnancies, the job promotions, the
weight loss journeys, the the weddings, the vacations. Like you
get the point, You're seeing everybody else's stuff, and like,
I'm okay, and I like love my life and I'm
like doing the thing. I have some sadness about things
I don't have, but that's all right. But I don't
get super super super bummed out until I see how
(26:24):
everybody else, it looks like, is getting that stuff except me.
Everybody else's quote unquote being invited to the party of
whatever it is that thing that you want, whether it's
to be included or to have something. So you're fine
until you see that over and over and over again.
We're seeing over and over and over again all the
things we do not have and the things that other
(26:45):
people do, and we don't see the things that those
people don't have. And I just don't think that's necessary.
I just don't think it's necessary for us to like
have in front of us all the time. Now, can
we completely get away from that? No, But we can't
find ways to have less of shoved in our face.
So Number one I noticed was following way too many
people that I actually just didn't care about in the
(27:07):
sense to know everything about their life and not care
about them as a human being. And then also it
felt very good to not know what people are doing.
And I think that I thought I was going to
feel more left out, but really I had that initial
like a I don't know how to function without knowing,
and then I was like, wait a second, this is
nice and it's actually helping me connect more with the
people that are really important to me. Okay. And then three,
(27:30):
so this is the hardest one for me to admit.
I almost didn't keep this in here, but I just
felt like it would be doing a disservice and not
telling you because I think a lot of people might
relate to this. And this is probably one of my
favorite parts in my favorite takeaways of this experiment. The
one time I journal this is kind of what I
was journaling about. And it was in the first couple
(27:51):
of days, and I had this initial like weird feeling
about like this feels so egotistical that I'm like on
following everybody, but I still want people to follow me,
Like I had a fear of like, oh no, At first,
I was like what if people on follow me because
I'm on following them? And then oh man, what was
going to happen to my community of followers and my
numbers and my blah blah blah. And I hate saying that,
(28:14):
Like I really do hate admitting that I do. I
really do. I want you guys to know that, but
it did matter to me at that point and through
me kind of digging into like why am I worried
about this? And like this feels egotistical? Where is my ego?
How big is my ego? What's going on? Like I
wanted to pay attention to that, like where is my
narcissism showing up? And it came down to this idea
(28:36):
that like, I really want people to think I'm important,
and that's just me being very honest. And again I
noticed this the first couple of days. It started with
the people are going to unfollow me. Then like this
is egotistical, Like this experiment feels narcissistic. And then I
was like, wait a second, Like I want people to
think I'm important, now I do also think some of them,
like I don't want to lose My whole following is
(28:57):
rooted in the podcast, in the community and and being
able to grow that and promote that and using this
as a marketing tool. But there is a part of
it that's rooted in the desire for people to care
about me, which I just talked a lot about how
like it's okay to not care about people, but also
it's okay to want people to care about you. To me,
that feels very real and there's just nothing wrong with it,
even though it seems a little tough for me to
(29:20):
to say, like I need people and I need attention,
I need validation just like the rest of you. And
that's what I'm saying, when I'm coming to you today
as a human and not so much as as a therapist,
what I want us to look at, if you're kind
of grabbing onto this idea as well, is to look
at our relationship with the constant contact and followers and
our ability to identify love and care in that. I
(29:43):
think what social media has done in my brain is
create an endless cycle of more is better, and if
more is better, than even more is even better, and
it's hard to shift into a quality over quantity mindset
in the space. And going back to what I was
talking about earlier is like an obvious reason you may
come up with of why somebody is following you as
that they care about you, they care about what you're doing,
(30:05):
they care about what you have to say, and that
feels really good, and why that may be partly true,
that could be true for a lot of people. We
don't necessarily always know that. That's not always why somebody's
following you. That's not always why somebody's watching your story,
it's not always why somebody's liking your post. And I
was talking to my own therapist a couple of weeks ago.
She's very good at challenging me kindly because you know
(30:27):
I can come off as you know, I know it all,
and I'm fine in therapy as a therapist. And in
the past we've wrestled this this idea of like I
love myself, yet I still need X y Z, and
I spent a lot of time on that in my
past working with her. Then recently I made a comment
about part of my life being unfair because I worked
(30:47):
so hard at this one thing and I still can't
seem to get what I want. I still can't seem
to get that one thing, but I worked so hard
at it, and I also know that I deserve it,
and so we were talking about that, and then we
started talking about out working hard and what I've done
to get my needs met in my life. And then unexpectedly,
lightbulbs and like watery eyes came in. It didn't cry,
(31:10):
but it's really also because we ran out of time.
But what came out of that conversation is we went
back to this idea and this truth that I didn't
feel very important growing up. I didn't and it wasn't
because my parents didn't love me or they weren't present
and available and good parents that as that's not why.
It's because I had a lot of experiences that didn't
(31:32):
feel so great, and I created conclusions and made up
stories about those experiences to help me make sense of them.
And what I came up with was I wasn't very important,
I wasn't very wanted. I wasn't We're not going to
go all into it, but that that's some of it.
And I guess what, Creating content that people care about
and seem to care about and want to see and
(31:52):
want to hear and want to watch has been a
great way for me to feel important. It's been a
great way for me to call that not heal that
old wound from when I was really young. And maybe
for you, it's like posting pretty pictures or creating carousels
of vacations and parties and evenings that people you and
are at in your comment section. Maybe if people wanting
(32:15):
to know where you shop or where you gotta pair
of shoes, like Instagram gives us all this monetarily free,
like this free tool that helps us get a manufactured
version of a basic and justifiable need, this need to
feel important, which, when we narrow it down, can be
another way to feel cared about and to feel cared for,
(32:37):
which I mean, are you full circling this right? How much?
How many times have I said like care in this episode?
And I realized that I looked at Instagram as a
way to prove something, you know, like to prove something,
to prove that I'm important, And actually I have nothing
to prove like I really don't like I know, and
I can no feel that I am important and I
don't have to have this tool to give me that.
(32:59):
And if no one liked my content and if nobody
followed me, then I would still be the exact same person,
with the exact same heart. It doesn't change me, It
doesn't change my importance, doesn't change my values and change
my worth, and my Instagram is not a full reflection
of me, so it's kind of like cheapening my importance
as well. So one of the biggest takeaways I've I've
(33:21):
had from this experience is that social media has this
opportunity to bring us the idea that people really do
care about us or they don't like. We assume if
somebody is watching something or following us or liked our picture,
we assume that they are paying attention. And if they're
paying attention, then we're important. And if I'm important, then
people care about me. And if if people care about me,
(33:43):
then I have value. And if I have value, I'm worthy.
And if I'm worthy and I am good and I'm good,
I will get the things I want. We can keep
going and that that stream might be different for you.
But here is where social media, specifically Instagram, manipulates us,
and that it helps us manipulate ourselves. We create false
nare If that helped put band aids, these are this
is band aid on a wound rather than heal the wound.
(34:05):
If I can gain more of a following than I'm
more important, more people watch my story than I'm more important,
more people comment on this post, I'm more important, and
more people like this, I'm more important, and more people
dm me I'm more important. And if I'm more important,
that means that I'm cared about. And if I'm cared about,
I'm worthy. And if I'm worthy, I'm going to be wanted.
Don't we all want to be wanted? The problem is
I can create the biggest following in the world, and
(34:27):
maybe the part of me who felt alone and not
important and maybe unwanted gets covered up right. The issue
here is that at what expense does this thing get
covered up? At what expense? What is it going to
cost us? Because do I now have to curate content
to be wanted? Is that what makes me important? My content?
My pretty picture from my vacation, my bikini body, Like,
(34:49):
what is it that's making me important? What are these
people seeing? And what do I have to keep producing?
And we may have covered up a wound, but are
we tending to it and are we caring for it?
Probably not? So then what we've done is we've created
this monster we have to feed. And because Instagram wants
to stay on Instagram for as long as possible so
they can send you more ads, you can buy more things,
(35:11):
so they can sell more ads, so they can make
more money, and all of that, they're going to help
you feed the monster as well. So here's where I
am now. Because I want us to heal the wounds.
I don't want us to cover up the wounds. I
don't want us to dissociate from the wounds. I don't
want us to ignore the wounds. I don't want any
(35:31):
of that. I want us to be able to heal them.
And so part of that is just being honest. Right,
So part of being able to heal something is acknowledging it. Right,
can't help something you are refusing to acknowledge. And if
we can step back from what we're doing and how
we're manipulating Instagram, we can look at, okay, how are
you be using this an unhealthy way? And then what
(35:52):
do we actually need to do in that area of
our life? So here's what I'm doing. I'm going to
allow myself to be very picky about who and what
I follow. It again seemed to me that I had
to follow everyone because if I didn't, I as rude
or mean or something like that. And it's not like
there's really nothing. I keep talking about this, but there's
really nothing else to say. It's just not mean to
not want to follow somebody. And I'm also okay if
people want to follow me, like I really am. I
(36:14):
wondered if that would feel different. I wondered if that
would shift or change, And like I also wonder if
that would feel different if I still had that old account.
I guess we don't know, and we don't have to
know because I don't have it. But I'm okay if
people don't want to follow me because it's not a
reflection of how important I am or how cared about
I am. I'm also just not watching as much on
Instagram and I'm not watching as many stories and I'm
(36:36):
not scrolling as much. And I actually started enjoying not
having content to look at because I still don't follow
as many people. I follow people now, and I'll probably
follow more as I like again be like, oh my
best friend, I forgot to re follow you, but I
don't have as much to see on my feed and
so there's not as much content to take in. And
also through this experiment, I really, I'm telling you guys,
(36:57):
is shifted the way I feel. I really just don't
hair as much about knowing everything. And then I'm also
the third thing, I'm not following a lot of influencer
and educational type accounts. I'm following some, but I picked
a few that I really liked, and then that's that.
And of course, like as time goes on, I might
find new ones, but I don't need to follow every
therapist and every meme account. It's already hard enough and
(37:20):
to be in innubated with like six hundred different posts
about attachment and trauma and this and that, and I
just don't need it all, and it gets to be
that simple, and you don't need it all either, Like
there's just such a thing as information overdrive. And if
I want to look at something, I can go search
it and I can google it, or I can find
them on Instagram if their account is public, I can
(37:40):
look at it when I want to look at it.
But we don't need to have just a constant scroll
of information, or I don't need to have a constant
scroll of information like that. I don't have it in
me to see that all the time. And so, in
kind of a conclusion of this, remind you that this
all came from a place of wanting Instagram to be
and continue to be a good fun thing. Instagram is
allowed to be fun. It is fun. It's allowed to
(38:02):
be helpful. It is helpful. It's allowed to be an
amazing tool to help grow a business and promote your
people and celebrate your people and celebrate things. It's allowed
to be all of that. But we have to find
agency in power within ourselves. And so to find agency
in power within ourselves, we have to find where we're
getting our power taken away. And for me, part of
My power being taken away was because I felt like
(38:25):
I needed to produce and be a certain way based
on what I was seeing out there to continue to
feel and keep up with the joneses and be important.
So we have to remember that we're in charge of
how we use it, and to do that, we also
have to deconstruct these unconscious messages that Instagram in the
world has kind of like put inside of our brains.
One being that knowing what everyone is doing all the
(38:45):
time is normal, it's not. Also the idea that I
need to know what other people are doing you don't.
And then lastly, when people don't follow me and means
that they don't care about me. If they don't follow me,
that means something negative about me. Those are all ideas
that we just got to deconstruct. And then we can
construct these ideas. We can like our lives without anyone
(39:05):
else liking them. We can have fun without anybody else
knowing about it. We can have experiences that people don't
know about and they're still meaningful. And it's more important
for us to do it for ourselves and do it
for the Graham. That's a huge one. Now. I hope
that you guys decide to do whatever you want to
do with your Instagrams that feels right for you. This
was just something that I wanted to do for me
(39:27):
um and something that's been helpful for me. But I
hope that we can all just put out content that
we like and that gets to be enough. I'm starting
to look at my Instagram page like a little love
letter to myself, and that might sound weird, I know,
but I mean it in this way that I'm going
to post and say and show things that I think
are important, regardless of the world, because I think I'm
(39:47):
important and I know I'm important, and that feels so loving,
and the feedback that I get or I don't get
doesn't get to change my mind, and what other people
are posting doesn't get to change my mind about how
I feel about what I'm putting out there. So there,
you guys have it, my Instagram experiment now. As always,
I hope that this episode was helpful to you, and
it's a lot to be helpful in different ways. I
(40:09):
think different people might get different stuff out of this,
but I hope you get what you need, and with that,
I hope you have the day that you need to
have and you create the content that you need to
create for you, and I will see you on Wednesday
for cotch Docs
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