My mental health & social scrolling
I've had to make a drastic change to improve my mental health...
I've been trying for months to get started here. How much or how little do I share? I'm not as good as other people when it comes to writing. Is this the right platform to start? I'm having a hard day today so I will try again tomorrow.
I have been interested about habits, forming healthy habits and keeping these habits for a long time. One of the longest running habits I have is my morning walk. I have been doing this since I was 12 years old and would go for a walk with my dad. I have been doing this for over 25 years and I love it. I don't think about it, I just wake up and go. However, other habits have been hard for me to keep (or break!).
One of these is scrolling on social media. This is a hard habit to break! I've been trying for a while now.
I would sometimes find myself scrolling on socials and then look up at the clock and see that an hour had passed without me really doing much at all. I find that my mental health suffers when I scroll on socials too much. I've removed any negative accounts so the majority of stuff I see is very positive and focused on personal development. Plus I get to see family and friends and what they have been up to. Positive right? Then why do I tend to feel a little down after scrolling? I would say that it has something to do with the fact that I compare myself with those who I am seeing on these pages. When I went through a divorce I would see so many happy anniversary posts and get frustrated and think I had failed. I would see happy family pics and get so upset. Even though the content was positive, it wasn't really helping me in that moment.
For the past year I have been really focused on supporting and improving my mental health. This has been my biggest focus. Part of that has been removing social apps off my phone. Then within a week they are back on again or I find myself scrolling on my computer instead.
I started to analyse what was going on for me before I would do some doomscrolling. One of the things was that I felt anxious so would pick up my phone to scroll. It gave me something to numb my thoughts and it gave me something to do with my hands. I also found that I would get frustrated by how creative people were being but I wasn't doing it. I love being creative but when I am stuck in a scroll-sesh, I'm simply consuming rather than creating.
While walking along the beach last week (without headphones or phone in hand) I gave myself some time to think. I'm not always a fan of this because when my mental health is not in a great space, this can lead to a range of thoughts that are unhelpful! Anyway, I gave myself some time to think and I reflected on these issues I had identified. What could be a solution here? Something to keep my hands busy and something to allow me to create. Puzzles was the first thing that came to mind but I'm not a huge fan. Another was cross-stitch which I've done in the past and it felt quite therapeutic. So today I am off to get some cross-stitch and insert this habit into my life instead of scrolling. Now I'm going to look for an app that blocks my socials except for 30mins each day. If you have any recommendations let me know!
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