Mental wellness on Instagram. Do we have anything to fear?

instytutsprawobywatelskich.pl 2 years ago

Social media have it against each another that they origin utmost emotions in people. 1 day we are delighted with the amazing possibilities of this form of communication, and another we curse it for the ease with which it takes us time and peace. I besides feel this ambivalent attitude towards the late emerging psychoeducational content in the Internet. The presence of specified posts – popular especially on Instagram – makes me happy and anxious at the same time.

For any time now, social media has seen quite a few popularity in profiles that take care of our intellectual welfare. I am referring to profiles that supply content in the field of psychoeducation. Here you can mention

Cyclina and its co-foundation
or accounts like
,
,
,
. These profiles address, among others, the normalization of intellectual disorders, showing that they can contact anyone and are not a reason for shame. They fight stigmatization of people struggling with depression or another problems. They convey basic intellectual knowledge, as well as general content on self-acceptance, building healthy relationships or self-acceptance.

Instagram vs. reality

Looking through my instagram window on the world, I see many akin blogs and enjoy breaking taboos on issues as crucial as intellectual health.

One cannot deny that social media, despite its not entirely affirmative image, is frequently a treasure of free and valuable knowledge. Instagram has undoubtedly become a place for the improvement of therapeutic culture.

This is where, among another things, the movement like body positive (body positivity). For example, they have created accounts exposing tricks utilized by models who want to enter the existing canons of beauty. any influencers faced the instagram trend of showing idealized life and alternatively of publishing sketched vacation photos, decided to show their unideal everyday life, writing about accepting themselves. I consider this to be a affirmative change and believe that the presence of this kind of content on the net plays an crucial function in raising awareness of the harmful effects of social media on our intellectual health.

Unverified sources

Clear and aesthetic graphics usually bear 1 conviction or short text. They attract eyesight, give fast advice and answers to crucial questions. Psychoeducational accounts are run by psychologists, psychotherapists, coaches and, mostly speaking, influencers. any build their image online as professional psychotherapists and make content under their name, but there are besides many anonymous blogs. After looking at the information in the "bio" (i.e. the instagram biogram in which the creator places basic information about himself), it may turn out that we will not even find the word "psychologist" there, but only "life reflections".

On the Internet, everyone can share their reflections and position on the world, and the problem in separating technological cognition from private theories is besides that the profession of psychotherapist is not regulated in Poland. So anyone can call themselves that. It is not so easy to separate between posts created by specialists and content derived from self-appointed therapists.

When scrolling Instagram, we usually do not take the effort to check the source.

Instagram diagnosis

One of the dangers that comes to head first is that education on intellectual wellness in this way promotes self-diagnosis. You can find on the net many descriptions of individual disorders and questions to aid diagnose a peculiar disorder. The advantage of this situation is, of course, raising public awareness and the chance to see the problem at home or at home. As a result, many teenagers became curious in their intellectual health, and many adults yet turned to aid after many years. It is risky to trust on a same - diagnosis. First, we are never nonsubjective towards each other, and secondly, the problem is most likely more complicated than we think. Many disorders have akin symptoms and it is not easy to immediately find their cause. If we are based on Instagram knowledge, then our diagnosis depends mostly on what post just appeared in our news and whether it was attractive and convincing adequate for us.

Catherine Kucewicz, scientist and psychotherapist, in conversation for NaTemat.pl says: “To diagnose a peculiar disorder or its personality structure in a patient, you request to take a close look – you request to conduct a deeper interview with him, do intellectual tests, sometimes consult with another specialist, e.g. psychiatrist or sexologist, and then make a appropriate diagnosis.” In an interview, she besides points to what is different from real therapy: “... professional support is not giving advice on how to live in 5 points but talking, exploring the subject together, hard work on changing beliefs. Instagram, in my opinion, lurks psychotherapy and self-work.”

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Toxic Love for Himself

Short slogans, which are frequently accompanied by minimalistic graphics, are created in the convention of golden thoughts – they are to become remembered and encourage reflection. The frequent subject of psychoeducational content blogs is to take care of your limits, end toxic relationships, release from others' expectations. “Learn to love the sound of your steps erstwhile you walk distant from what doesn’t service you”, “When you realize your value, you will halt giving people discounts”, “The relation that you make is not to be a copy of your relation with an ever-dissatisfied parent or a constantly absent father.” These are examples of instagram posts. And although these sentences may be true, I find it hard to defy the impression that they encourage us to interpret the planet in a very simple way.

Their message focuses on a alternatively selfish imagination of love for 1 another. A love that involves rejecting everything that hurts us.

The problem is that we're assessing what's incorrect with us and what's incorrect with us, due to the fact that there's no outside individual in the form of a psychotherapist who would look at our decisions from a distance. The excess of posts with specified a message gives me resistance, due to the fact that while I consider love for myself as the basis for a healthy relation with myself and others, I am afraid about the division of people into good and bad. due to the fact that who are all these toxic partners, complaining mothers and disloyal friends? From the content of blogs they appear almost like a different category of people from whom they should mostly stay away. In fact, they are most likely our closest family, or possibly even friends who read the same posts.

Finding knowing on the Internet

Feeding quite a few specified content can, in my opinion, lead to alienation from loved ones and deepen divisions between people. Influencers build friendly spaces online that respond to the natural and very human request to be accepted and noticed. I frequently found refuge in them myself erstwhile I sought knowing for my problems. Not everyone, however, will want to sail out of this empathic harbor into the waters of the real world, especially if it appears to him as a place full of lurking dangers and traumatized people. The intellectual cognition given in this selective way limits the field of sight and encourages us to view their problems as the most important. The word “toxic” or the phrase “red flags” (warning signs in romanticist relations) is widely utilized in the online language of the therapeutic culture, and reminds us that others can hurt us.

photo. Gerd Altmann au Pixabay

But relationships are 1 of the most crucial elements of intellectual health. There's quite a few investigation here. I can think of test presented a fewer years ago by Robert Waldinger at a TED lecture. For 75 years, researchers at Harvard University have observed a group of selected people and proved that good relationships with friends, household or another community make us happier and healthier people – both physically and mentally. Those who had the most satisfying relations with loved ones at the age of 50 were the healthiest at the age of 80.

Operation of algorithms

Instagram's specificity is besides based on algorithms that give us content based on what we click on. There is no request to explain how easy it is to get lost in this, and although most of us are aware of the mechanisms of social media, we all follow them. If a vigilant eye of the algorithm identifies individual as a individual curious in building self-esteem, it will send more and more posts with specified a message. If we like the post of individual who shares their "life thoughts" on the Internet, we will not even announcement erstwhile profiles of akin people will make good usage of the proposed posts.

I myself, preparing to compose this article, looked for specified profiles, moving from 1 to the other, utilizing algorithms that are favorable in this case. I've been going through my posts with advice on taking care of myself and my head, so my Instagram is now convinced that it must aid me cope with the complexes and remind me that I'm worth more than a failed relation with my erstwhile partner. I appreciate the concern, but this time I'd like to thank you.

Critical reasoning alternatively of thought Shortcuts

Finally, it would be worth proposing an attitude that can be adopted against the problems described here.

I don't have the advice to make it more beneficial to interact with the therapeutic culture than to harm. I think critical reasoning is the most crucial thing as usual.

Be careful and realize that not everything we read online applies to us. erstwhile you come across any advice on social media, you might want to think about what we think of it and what emotions it gives us. Would it apply in any aspect of our lives? And if we disagree with her, why?

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