A year off social media part 1
an experiment in healing:: ORIGINALLY POSTED NOVEMBER 6th 2023
Dear reader, dear soft heart,
I changed the name of my newsletter to The Soft Heart newsletter, after it was The Beatrix Newsletter from March 2021 to July 2023.
I have a soft heart - and I think most of you reading this also do too. This is the name in which my personal essays will exist under from now on. So hello, dear soft heart. If you’re new here, my personal essays explore being on earth as a highly sensitive, autistic, disabled, white, queer, artist woman, usually at the intersection of topics I know very well such as developmental trauma recovery, sobriety, spirituality, and creativity. I like to use writing as a way to feel less alone in the world - that is also why I love reading so much.
I am the author of the memoir, Can You Turn The Lights Off? if you want to read more about the topics above from my perspective.
A year ago, I logged out of instagram and stopped using it as a public platform.
I was thinking about it the other day and… instagram, or even twitter, or facebook, any of the big 3 social medias, are sort of like an unofficial memoir process. I am not sure I would consider it an art form as I consider a memoir art, but if you think about it, our social media accounts for the past 15 years have been a very cool way to story tell that has been accessible to anyone who can get an internet connection.
When you go on someone’s social media profile, especially instagram, you are seeing and reading a story. You get to know what is important to someone, what they are proud of, what their style is like, maybe what kind of books they are reading, what kind of music they listen to, what landscape they live in, usually what they do for a living, what sort of thing they take up as their hobbies. It is actually pretty cool when you look it at it that way. So many people are storytellers without even realizing they are curating a story for each other.
So here are my social media key points:
I got facebook in 2009 and deleted my account in 2019.
I got twitter in 2012 and deleted my account in 2016.
I got instagram in 2012, and stopped using it in 2022.
I got substack in 2022 and invited those who followed me on instagram who enjoyed my writing to subscribe to me here, as I would stop posting on instagram post 2022. More on this later; how that migration went/ my experience of substack now (as in post spring 2023 substack upgrades) which feels to me like a fused news media outlet and social media site.
I never got a linkedin account, snapchat account, and I have never even downloaded tiktok on my phone as an app, let alone opened an account on it.
Social media was a huge part of my life, however.
Facebook was initially huge for my business. I got very popular in a specific facebook group through word of mouth marketing that led to an inbox full of requests to book spiritual sessions with me in early 2014. People would then make statues, updates or tag me in regards to the positive experience they had in a reading with me, and more people would friend me, and request an appointment of their own. Most of my sales happened like this for the first year of my business, and I got an excellent reputation through the sharing of my work that other people raved about on facebook. Facebook gave me connections that led directly to conversion. In the past decade, I have done well over 5000 sessions with folks, and it truly started from first offering my services in a facebook group. Wild eh!
Twitter was also huge for my work. Twitter was how my writing was first amplified. One year in the early 2010s I took to my account for the annual #BellLetsTalk day and my life actually never was the same since (in a great way). I linked and shared bits of my story with diagnosed anxiety disorders on there and it went viral. This led me to creating my non for profit movement Anxiety Free Community and from there, I wrote my first book which I promoted heavily on twitter and became a speaker as a mental health advocate through becoming well known in the greater Toronto Area for my writing.
I loved seeing pictures of people’s books with their coffees and cute instagram set up. I would save them all.
And then I’d filter them so their aesthetic all matched and then I’d repost them.
Instagram was initially a safe haven from twitter and facebook for me, who used both those platforms for work mainly. While I got Instagram in 2012, I barely used my account except to post occasional pictures of my breakfast captioned “is this how you use instagram? ;)” or pictures of going to a concert with friends now and again until 2015. In 2015/2016, I started using it for work, similarly to how I was using facebook - to connect with potential and current 1:1 clients. However, instagram was also a place in which I found community around this time- particularly in the chronic illness spaces, something like the medical medium community became a huge part of my life through instagram. When stories were introduced in 2017, I started using them to promote my new offerings: group coaching courses and programs. I ended up selling out 10 group coaching programs over the course of 4 years from 2017-2020. And in 2020, 2021 and 2022 throughout the height of the pandemic, I also taught over a dozen one-off nervous system health classes that sold with the direct help of instagram at an accessible and low cost. In 2022, I promoted my second book, my memoir, Can you turn the lights off? on instagram and sold hundreds of copies within the first months. As I decided to self-publish my memoir, all the royalties came directly to me so I could really feel the direct support from my readers who largely knew about the book from my instagram account or from the instagram account of others who shared it. Although I never went viral or never got very instagram or facebook famous, my audience on what ended up being eventually both meta platforms was usually around 4-5k people and I had overall great conversion rates.
So, I share all of this context to paint you a picture of how much social media meant to me, how much it was a part of my life in really tender and vulnerable ways that included survival, belonging, and happiness, and so that I can name that I do not and have never taken social media for granted. It is a wonderful tool. It is a connector that is in a lot of ways, completely magical and holy.
Me in Arizona, being silly early in the morning. I wish I would have gone to the grand canyon without the intention of taking pics or showing them on instagram, etc. I would have connected with the landscape much more deeply.
The advantages I felt I experienced participating on social media:
It made me feel heard and seen
It was a way to express myself and connect with those who had similar values and interests
a lot of my stories now can make me cringe - why did I talk like that? a lot of them make me laugh. Some of them make me have compassion for myself - oh gosh, you were trying so hard! Some of them make me sad - I was masking a lot. Most of them, however, are just me showing off the food I made.
It helped me make money
For a long time, it was one of the best marketing avenues for me as a disabled person - there was less physical labor to marketing on social media (I could do it from laying down somewhere)
SM helped me make friends
A thousand step beach in Laguna Beach - found this local nature spot through instagram.
SM helped me meet significant others
It got me through ativan withdrawal and gave me support for things IRL community did not understand, live themselves or know about
It served as inspiration for a long time and gave me good ideas for plans around town like restaurants, or cool hike spots - especially when I lived abroad and also when I travelled to new cities
Malibu farm was the coolest via instagram spot a couple years ago in LA. I don’t remember the food, so that means it wasn’t that memorable, but I do remember feeling cool and hip and I liked their bathrooms.
It made me feel important
It was a huge help with coming out - A lot of the gay people I have seen, families, couples, etc, have been on social media and not in real life, still to this day
It made me aware of the worldly things whether that is serious education about news stories or realities that are not my own which grows my empathy and allows me to get involved in helping others in mutual aid, or a silly thing like what Taylor Swift is up to
It facilitated easier access to get in contact to folks
(This is both an advantage and a disadvantage) - It was a distraction and served a resource sometimes to calm myself down
It was a way to be known without over-explaining - the inherent story telling that it does for you by way of sharing
And then… on October 2nd 2022, I got off social media entirely and I have not used it publicly since.
So what happened?
The short story of all of this is that I did not want to get to the end of my life and realize that I spent my entire adult life on my phone, or in front of a screen.
I got gnawing existential anxiety when I thought about the fact that I could get to the death bed of my most precious loved ones, and I would realize that I had wasted the time we were alive together at the same time being on my goddamn phone if something didn’t change.
I couldn’t bare that. I can’t bare that.
No amount of success, status or likes would ever be more important to me than being present with what matters most to me - things like nature, planting flowers, enjoying food, being with loved ones, feeling the wind on my skin, going to the lake or the ocean, etc.
At a juicery in chicago, being a cool instagram girl
So yes, there were clear benefits for me using social media for both professional and personal use, however, the disadvantages were huge:
SM is very very addictive for me- I need more when I hit my tolerance level and my tolerance level grows. I can never seem to metaphorically just have one drink
It is a huge waste of time and energy suck - could be doing other things like cooking, beautifying my home, exercising to boost my overall health and wellbeing
It gives me too much info about people I do not know, or that I do not particularly like or feel a connection to, that is not productive - seriously why do I know everything about a christian girl named Hannah and her marriage? This obviously lands in the time suck category.
It creates disembodiment that is significant - I lose track of my body, my needs, time, and my environment when on it
It is overstimulating and creates symptoms for me because of this like ringing in my ears or can eventually lead or contribute to meltdowns if I experience emotional and social stress while using the platforms
It can be upsetting and too much too soon too fast (trauma energy)
Absorbing the energy on there a lot and carrying things that aren’t mine to process - energetically trauma looks for empathy and attunement for its resolution. It is something I am good at doing, and that I enjoy doing very much when I have the capacity for it, however, I do not have it always
Social media creates a never ending pit of want in me. I want more as soon as I am on the platform, and it makes me feel like my life always needs to be improved or like I should want things that I don’t have (MORE MORE MORE problem) - rarely experiencing satisfaction when on social media - this is sad
Me, filtered, in Miami, in the rain. Definitely only got on the lifeguard stand for the picture. Fun, but also, wow, a lot of effort to have a cool looking life.
When on social media, I compare myself to others - everyone seems richer, healthier, more fulfilled than me. The comparing also ends in me feeling lonely if I spend too much time on it - everyone seems to be having more fun than me, together, without me
I start to feel like I don’t belong and I am not doing life right and that my pace is wrong and bad. I feel largely left out when on social media - I feel not on par with my peers -not getting married or having babies for example, not going to europe, not buying and wearing the latest fashion trends, etc
A screenshot from Lee Tilghman’s essay on her substack Offline Time she shared last month, “Why Wasn’t I Invited to That Thing?”. I laughed out loud to this - this is SO real.
SM removes 1-1 connection and makes it into a bulletin board feeling where there is no in depth connection, just watching and a brief contact point
It can be performative for me - brings out sides of me that I don’t like for example, feeling as though I need to make things look good even if they don’t feel good, doing the thing that was coined “doing it for the ‘gram” - defined as: doing something for the purpose of sharing it on instagram, rather than for the experience itself… Or I have noticed myself get competitive on social media before… especially with ex partners/ boyfriends/ girlfriends…
It is a huge avoider tool - distraction from feeling my feelings and integrating my experiences
It makes me feel like I owe people something
It was a way that I overworked and enabled my workaholism
This photo was definitely for the ‘gram. It’s taken in my yard at my old house in Encinitas. I don’t think I lasted more than 5 minutes in these shoes in real life. Have since donated ‘em in my autistic unmasking process.
So as you can see, the long version of this is that social media isn’t good for my health overall. It makes me addicted, disembodied and overstimulated physically, it affects my auric field negatively spiritually and mentally, well, there is no shortage of dissatisfaction, comparing, loneliness, and avoiding that it gives way to. Bottom line, I am stripped of appreciating the beauty of my own daily and mundane life when consuming social media. I don’t notice the seasons changing, the light dancing, or even the birds singing very much when the whole world appears to be in the palm of my hand.
The leaving:
Health is always my number one value, priority, all of it. This is ultimately why I deleted two of my main social media accounts already and stopped having a public presence on the other I used.
I got off facebook 4 years ago now because it was a time suck. Before I participated on facebook for my business 2014 on, I used it as a platform to post family vacation photos, and special dinners or parties with friends for a few years in the beginning times of FB and social media as a whole. Five years after being on facebook for business purposes, I realized I was not getting any new clients there much any longer. Everyone, it felt like, was on instagram now for personal life updates too, those who had met me on facebook for biz had my email, and my site info, if they wanted more services, etc. Facebook was no longer helping me feel inspired, helpfully educated and engaged in the world, or connected with those who shared my values and interests. It was no longer helping me make money, friends, significant others, nor did it help me feel expressed or feel heard and seen. Instead, what was happening was that I would be on my 8th grade crush’s mom facebook page learning about her favourite wine and suddenly catch myself in the zombie scroll daze like, how long have I been gone? It was the number one thing that contributed to my disembodiment in those days - scrolling on facebook. So I deactivated it. I have never once missed facebook since I have not been on it. Literally, not one time.
Twitter, I was completely addicted to and spent the 4 years I was active on it being so obsessed with it, that I was like, gurl, in the words of Gabor Mate, don’t ask why the addiction, ask why the pain. I would say twitter was the one social media that made my addiction to social media the most apparent. I could never have just one drink. It scared me, how many hours I would log on twitter, how overstimulated all the new information made me, how I absorbed a lot of energy that wasn’t mine to process, and how any time I had an emotion that was hard to be with, I would distract myself by tweeting or chatting with others on there, so I just clicked delete account one day. I will say, twitter I did miss a lot. I attribute it to being a writer, and thus, I think in blurbs a lot and it was fun to do that. I also was recognized for my writing on twitter and I missed the praise, the status and the retweets, if I am keeping it real with you. Giving up that professional status of having a lot of people love my writing, being featured in highly sought after journalistic pubs and retweeting those mentions which would only further status, was difficult for the parts of me that want to be validated instantly and often in my career by others. Getting off twitter made me build my self-worth, self-validation, self-esteem muscles. It also helped me divest from the press and academia as the ones who get to decide if what I want to write about or what I am writing about is worthy of attention or not. 7 years later, do I think it was the wrong move to delete my account? No, definitely not.
Don’t ask why the addiction, ask why the pain - Gabor Mate
Instagram was hard to quit. By far the hardest, I didn’t know at first if it was just because by the time I was using instagram daily all day long, everyone was deeply entrenched with it as well, and it’s like life was happening on instagram in a seemingly more legit way than it was happening off the grid, but I did know this: it was so hectic to withdraw off of. It seemed impossible. I spent 3 years debating what the hell to do with instagram, trying out different methods until simply just not using it anymore. Yes, 3 years. Whereas with facebook and twitter, I simply decided that the disadvantages outweighed the advantages for me relatively quickly and with ease and clarity, instagram was not so clear. And I would soon learn why that was…
In part two and three of this series this month, I will feature…
HOW ANALYZING MY RELATIONSHIP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA LED TO SURPRISING HEALING
THE 3 YEARS OF INSTAGRAM WILL SHE OR WONT SHE THAT STARTS WITH STEP 1: STOP SHARING EVERYTHING (2020)
THE-REAL-WITH-YOU ADVANTAGES OF BEING OFF SOCIAL MEDIA AND WHAT I FIND HARD ABOUT IT TOO
WHAT MY CONCLUSION ABOUT DOING SOMETHING COUNTER-CULTURE LIKE THIS IS
If you are new here also, know that I love to get email replies if you resonated or if something I wrote landed well with you and you’re keen on sharing with me how you’re integrating it. Don’t be shy.
As a general disclaimer, I always write from my own experience and I have not experienced every single context known to earth, so you might appreciate some things I write/wrote and others may feel incomplete for you in your own context. I always encourage everyone who reads my work to take what serves you, and leave the rest. I love other people’s art too, so send me yours!
I welcome you to leave a comment (maybe about what is an advantage or disadvantage for you about social media?), HEART the post if you’re on the substack app, or send the essay to a friend via email or text link as I cheer for the sharing of my writing if it’s helpful.
Lots of love and until next time,
Emily