The Best Thing I Did For My Mental Health

Originally published October 24, 2024

I practice mindfulness and gratitude on a regular basis, but I had reached a point where I was constantly anxious and I couldn’t quite figure out why. I looked for the worst in every situation and I was constantly planning and preparing for a disaster.

Then I connected the dots and realized the very thing I was utilizing to soothe my anxiety was actually the cause of it. It was then that I deleted Instagram from my phone. This was really hard for me to do. As the mom of a toddler, I often feel disconnected from the world and from my friends, and social media is a great way for me to keep up with everything. However, mixed in with those images of my friends living their best lives were the political memes, the mutilated puppies from the animal activists, and pseudoscience ads from momfluencers. I’d go to bed paranoid that our democracy was going to end, that I was responsible for all the animal abuse in the world and that my child is somehow unloved because I’m a working mom. And then, huge shocker…I couldn’t sleep, or refocus on whatever task I needed to work on when downtime was over.

Are some of these things legitimate concerns? Absolutely. But do I need to be concerned with them during every free minute that I have? No. There are two things at play here. The first being that social media is filled with things that fuel anxiety. The second being that when you deprive yourself of the opportunity to be bored or to daydream, or to simply sit in silence, you deprive your brain of the opportunity to create. Being bored is essential to being creative. So not only was I not allowing my creative brain the chance to do it’s thing, I was replacing creativity with fear.

We are going to be bombarded with negativity these next two weeks. We have an inherit negativity bias. We are hardwired to respond to and pursue information when it’s presented negatively. Advertisers, influencers and politicians prey on our fears. It’s what keeps us scrolling and clicking. Do yourself a favor and turn it off.

So try my experiment:

• Take socials off your phone.

• Don’t engage with social media for three days.

• Do a check in. How do you feel?

• Temped to scroll? Phone a friend. Text a friend. Make an actual connection with another human being and talk about how you’re feeling.

• After three days, you can check your socials, but do it on a laptop.

• Check in with yourself again. How did you feel after spending time on social media. Anxious? Scared? Serious FOMO?

In need of some positive inspiration to survive these next two weeks? Check out the cast of Suffs performing “The March” here. Or this compilation of the best live animal feeds around the world. I’m a big fan of the Puppy Playroom at the Service Dog Project.

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Thanks for sharing part of your day with Anxiety and the Artist. Be healthy. Stay creative.

-Allison and the A&A team