Make Peace With Social Media

Pablo Picasso, "“Marie-Thérèse au Béret Rouge et au Col de Fourrure”

We’re alive during such a progressive time and yet we’re falling backward.

Most of us seem to simultaneously be dependent on modern technology and be frustrated with how it’s transformed areas of our lives. We love being able to easily communicate and connect, but the more we communicate, the less we really connect. We text and “like” each other’s posts so that we get the sense of knowing each other without physically getting together or really sharing. Often, we end up feeling worse about ourselves after a stroll on social media. There's regret if we had an amazing night and didn't get a picture to prove it. It's hard to understand how to create a curated, "on-brand" feed or how to appropriately edit photos or captions. Plus, there's weird professional pressure to be a "personality" and accrue followers. And yet our addiction grows!!

So, how do we live more authentic and fulfilling lives in an Instagram world? 

SEEKING APPROVAL AND VALIDATION FROM OTHERS
Our brains are deeply wired to seek social approval - that we're good, that we're doing it right, that people like us. Part of this is a normal drive for belonging and survival, but it can be unhealthy when our own self-worth is based on external sources, like approval from others. 

Social comparison is inevitable and we all do it, but it is especially rampant on social media. One problem is that we know ourselves from the inside, but we only know others from the outside. We're constantly aware of our insecurities and faults, but all we know of others is what they do and tell us, which is a far narrower source of information. Since we mostly present the best versions of ourselves on these platforms, reality is lost on social media. 

What's important is acknowledging that flaws are part of being human and that struggle therefore connects us to others. Everyone is every bit as disturbed as we are. Without knowing exactly what troubles each person, we can be sure that it's something. Rather than comparing ourselves to other people and watching our self-esteem bounce around as a result, we can remind ourselves that everyone suffers and feels painful emotions. Recognizing our common humanity means seeing our flaws and imperfections as something that unites us to others, rather than setting ourselves apart.

AN ANTIDOTE TO LONELINESS
Just as human beings have a basic need for food and shelter, we also have a basic need to belong to a group and form relationships. Social rejection signals that we are all alone—that we are vulnerable—and need to either form new connections or rekindle old ones to protect ourselves against the many threats that are out there.

The hard truth is that we are all at once irredeemably alone and also not alone at all. We are born alone, in many ways we live alone, and ultimately we will die alone. No one will ever fully know what it's like to be you. And yet - look around you - everything you see is here because other people constructed it or harvested the materials or packaged it or built the roads to get it here. Everyday you entrust your life to other people. Then there's the natural world: an ever-present ecosystem brimming with life, of which we are a part. We're all sitting on a planet spinning around in the middle of absolutely nowhere. All of us - all of the species - are on one little ball of dirt spinning around one of the stars. The sun beams you feel on your skin are from the same source as the sunlight on the arm of a person in India and is the same light that helps your food to grow. 

You see, you don't need social media to affirm your belonging. You cannot not belong to this world. 

SOURCE OF PROTECTION
Cell phones allow people to limit their attention and absorb themselves into a very focused sphere of stimuli and activities. In this way, technology provides a shelter from having to think about the world’s situation and your personal problems. It's also useful when you're at a party and you have no one to talk to ... grab your phone and you're never alone! You're fine, you're cool, you're not awkward. You can just absorb yourself in a little protected world on the screen with your friends. And, god forbid, you ever get bored; on this device there are endless sources of distraction. 

The disadvantage is that with our bid to escape ennui, life actually becomes shallower, more frantic, and more desperate. The more we react by trying to get rid of boredom or discomfort, the less equipped we are to deal with it. Distracting ourselves again and again, we never learn how to cope with the uncomfortable sensations that come when we can’t get satisfaction. Avoiding your feelings is escapism. And the problems persist.

Instead of distracting yourself and numbing your feelings, try to open them. Can you just stand here alone and be uncomfortable? Can you pause the busyness and resist the urge to always be doing something? Can you stand in line or sit at a red light and notice what's going on around you instead of scrolling through your feed? Seeking bits of distraction is ok, but understand that they can be superficial responses to deeper issues. 

INSPIRATION & CREATIVITY
The internet is probably the greatest invention of our time. We really do have the potential to learn about everything. Political and spiritual messages spread, ideas disseminate, advocacy groups form, inspiration abounds, access to art and beauty becomes part of our daily lives. 

Let the stuff that makes you smile be what shines in your posts. Aim for content that's meant to delight, illustrate, celebrate, and entertain. Inquire what you are hoping to get from this post (praise? attention? connection? support?) and explore those desires. Be authentic and show the messiness of your life. Don't try to sanitize it.

Finally, recognize that you are the one using the internet to get something you want, rather than allowing it to manipulate you. Social media is a tool that you are choosing to use. It is a collection of words and pictures that only appear in front of you because of some coding, a battery, and a wifi signal in an otherwise useless combination of glass and plastic. 

To quote Louis C.K., "It’s now, we’re us and this is here.  If you’re in pain, this too shall pass.  If you’re in luxury, this too shall pass.  Ask an old lady how she’s doing.  The internet is not real.  Draw a picture on a napkin."

You're Single? There's Nothing Wrong With You

Loma Vista Garden, Big Sur

Why is it her? Why isn't it me? ... That woman in the grocery line with her little girl and her husband. It's not even envy, you're just wondering? 

Why has she been liberated from the purgatory of looking? Why is she allowed to remain blithely ignorant of the politics of the post-date text? Why does she never have to wonder who she'll spend New Year's Eve with? Why is she free of these concerns? And, more important, why aren't you? 

Single people often ask themselves the question, "What's wrong with me?" The corollary question is, "What's right with her?" 

Our culture encourages the idea that people searching for love have some fundamental deficiency that's preventing them from finding a partnership. People want answers - "How can I find someone?" "What am I doing wrong?" - so it's no surprise that there's a big business around selling books and seminars about how to upgrade yourself into a person who will "attract love." 

These relationship experts are offering you help in a particularly American way - by cultivating positivity, by rolling up your shirtsleeves and getting to work. They offer personal growth as the pathway to better luck, and there is something very encouraging and optimistic about that. 

Why not take yoga classes and develop your self-esteem? Why not make vision boards and volunteer with the homeless? Sounds great, but it doesn't necessarily lead to a relationship. There are plenty of people in happy relationships who have never once read a self-help book or stepped inside a yoga studio. Why do you have to work so hard when so many others don't?

Sure, you have a lot to show for your work, but often there only feels like one true measure of success: finding that relationship. This is the problem with the attitude that treats self-improvement as the means to finding love: it begins with the fundamental premise that there is some defect in you that must be corrected. 

So I ask you: Are your friends who are in relationships perfectly self-actualized human beings? Are they all their ideal body weight? Are they free of all their insecurities and neuroses? Then why do you think you should be? 

Instead of self-improvement, I'd suggest self-care. Exercise and eat healthier so that you'll feel better, rather than look hot for this or that guy. Develop your confidence so that you can be a better advocate for yourself rather than to convince some dude that you're not weak or needy. Get out in the world because it's fun to have new experiences and meet new people, even if none of those strangers end up being the love of your life. 

With self-improvement, you're always looking for a validator to prove that you've "achieved" something. With self-care, you can't lose. All you need to do is be good to yourself. 

- Sara Eckel, "It's Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You're Single" 
More at her website 

- VIDEO: Bill Maher proposes a national day to recognize the contributions of single people 

Love Addict

Todd Hido, "Between the Two"

Even if you've never heard this term, I bet you can think of someone who fits the description. Pia Mellody is the expert in this field and the following theories come from her book, Facing Love Addiction. 

Possibly the most significant characteristic of love addiction is that we assign too much time and value to another person. Love Addicts focus almost completely on the person to whom they are addicted. At the beginning this relationship feels fantastic. The Love Addict feels special, it's a kind of high. They experience relief from the pain of feeling empty, of being alone. The connection is usually intense and finally gives meaning and vitality to the Love Addict's life. 

It is believed that people fall into love addiction because of the unhealed pain from childhood abandonment, and the feeling that they cannot be safe in the world without having somebody else hold them up. They cling to a delusional belief that the other party has the power to take care of them, affirm them, and somehow make them complete. Love Addicts usually didn't have enough appropriate bonding with their caregivers, and probably experienced moderate to serious abandonment or neglect in childhood. Because they weren't nurtured for who they were, they have trouble being or liking their natural selves. 

Eventually, as Love Addicts try harder and harder to manipulate the other person to live up to the mental image they have created -someone who will care for and love them the way they long to be cared for and loved- they experience repeated disappointments, because no one can satisfy these insatiable desires. Love Addicts begin to retaliate with toxic fighting against what they interpret as a willful failure to love on the part of the other party. 

The irony is that while Love Addicts want to avoid being left and want to be connected to someone in a secure way, the close, demanding connection they try to establish is actually enmeshment rather than healthy intimacy - which they also fear, at least unconsciously. This denied fear also comes from the childhood experience of either physical or emotional abandonment. Love Addicts did not experience enough intimacy from their abandoning caregivers to know how to be intimate in a healthy way. 

This is the cycle of the Love Addict. 

Love Addicts are usually drawn to Love Avoidants, who tend to avoid commitment and healthy intimacy. This makes Love Addicts desperate and needy for their partners' affection, always demanding more out of them. And since they cannot tolerate the thought of being alone, they stay in the relationship, becoming more and more angry. They can't leave, because they fear abandonment; but they can't be comfortable staying, because their desire to be rescued, cared for, and protected isn't being satisfied. 

Love Avoidants, meanwhile, fear intimacy because they believe that they will be drained, engulfed, and controlled by it. This is because in their families, the child was expected to nourish the parent. These enmeshed children get drained dry and used by Mom's or Dad's need for companionship, attention, and love. This experience of childhood enmeshment created a deeply ingrained conviction that more intimacy will bring more misery. 

It's complicated, though. Children who have been enmeshed develop the idea that taking care of needy people brings them self-worth. They believe that taking care of needy people is their job. When they stay in relationships, it is often out of duty and to avoid guilt, not love. This is the only way they know how to have relationships. 

Paradoxically, while Love Avoidants actively avoid intimacy, they also fear being left. This fear is usually unconscious. Because they were valued for their caregiving, they derived their self-worth from it. Although they resent this role, it's the way they know to receive attention and love. They worry that if they don't allow themselves to be engulfed by their partner, they'll be worthless.

So Love Avoidants have the same two fears as Love Addicts: intimacy and being left. The difference is that what is conscious for one is unconscious for the other. Love Addicts have a strong fear of abandonment and an unconscious fear of intimacy, which causes them unconsciously to pick someone who can't be intimate. Love Avoidants have a strong fear of intimacy, and yet also deep underlying fear of being left. This keeps them on the front edge in relationships, where, for part of the time, they can feel powerful by meeting someone else's needs without being engulfed. 

How to Tell If You Were Raised by a Narcissist

Sue, Big Sur

The term narcissism gets thrown around a lot and, since it exists on a continuum, some cases are more obvious than others. You may not immediately resonate with this idea or it may be uncomfortable for you to think of your parents in this way. You may assume that certain qualities existed in every family. However, as you begin to explore your childhood through a different lens, a more nuanced picture may emerge, which can help you understand yourself better. 

• Is your mother overly conscious of what others think (family, friends, neighbors, coworkers)?

• Does your father lack empathy for your feelings?

• When something happens in your life, does your mother react with how it will affect her rather than how you feel?

• Does your father blame things on you or others rather than own responsibility for his own feelings or actions?

• Does your mother swing from egotistical to depressed mood?

• Do you feel your father is critical of you?

• Is your mother hurt easily and does she carry a grudge for a long time without resolving the problem?

• Do you feel valued by your father for what you do, rather than for who you are?

Are you a doormat?
A narcissistic parent will trample all over their family to address their own desires without giving much thought to what anyone else needs. Because of this, some adult children of narcissists will actually overcorrect and bend over backwards to make sure no one could ever possibly perceive them this way. Alternately, they may have grown up all their lives being told that their needs don’t matter. Either way, the result is the same: They let people walk all over them because they’re not in touch with what they need and they don’t know how to express it. They feel selfish for expressing the most basic of needs. 

Do you feel you have to take care of your parent - like they're the child and you're the adult?
Not all narcissists command the spotlight with their bold, brash personalities. Some narcissists demand the attention of the room by playing the victim or describing their problems as greater than anyone else’s problems. They may also try to control other people’s actions by threatening to harm themselves unless a certain outcome goes their way. People with this kind of narcissistic parent may feel that they spend their entire childhood running to put one fire out after another, or trying to maintain the peace so that no one is hurt. In so doing, they have to forfeit a lot of their own innate childhood needs.”

Do you put an overemphasis on your achievements?
Some children of narcissists figure out that the only way to get along in this world is to do as their parent does and derive their self-worth from production, performance and achievement. They may take on behaviors like workaholism because their performance is the only way they’ve ever been taught to define themselves. The only thing that matters is what they can produce in the world, not just their own little being. 

Are you lacking a sense of yourself, your wants, your needs, your goals? 
A telling trait of narcissism is grandiosity: thoughts or feelings that one is superior to others, even if one doesn’t have the achievements to justify it. Narcissistic parents may see themselves as elite, but because they never achieved a certain level of success, they may find meaning in living vicariously through their children. Many children of narcissists will say, "I’m not sure how I ended up in this career because I never really knew what I wanted,’” or “I always felt like I was poised to be more of a reflection of my mother rather than be my own person.”

Some Examples of Parental Characteristics:

NEEDY PARENTS: The needy self-absorbed parent can come across to others as very caring and concerned. This parent is usually attentive and is very anxious about getting recognition for her efforts. This parent has to receive attention, appreciation, and approval for almost every parental act, both from the child and from others. The child is expected to "pay" for the care with emotional coin. This parent makes sure others know how hard she works, sacrifices, and cares. Any suggestion that the parent's efforts are not wanted or appreciated can result in the parent's displeasure or in her taking control and managing the child. 

PRICKLY PARENTS: The prickly self-absorbed parent is very demanding and expects prompt and accurate compliance with her needs, whether or not these needs are verbally conveyed. Others are expected to "do it right," without ever having an adequate explanation for what "right" means. The child endures constant criticism and negative comments if she doesn't do things the right way. This parent can also be very touchy, sensing disapproval, criticism, and blame from almost everything that is said and done, whether or not that is what was meant. Children tend to be on edge around this parent, careful of what they do and say, and may withdraw physically and/or emotionally.

PSYCHOSOMATIC PARENTS: The psychosomatic parent uses illness and aches and pains to manipulate others, to get her way, and to focus attention on herself. She cares little for those around her. The way to get attention from this kind of mother is to take care of her. This kind of mother uses illness to escape from her own feelings or from having to deal with difficulties in life. You cannot be sicker than she. She will up the ante.

CONNIVING PARENTS: The conniving self-absorbed parent is always positioning himself to win, come out on top, be superior to others, and make sure that all others understand just how they are inferior. This applies to almost all aspects of his life, including his children. He can be adept at reading others' needs and emotional susceptibility and using these to manipulate and exploit them. Some effects on these parents' children as adults are a wariness and constant questioning of others' motives or a tendency to get into relationships where they are manipulated to do things they do not want to do. 

GRANDSTANDING PARENTS: The grandstanding parent can be described as "always on stage," "playing to the crowd," "larger than life." Others in his world have to assume a subordinate role, and that role must support and highlight this parent's self-perception. His children are extensions of him and exist to enhance and expand the areas where the parent can be admired, receive attention, or be better than others. The child must never fail; and when the child succeeds, that success is perceived as due to the parent's efforts or contributions. The effects on his children can produce someone who is timid, cautious, and always seeking attention and admiration, or someone who acts out to get the same outcomes. 

Two books may be helpful in learning more on this topic - Will I Ever Be Good Enough? by Karyl McBride and Children of the Self-Absorbed by Nina Brown. In them, the authors discuss ways to heal, such as: grieving the parent you never had, grieving the loss of the child you didn't get to be, psychologically separating from your parent, becoming your own person by discovering your own values, passions & interests, reducing your perfectionistic standards and being more realistic, opening yourself to beauty & wonder, strengthening yourself & becoming less self-absorbed, and finding purpose & meaning. Simple! 😉

The Voice Inside Your Head

Big Sur, CA

Meg just said something really funny. I haven't said anything. Nicole still hasn't made eye contact with me - does she not like me or is this just the way she is? Laura is cleaning up the dishes from the party. I should have been more helpful like that, I'm so selfish. I could help now. Oh my god, Meg just made another funny comment - she's so charming. I wish I came up with stuff like that. They must think I'm lame. I feel like I'm just standing here. Nicole's boob is hanging out of her dress and I keep looking at it. I ate that hummus, I hope my breath is ok. Have I stayed long enough at this party? Can I slip out now? -- Me. True story from last night.

In case you haven’t noticed, you have a mental dialogue going on inside your head that never stops. It just keeps going and going. Have you ever wondered why it talks in there? How does it decide what to say and when to say it? How much of what it says turns out to be true? How much of what it says is even important? And if right now you are hearing, "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't have any voice in my head!" -- that's the voice we're talking about. 

Take the time to step back, examine this voice, and get to know it better. If you spend some time observing this mental voice, the first thing you will notice is that it never shuts up. When left to its own, it just talks. It's actually a shocking realization when you first notice that your mind is constantly talking. 

The best way to free yourself from this incessant chatter, is to step back and view it objectively. Don’t think about it, just notice it. It doesn't matter what it's saying, it's just a voice talking in your head. If you're hearing it talk, then it's obviously not you. You are not that voice. You are the one who hears the voice. You are the one who notices that it's talking. 

One of the problems is that you're likely to believe what it's saying. But these words are not true ~ they're not The Truth, they're not a fact. It's not a fact that these women in the example from my party last night were thinking I was "lame." But when I listen to that voice, I begin to believe it, which makes me act that way, and then I do end up being lame! 

Try this: Suppose you were looking at three objects - a flowerpot, a photograph, and a book - and were then asked, "Which of these objects is you?" You'd say, "None of them! I'm the one who's looking at what you're putting in front of me. It doesn't matter what you put in front of me, it's always going to be me looking at it." You see, it's an act of subject perceiving various objects. This is also true of hearing the voice inside. It doesn't make any difference what it's saying, you are the one who is aware of it. But you are not the voice itself. 

There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind – you are the one who hears it. If you don’t understand this, you will try to figure out which of the many things the voice says is really you, is really the truth. The answer is simple: NONE OF THEM.

If you watch objectively, you will see that when there’s a buildup of nervous, fearful, or desire-based energies inside, the voice becomes extremely active. You'll also notice that at times the voice is actually narrating the world for you ("Look at that dog. Brrr, it's cold out here. I love this song"). This narration makes you feel more comfortable with the world around you. Like backseat driving, it makes you feel as though things are more in control.

This mental manipulation of the outer experience allows you to buffer reality as it comes in. Your consciousness is actually experiencing your mental model of reality, not reality itself. You can control your mind whereas you can’t control the world!! If you can’t get the world the way you like it, you internally verbalize it, judge it, complain about it, and then decide what to do about it. This makes you feel empowered. Reality is just too real for most of us, so we temper it with the mind.

You will come to see that the mind TALKS all the time because you gave it a job to do. You use it as a protection mechanism, a form of defense. Ultimately, it makes you feel more secure. As long as that’s what you want, you will be forced to constantly use your mind to protect yourself from life, instead of living it.

True personal growth is about transcending the part of you that is not okay and needs protection. This is done by constantly remembering that you are THE ONE INSIDE THAT NOTICES THE VOICE TALKING. That is the way out. Come to know the one who watches the voice, and you will come to know one of the great mysteries of creation. 

- Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul