Social Media Breaks: A (Quiet) Healing Endo Call to Arms
If you follow me on social media you know that I often take breaks - maybe 2-3 per year. They helped me with mental clarity and focusing on the now. When I started doing breaks they were shorter, maybe a week or so, and now they’re much longer. I’ve currently been off for about 2.5 months and, well, find myself not planning on coming back for a while.
No, I’m not announcing that I’m switching social media platforms to ones that aren’t owned by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Insta, or whomever. Even though there are important concerns with mega corporations owning our freedom of speech (oh, and all of our personal information, photos, etc), I actually think this is more important on many levels for YOU if you read my blog - and thus have endo.
Here’s what I realized, and what I want you to realize too: Social media will not heal your endo.
What do I mean? Well, first of all many of us learn a lot about endo from those in our tribe. This is cool! But once we learn and start following, like, everyone in our endo tribe we suddenly are inundated with information. SO. MUCH. INFORMATION. All the time.
Even just reading 10 posts each day (or hundreds for some folk) leads to overwhelm - especially when they’re either not informative, contradictory, incorrect, angry, sad, or hopeless. What about if they’re super duper informative? I still don’t think they’re helpful if you read then scroll, because there’s no time to internalize or apply the nugget of wisdom you just read. It’s just more information for your not-a-computer self to process and internalize and start to beat yourself up about.
In fact, I think the amount of mass information out there traumatizes people. Here’s an example of traumatized clients who’ve arrived at my doorstep:
Ok ok, so it’s an over-exaggerated example :) But you’re catching what I’m throwing? Social media is an endless and exhausting waterfall of content that never stops coming and that truly - for most of you - doesn’t even apply to you and your healing.
A Counter-Revolution to Truly Start to Heal: do less, heal more
I recently read the book How to do nothing: Avoiding the Attention Economy. It’s a great book, about how everyone is out to grab your attention, every single minute of the day. From early emails to lunch with the ‘ol iPhone, working on your “personal brand” (whatever that is) as a hobby, to being absorbed by Netflix at night. It turns out it’s very easy to have our precious attention snatched away with nothing to show for it.
Read that again: nothing to show for it.
To put it another way, imagine that you were told to stand in a spot and do nothing all day, you would realize you’re not really making headway in life, right? But when we’re distracted by all the shiny (social media) things, we’re reallly doing the same thing. Sitting stuck not accomplishing much. Again, nothing to show for it … a big problem that becomes an even bigger problem when we have an enormous problem called ENDOMETRIOSIS.
The truth is that to heal from a disease as complex as endometriosis you may need to do a lot of new, different things. No, it doesn’t have to be expensive, and no it doesn’t have to be a full time job. But yes, it takes patience and perseverance. It takes not just learning new habits, but applying them so they end up fitting seamlessly in your life without you thinking about it. Social media scrolling will not accomplish this for you, no matter how much “new” information you think you got out of that last 30 minute sesh.
Here’s an example of “nothing accomplished” because of social media: your favorite Pinterest page you’ve been cultivate for a millennia. Is it of gardens you want to have one day? Or a really awesome kitchen, reorganized house, fun new recipes, or cool crafts you’ve been dying to do for, oh I don’t know, 2 years? Yah, you’re not actually doing the things you want because you’re being distracted by the pretty pictures.
Here’s an example of what can be accomplished without social media: HEALING. My own journey took 3 years (Pinterest, Insta, and Facebook free I remind you) to feel like my endo was in remission, and that three years was a journey. I literally went from eating gluten free processed vegetarian thingie-ma-bobbers to a whole foods diet of locally grown veggies, hunted meat, and ancestral fats. “Yuck” said old me, “how will I every do this??” I had to kick my sweet habit to the curb and it was a slow process to learn to like savory meals. I had to dial in my terrible digestion (there’s no insta-fast way to do this it turns out). All of this took months and months of learning to cook, shop, and prepare new locally grown foods (amaranth greens, collards, kalua pork and eggplant, anyone?).
Then I had to fix my terrible biomechanics. I walked barefoot in the forest, climbed trees, learned to breathe and move in new ways. This took forever to shift my body from a broken one to properly moving one - truth be told I’m still working on it. But my endo was fading! No one told me that was possible, no one ever. Insta didn’t tell me that, nor could I have been doing all these things in mindful peace if I was thinking of insta the whole time (like: ooooh, this would be such a GREAT post!)
I read books, cookbooks, and even textbooks on these topics: gut health, biomechanics, fermentation, nutritional deficiencies, stress, natural living, toxins, and fertility. Seriously, libraries worth of books, many of which still stand on my Shelf of Health.
Of course I did a lot more, but the example is that just these facets alone - eating, reading, and moving in brand new ways - took a lot of time and patience and focus. I wasn’t scrolling social media trying to find the newest moving trend - I was buckling down and learning new skills, skill by skill, until at the end of a few years I’d mastered a great handful of skills and felt like a whole new person. I had healed my endo, all without social media, but with a heck of a lot of hard work.
Yes, this is an example of me, but it’s also an example of what I ask my clients to do. Want free client advice? There ya go, you’re welcome :)
”So … You’re Saying I Should Get off Social Media?”
This is my quiet call to arms (quiet because I just want to whisper this nicely): yes, I think so. But social media is addictive, and so is news scrolling and chronic email checking, so like all things healing-endo this may be no small feat for you depending on the level of your tech dependance.
What I want to do is lead by example. I want to offer a grounding experience in healing that’s not of the (all to common) business mindset of placing myself incessantly in front of you. In fact, as an online business, I’m told to post on social 3 times per day and deliver an email to your inbox at least once a week in order to stay relevant! But what’s more relevant to healing than elevating a true lifestyle that maintains endo remission? Because, yes, I still need to keep my own endo in remission, and social media sure doesn’t help me do that either.
But what will I do without it???!!?!?!?!
Focus on the basics: creating a nice peaceful life that doesn’t distract you all. the. time. with things you should buy, things you should do, people you wish you were friends with, bodies you wished yours looked like, or all the influencers telling you one more time that you’re a BOSS BABE or YOU’VE GOT THIS. You just do you :) Get traction on 3 new skills, be happier for it.
Oh, and it give it a solid 3-5 days to feel natural. It’s okay to mistakenly grab your phone for the usual scroll only to be reminded that you’re not going there. In time, it will feel oddly normal to not be on social platforms throughout the day.
Do you want to know what I do when I’m not thinking somewhat obsessively about the next super-duper-informative-post I’m going to deliver as an A-type perfectionist (oh, and respond to all the messages and comments)? Here’s what I’ve been doing the past 2.5 months that has led me to feel loved, safe, grounded, and intellectually stimulated:
Gardening! Growing food actually takes quite a bit of time.
Reading, real books! These two are, quite literally, life changing. Quick, go buy them
Investing in STRONG relationships. Did you know marriages don’t grow on trees? Turns out they need nurturing too, not insta scrolling :) That goes for friends too!
Mothering a very energetic toddler, while being very pregnant
Yup, still cooking. The fun that never stops, ahem. Okay, maybe it does when you’re 8.5 months pregnant and tired af. Oh well.
WRITING A NEW BOOK! Yah, this takes a lot of time, believe me. As does doing all the graphics for it. Isn’t this graphic neat? Look how the immune system is a culprit in your estrogenic pelvis! #nerdforlife
What if I need to be on it? For anyone that’s already justifying your use (as we all do)
Some of you who read my blog may be influencers. Some of you may use it for work. Some of you may say you need it to connect to family and friends in a time of covid. I’m not here to judge anyone, but since my goal in life is literally to help women heal from endo I ask you to ask yourself this: how much healing do you need to do? And how much are you really doing this for work/to feel connected/whatever, and how much are youI fooling yourself? [yes, only you can answer that question honestly]
I have a sneaky suspicion that those of you who post a lot (maybe to a lot of followers who you think rely on you, and maybe to not many followers at all but because you feel like you need to) have a TON of stress. And those of you who scroll a lot have a TON of anxiety. And those of you who feel like social media connects you to loved ones are actually pretty lonely because what you really need is a wonderfully long phone or Zoom call, or real human-human catching up. And most of you probably have at least a handful of symptoms that mysteriously won’t budge. If this is you, why not answer my call to arms with even a three month hiatus, just to test the waters.
THREE MONTHS???!
Yup, because if you take a week off you’ll only just start to retrain your brain to not think about social media by the time you get back on social media - like a big social media boomerang. If you need it for work, figure out how to use it without getting lost in it. If you want to stay connected to your badass online friends, get emails or *gasp* a phone number ;) Connect in new deeper ways.
Are you terrified you will no longer be relevant? Yah, that’s a sign of social media’s addicive powers. Push through, I promise you are relevant, and that you deserve love and grounding and peace and to feel relevant no matter how many (or few) followers you have. You don’t need likes to make that Pinterest garden (or crafts, recipes, kitchen, etc) the most perfect thing in the world.
As for me? I think I’ll go have a baby soon….
If you decide to go on a social media break I’d love to hear!! Email me katie@healendo.com.