Setting Boundaries On Social Media For Our Mental Health
The beauty of most social media platforms is that you can mute phrases and words, so the same kind of posts don’t keep showing up in my timeline. There are pros and cons of following people in the #writingcommunity. Some you will call your tribe, and some just aren’t. The reason for the divide is that there are people who are in certain cliques depending on their publishing avenue. One of the great features of X is the ability to mute specific phrases and words, allowing you to control the content that appears on your timeline. There will be posts from fellow writers that may resonate with you, contributing to your tribe, while others may not. This distinction often stems from the different publishing avenues they are associated with.
This is just a fact.
So, while I love so many writer announcements flooding X lately, I’m choosing to mute certain key phrases for my mental health. Not because I’m not happy for them but because social media is a double-edged sword. It tempts us to compare our wins against those of other people. It lures some into elitist cliques that are not inclusive. You either have bragging rights in your bio, or you don’t. At the end of the day, we should only be focusing on our own path. This can be a challenge when timelines are constantly flooded—bombarded even—by what other people are doing.
I am a huge mental health advocate. I am also a professional content strategist and marketing professional by day. So, as one, I can understand the power behind marketing ourselves and promoting our wins. But at the end of the day, we’re not robots. It’s hard not to compare our houses, cars, book deals, “I got an agent” vs. non-agented, indie vs. traditional, and so on when the X algorithm keeps showing us the same stuff that matches our interests. It can actually be taxing. I am a huge advocate for being proud of ourselves. But at the same time, it’s okay to prioritize our own mental health. It is not selfish to mute accounts or even announcements.
We can be happy for people at a distance while also first realizing that we must champion our own journey. We can’t do that by looking to the right and the left. When we feel forced into unhealthy comparisons, we allow our joy to be stolen. The only way to protect yourself from unhealthy activity on social media is to set boundaries for yourself. Boundaries aren’t selfish. Boundaries aren’t jealousy. You can set boundaries and still be happy for others.
Setting boundaries by muting accounts and keywords or even taking social media breaks means valuing ourselves. It is about loving ourselves enough to put ourselves first. It is respecting our sanity, peace of mind, and our personal goals. It is ensuring that we aren’t comparing ourselves to other people. The best thing we can do for ourselves as aspiring authors and writers at all levels is to acknowledge how easy it is to compare ourselves to others, especially in the publishing world, and how quickly that can sink us into depression.
You are on your journey, and I am on mine. We can champion others but realize we must first respect our mental health, and that means setting boundaries in terms of what we want to see and constantly read on our timeline. If someone muted my publishing announcement, I wouldn’t be offended at all. Because as someone who deals with lifelong depression, anxiety, and insomnia—I totally get it. It reminds me when I was struggling with secondary infertility and there were secondary infertility support groups where those in the group couldn't handle pregnancy announcements after all of their miscarriages. I myself had 16 non-viable pregnancies before I successfully had my son. So, a writer facing a ton of rejections and then seeing agented announcements flooding their social media feed can be triggering to them.
I'm the first one to say that we need to celebrate our wins and not minimize them. But on the flip side, we have to set boundaries for ourselves. As someone who had an agent and no longer has one, I am also allowed to feel complex emotions when bombarded by such announcements. Everyone expects us to be subhuman and gleeful all the time when it comes to everyone else’s positive news. But, the amount of rejection by writers receive is not even at normal levels. We are allowed to admit that rejection hurts. We are allowed to admit that seeing repeated announcements is a tad annoying, and we are allowed to do whatever it is that we need to do to protect our sanity.
Social media puts everything in our faces, and that can sometimes be harmful. Whether we realize that immediately or not.
The bottom line? No, this isn't hating on people's joy. No, this isn't asking people not to be happy when they win. There isn’t anything wrong with filtering your content on social media. Sometimes, the best thing we can do in terms of social media and mental health management is to understand our triggers and to work accordingly to set digital boundaries out of respect for mental health.
This is just a fact.
So, while I love so many writer announcements flooding X lately, I’m choosing to mute certain key phrases for my mental health. Not because I’m not happy for them but because social media is a double-edged sword. It tempts us to compare our wins against those of other people. It lures some into elitist cliques that are not inclusive. You either have bragging rights in your bio, or you don’t. At the end of the day, we should only be focusing on our own path. This can be a challenge when timelines are constantly flooded—bombarded even—by what other people are doing.
I am a huge mental health advocate. I am also a professional content strategist and marketing professional by day. So, as one, I can understand the power behind marketing ourselves and promoting our wins. But at the end of the day, we’re not robots. It’s hard not to compare our houses, cars, book deals, “I got an agent” vs. non-agented, indie vs. traditional, and so on when the X algorithm keeps showing us the same stuff that matches our interests. It can actually be taxing. I am a huge advocate for being proud of ourselves. But at the same time, it’s okay to prioritize our own mental health. It is not selfish to mute accounts or even announcements.
We can be happy for people at a distance while also first realizing that we must champion our own journey. We can’t do that by looking to the right and the left. When we feel forced into unhealthy comparisons, we allow our joy to be stolen. The only way to protect yourself from unhealthy activity on social media is to set boundaries for yourself. Boundaries aren’t selfish. Boundaries aren’t jealousy. You can set boundaries and still be happy for others.
Setting boundaries by muting accounts and keywords or even taking social media breaks means valuing ourselves. It is about loving ourselves enough to put ourselves first. It is respecting our sanity, peace of mind, and our personal goals. It is ensuring that we aren’t comparing ourselves to other people. The best thing we can do for ourselves as aspiring authors and writers at all levels is to acknowledge how easy it is to compare ourselves to others, especially in the publishing world, and how quickly that can sink us into depression.
You are on your journey, and I am on mine. We can champion others but realize we must first respect our mental health, and that means setting boundaries in terms of what we want to see and constantly read on our timeline. If someone muted my publishing announcement, I wouldn’t be offended at all. Because as someone who deals with lifelong depression, anxiety, and insomnia—I totally get it. It reminds me when I was struggling with secondary infertility and there were secondary infertility support groups where those in the group couldn't handle pregnancy announcements after all of their miscarriages. I myself had 16 non-viable pregnancies before I successfully had my son. So, a writer facing a ton of rejections and then seeing agented announcements flooding their social media feed can be triggering to them.
I'm the first one to say that we need to celebrate our wins and not minimize them. But on the flip side, we have to set boundaries for ourselves. As someone who had an agent and no longer has one, I am also allowed to feel complex emotions when bombarded by such announcements. Everyone expects us to be subhuman and gleeful all the time when it comes to everyone else’s positive news. But, the amount of rejection by writers receive is not even at normal levels. We are allowed to admit that rejection hurts. We are allowed to admit that seeing repeated announcements is a tad annoying, and we are allowed to do whatever it is that we need to do to protect our sanity.
Social media puts everything in our faces, and that can sometimes be harmful. Whether we realize that immediately or not.
The bottom line? No, this isn't hating on people's joy. No, this isn't asking people not to be happy when they win. There isn’t anything wrong with filtering your content on social media. Sometimes, the best thing we can do in terms of social media and mental health management is to understand our triggers and to work accordingly to set digital boundaries out of respect for mental health.
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