#Life #MentalHealth #SocialMedia

Five years ago I was in a mental institution, undergoing treatment. It was an eight-week inpatient program for people with PTSD.

I was about half-way through it and was already starting to feel positive changes. I was on my laptop, trying to figure out how to get rid of the toxicity in my life.

Work was an obvious one. It had been a dream job for 12 years, but a year prior the company had “merged” with a bigger one located 350 kilometres away, and things had been going south since then. But I was on medical leave, so now was not the time to deal with it. I had plans, but they could wait.

One more immediate concern was social media and the stress it brought to my life. I was not an avid user but there is this push-pull relationship with Twitter and Facebook. You are force-fed posts according to algorithms that are designed to elicit “engagement” through strong emotions like admiration, envy, shock, outrage —mostly shock and outrage. So there is this urge to react to other people's posts, but also to share “interesting” things about your own life with the hope to get some feedback in return, either in the form of praise or dissent.