The Therapy Room is a MyndStories Special where mental health experts offer help and guidance on mental health issues, relationships, and wellbeing.

A social media post appeared on my Instagram feed a few days back. The post was about ‘unusual signs in someone dealing with anxiety issues.’ 

One of the points that stood out to me was that people with anxiety tend to carry a water bottle everywhere they go! I myself carry one all the time, and reading that definitely spiked my anxiety levels at that moment, wondering how many people would question themselves or move closer to their self-diagnosis reading this today.

My pet peeve with the popular mental health conversations on social media is that they miss the nuance. So, I thought I could share popular ideas that can indeed do with a pinch of salt.

1. Self-care is all about I, me, myself

Self-care can be many things simultaneously. It can be fun and serious, quick and time-consuming, dirty and fancy, one-off and repetitive, carefully planned and spontaneous. Likewise, sometimes self-care can be about cutting off, but sometimes it is about reconnecting. Self-care is not only about “I, me, myself.” Self-care needs to include relational experiences, too, for it to be sustainable.

2. Boundaries are about cutting ties off

The conversation around boundaries is often centered around giving an ultimatum, walking out on relationships, and canceling people. Especially in the context of the collectivistic society and familial systems we live in, what boundaries look like has more dimensions than that to be effective.

The idea of a boundary is not to run away at the first sight of conflict. Of course, extreme measures may be warranted in extreme circumstances, but is that the norm by which we set our everyday boundaries with people who are important parts of our life?

3. (Mis) labeling someone is equal to self-work

Loosely used labels have always been floating around in mainstream mental health conversations. Social media has given this a facelift by externalizing the tags and labels. Toxicity and gaslighting have become part of our everyday vocabulary, and it is high time we question whether we use these words responsibly. 

What is the impact of tagging our partners as narcissistic with no professional opinion taken whatsoever?  To find camaraderie and solidarity in our struggles is amazing. However, we should consider what it is doing to our collective empathy and healing when we find solace in mislabeling someone and move on without doing the hard work on ourselves.

4. Fixing surface-level issues will resolve it all

There are a lot of quick fixes to work around procrastination, burnout, anger management, and so on. Some of these skills are valuable to add to our toolkit. However, procrastination may be a coping tool for something deeper. 

Anger may only be the tip of an iceberg with many unpeeled layers of pain and betrayal. And many times, we may, in fact, need practical problem-solving at the workplace or value-aligned career planning, and not just an ice-pack to pacify the burnout. Tackling issues at the surface level probably would not sustain without addressing underlying issues.

5. Positive mental attitude is possible and helpful at all times

Resilience and distress tolerance can be strengths but vulnerability takes strength too.

If there is space for “positive vibes only,” where would all the other not-so-positive vibes go? 

Maybe you need to grieve not getting asked for a second date, and that is perfectly okay when the rest of the world seems to be taking on setbacks with their positive armor, cape, and that magic pill of self-motivation. Some days just need to be survived and not powered through, and there’s often no “skipping to the good part,” unlike Instagram reels would like us to believe.

6. Playing smart is how to build romantic relationships

There is no dearth of free relationship advice online. There are quite some psychoanalysis and aha moments one can find in the comments section of posts like “Signs that your partner may be cheating” and “How to find out if someone is into you.”

There are also tips on how your texts should be spaced out to not come off as ‘desperate’ and manipulate someone into liking you. If more and more people are choosing mind games over conflict resolution and communication in matters of love and relationships, mental health is not making a win there.

7. Self-work journeys follow a linear format

The steps explained seem so unambiguous and seamless that they can create unrealistic standards for measuring our progress. Though the internet tells us the exact steps to overcome a setback, healing and growth do not often follow a continuous, upward graph. There is a lot of back and forth – probably a fall from step 6 to step 0 and maybe even a jump from step 2 to step 9.

The bottom line is that we all evolve, and our goals evolve, too, in the inner work journey.

Progress is often portrayed as a transition from damaged goods to QC-approved goods, with little space for valuable work in progress. All of our graphs can look different, and we can very well be agents in the meaning-making of what progress means for us.

There is no denying that social media has been playing a pivotal role in making mental health a mainstream conversation. It is also true that for all the advantages the internet brings, it always throws some extra challenges. 

One step we can all take to tackle this is to become a more conscious and intentional consumer of online mental health content. Besides, it is important to remind ourselves that content consumption alone does not equal working on yourself – let us be more mindful of the fact that content is created primarily for awareness and advocacy.

Challenges around mental well-being often play into each other, and the tips for tackling them in isolation may not always add up. We can very well fall into the trap of intellectualization to escape the hard work. If you have been consuming an overwhelming amount of psychology content online, how is it impacting you, and what value it is adding to your life is something worth reflecting on.

Here are a couple of reminders to start with – while trying to become a more conscious social media consumer of mental health content.

• Know and vet who you are consuming mental health content from; beyond the number of followers.
• Take any ‘generic’ mental health advice with a caveat – everything is not applicable or feasible for you. The content creator does not know your individual circumstances.
• You can respect and appreciate someone’s lived experience and still have your own unique journey.
• The ones posting motivation tips could very well be battling struggles with their own motivation to create and upload these tips, but that part often does not make it online.