We all have complicated relationships with social media. In this Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily talks to Emmy-Award winning TV Producer and therapist-in-training Jesse Zook Mann about his own intentional approach to social apps and the steps we can all take to bring some emotional fitness to our digital lives.

Thank you for listening! Staying emotionally fit takes work and repetition. That's why the Emotionally Fit podcast with psychologist Dr. Emily Anhalt delivers short, actionable Emotional Push-Ups every Monday and Thursday to help you build a better practice of mental health. Join us to kickstart your emotional fitness. Let's flex those feels and do some reps together!

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The Emotionally Fit podcast is produced by Coa, your gym for mental health. Katie Sunku Wood is the show’s producer from StudioPod Media with additional editing and sound design by Nodalab, and featuring music by Milano. Special thanks to the entire Coa crew!

Ready to break an emotional sweat? Welcome to Emotionally Fit with me, Dr. Emily Anhalt. As a therapist, I know that staying mentally healthy takes work and repetition. That's why I'll share emotional push ups, short, actionable exercises to help you strengthen your mental fitness. From improving your friendships to managing stress, let's flex those feels and do some reps together.

Hey there fit fans. I'm here today with Jesse Zook Mann, Emmy Award-winning TV producer and currently training to become a therapist. It's so great to have you here, Jesse.

Thank you for having me, Dr. Emily. Good to see you.

You too. And you know, Jesse, you and I actually met on Twitter years ago, and I know we both have complicated feelings about social media. So I'm curious, what is your relationship to social media like these days?

I mean, it's always evolving as social media is always evolving. It's hard to say what it is. I always try to make sure it's a positive force in my life and something that is helping me in my recovery. I'm somebody who is disabled with bipolar disorder and PTSD. So managing my emotions, managing my time is a really big part of my recovery. So I have to make sure what I'm looking at all day is pushing my life in the right direction. I can't just be willy-nilly about it.

Yeah, I'm with you. I know I personally have kind of a love-hate relationship with all of it because so much opportunity and so many really authentic relationships have come into my life because of social media, my friendship with you included. But I also know that I spend way too much time on it, and I've noticed that sometimes I will let other people's reactions to what I post influence how I feel about my own thoughts and my own content.

The other thing I see a lot with people is that social media has given us a very unrealistic idea about what our life should look like. Like even though we intellectually understand that people curate their life on social media to look a certain way, it's still so easy to get caught up in it and to compare our behind the scenes life to everyone else's highlight reel. We forget that we're not privy to all of the messy shit in a person's life that they decide not to post, and yet we will often think that what we're seeing is the whole picture. I'm curious what your thoughts are about that.

I mean, I definitely see some of that. And then I think, depending on the accounts that you follow, sometimes you see the other side of that. There are people that you might have a relationship with that only post the worst things that happen. And then you get caught into that.

That's true.

And I think the thing is, you really lose a sense of control with social media. We kind of forget how much control we've given up. It used to be if you were going to go buy a book, you had a pretty good idea of what that was going to be. When we were watching TV, yeah, there would be surprises, but you had a pretty good idea. If you were watching the news, if something really horrible was going to happen, they would give you a heads up and say, kids leave the room, or turn it off, or whatever. Sometimes people will post trigger warning for things, but just the overall, you just never know what you're going to get. And it could be something that's really hard to see or something you just don't want to be waiting in day in and day out. It's hard. It's really hard because if you're in a vulnerable place in life, it can really mess with your emotions. So I'm very careful with who I follow, how I follow people, and just how I spend my time on social media.

You make a really good point, which is that it can be insidious. Like there's the really obvious stuff of “Oh, wow, I really don't like what this person posts.” But there's also the other way you spoke to, the kind of slow drip of something just not quite jiving with what you want to fold into your mind, but there it is all the time. Same with if you follow more than one news site, you're getting the same tough information 20 different ways. And I don't actually think our minds evolved to take in that amount of bad information every single day. So I appreciate what you're saying there. Actually it ties in really perfectly with our push up today, which is all about being more intentional with our social media use, something that it sounds like you've put a lot of thought into.

So step one of this push up today, Jesse, is for us to scroll through our social media, whatever platforms we tend to use the most. For me, I think that's Twitter. And what we're going to try to do is find one to three accounts that maybe we've noticed, make us feel more negative or insecure or unhappy or invalidated than they make us feel empowered, excited, connected, less alone, whatever it might be. I try not to create a negative, positive binary here, because it's not like we should scrub our feeds of all negative information. We need to feel those things too, but it's more like, does it take more away from us overall than it gives us? The goal is once we find that, these accounts that aren't so great for our mental health, then we should consider whether they have a place in our feed. Should we mute them? Should we unfollow them?

For those listening in, feel free to press pause here while you scroll through your feed a little bit and take note of how you're feeling or keep listening to hear what Jesse found.

So Jesse, I'm curious, can you share anything about the accounts you chose for this?

This was actually a pretty easy one. I did recently unfollow a lot of accounts partially for my own mental health. So I've already limited it to a pretty significant degree, but as the discussion of Elon Musk buying Twitter, I followed Elon Musk and I'm about to unfollow Elon Musk as part of this exercise because I don't need this dialogue all the time when I'm trying to rest. Let's see ba, ba, ba. I got a lot of wrestling. There's nobody fighting on my feed anymore.

I love that you're scrolling in real time here.

Yeah. So I have a friend named Elsa who is this brilliant disability rights activist, and she just retweeted an example of ableism. I don't want to look at it, but it says, “Trigger warning: ableism.” And it says, “As a disabled person, I'm going to throw up.” And I just don't know if this is the kind of thing again that I want to see on my chilled out time. Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure it's going to upset me. So I'm not going to... I love this person. She is a comrade in the disability rights space, but you know what? I might turn off retweets because I don't think this is her voice, and I just don't know if I need to see it. I'm going to consider it.

I love that. That's really cool. And I think you've just introduced me to a feature I didn't know about, which is that you can turn off just the retweet aspect of an account.

Yeah, and that'll definitely work. And one small tip with Twitter that I learned recently is that if there's a really annoying ad in your feed and you're like, “Oh, I don't... ” Like right here, I'm seeing... This isn't particularly upsetting to me. It's an ad for Lowe's mulch. It says, “Springtime is project time.” But let's say that was something that maybe was aspirational in a negative way or was really body negative or health negative or whatever it was and it was just like gross, you can actually block the company that sends you the ad and you'll never see them again.

I love that. So it's not just accounts, it's also ad accounts.

Yeah. If you're not following an ad account, they'll still see it in your feed, but you can block the ad account and then they are gone.

Nice. I know that one of the big things I did for myself on Twitter is I muted a ton of words.

Uh-huh. I did that too.

Yeah. Like pretty much any current event that just felt more upsetting than helpful. Clearly, I got the gist of it. I know it's happening. I don't need to hear people arguing about anymore. I just mute those words and it's delightful.

The problem I have with that is if in the replies it'll say, you muted a word and then I kind of want to see it more.

That's fair.

Okay. So here is a reporter reporting of a really nasty thing. A breaking news story about a vulnerable person being really hurt really badly. There is no trigger warning of any kind. I think that the data on trigger warnings is not great anyway if you just put the TW, but this is somebody who is reporting in real time someone being hurt and using very inflammatory language and you know what? I get it, it's a horrible thing that he's reporting about, but I just don't know if I want to read this story and absorb this information in this way in real time as it's happening.

Yeah. So what action would you take? Would you mute them? Would you mute temporarily? What does taking care of yourself look like in that moment?

I'm going to review just to see what they're reporting on and what kind of work they're doing. It looks like it's somebody that does important work and does do good social justice work, but I just don't know if I need to see the inflammatory upset in real time. This is a story that's important to look at and to see, but I just don't know if this is the format and the time to do it. So I'm going to mute.

Nice. Good for you. Well, that's fantastic. And you know, this is an ongoing thing. I think I've just been trying to bring more intentionality in general where as I'm scrolling, if I notice like, “Man, this doesn't make me feel good.” I now know I have the option to mute or unfollow or take a break. But step two here is to consider also setting limits for how long we can scroll on social media period per day. One way to do this is to turn off notifications. Another is to set time limit restrictions on your phone, or I know when I'm really feeling brave, I'll delete the apps off my phone altogether so I can only check them when I'm at my computer. So Jessie, I'm curious, what does that look like for you? Is this something you need support in restricting or are you pretty good at stepping away from it?

You know, it was a lot easier before COVID because there was stuff to do. I'm grateful that the gym has opened because that's one thing. And now that summer is coming, I will use social media 20% of the time I usually do if I can go outside and take a walk. But yeah, I'm terrible at setting boundaries and setting limits, especially now that I'm in grad school and I'm writing papers and the computer is on and I'm in Google Docs, which is a web browser.

Totally.

So yeah, well, I don't know. How do you support people in doing better with that?

I mean, so I am the type of person who I need a little bit of outside help to restrict myself with things. So if I want to eat less sugar, I have to not bring sugar into my house. I can't sit there and look at sugary things and expect myself not to eat them. So I've learned to cut myself off at the source. It's just what works best for me. So when it comes to social media, I have actually gone so far as to set time restrictions. You can do this through your phone where it kicks you off the app after a certain amount of time, or like I said, I'll delete it off my phone altogether. Because constantly expecting myself to abstain feels like a lot of work versus it just not being an option. It ends up not feeling so bad. I actually don't even miss it that much as long as it's not in my field of vision all the time. So that's what I do. Are any of those things feel like options for you?

Oh yeah, sure. I mean, I would just like to just give my phone away if I could. I just want to throw it.

You're not alone there.

I don't even want to... I like texting my friends. I want a phone that you can't put Twitter on or Instagram.

Bring back the flip phone, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

With like a real keyboard though. I need like a Blackberry, like an old school Blackberry.

Yes. I loved my Blackberry.

That's really all I want.

Yeah, I'm with you.

But I don't want to hit the three buttons for like A.

Yeah.

Or C.

Right. I used that between playing snake for hours. Anyway, all that said, Jesse, how did it feel to do this push up in general? What's it like to, just to put your attention on your social media use a little bit?

You know what feels really good is knowing that you are working on this too, and you're someone I really look up to in this space and that you also have this concern and struggle. And even people who are really amazing therapists who are doing really incredible mental health work, who are doing really important, psychoeducation work are also people. And yeah, I think it makes it a little bit easier to know that you are working on this and that it's just not me who's weak and has a problem and just doesn't need to toughen it up a little bit.

Oh, you're so kind. And the feeling's so mutual and absolutely, I would maybe venture to guess that tech addiction is the most widespread addiction that we're struggling with at this time. It's just so hard to get away from. It's not like a substance that you can just not have in your life at all. You need to use it for work and things like that. It makes it really hard. So you are very far from alone on this one. I am right there with you. And I really appreciate you flexing your feels and breaking an emotional sweat with me today, Jesse, it's such a pleasure

Anytime. Thank you so much.

Take good care.

Bye, bye.

Thanks for listening to Emotionally Fit hosted by me, Dr. Emily Anhalt. New push ups drop every Monday and Thursday. Did you do today's push up alongside me and my guest? Tweet your experience with the #emotionallyfit and follow me, @dremilyanhalt.

Please rate, review, follow, and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts. This podcast is produced by Coa, your gym for mental health, where you can take live therapist-led classes online. From group sessions to therapist matchmaking, Coa will help you build your emotional fitness routine. Head to joincoa.com. That's joincoa.com to learn more and follow us on Twitter and Instagram, @joincoa.

From StudioPod Media in San Francisco, our producer is Katie Sunku Wood. Music is by Melano. Special thanks to the entire Coa crew.

I'm sorry, I have a cat. And should I put him in the car?

No, it's okay.

Okay.