Make Social Media Work *For* Your Mental Health

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Social media gets a bad reputation for being addictive, drama-mongering, and time-eating, but it doesn’t have to be that way

  • Used mindfully, social media can be used to grow and nurture one’s community, and enjoy a rich adjunct to one’s social life (important, especially as we get older)

  • Today’s main feature has tips for actively having more of the latter!

• If you love the condensed daily knowledge of newsletters, but don’t love clutter, then today’s sponsor Meco is here to help.

  • Meco is an app designed specifically for reading newsletters, and keeps them all in your own personal newsletter library—uncluttering your inbox in the process!

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

🤫 A WORD TO THE WISE

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

The Best Mobility Exercises For Each Joint (8:45)

Mobility is critical to health-related quality of life. Here’s how to keep each of the most commonly lost mobilities in good order:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Mobility menu:

• 1:15 | Wrists

• 2:06 | Elbows

• 2:51 | Shoulder

• 3:58 | Spine

• 4:42 | Hip

• 5:21 | Knee

• 7:08 | Summary

Want to watch it, but not right now? Bookmark it for later 🔖

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❓️ THIS OR THAT?

Vote on Which is Healthier

Yesterday we asked you to choose between krill oil and fish oil—we picked the krill oil (click here to read about why), as did 58% of you!

Now for today’s choice:

Click on whichever you think is better for you!

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📱 MAIN FEATURE

Social Media, But Healthy

Social media has a bad reputation, and rightly so. It’s calculated to trick you into doomscrolling and rage-posting, and it encourages you to compare your everyday life to other people’s carefully-curated highlight reels.

Rebalancing Dopamine (Without “Dopamine Fasting”)

But it doesn’t have to be so.

Find your community

One of the biggest strengths social media has going for it is that it can, if used well, be a powerful tool for community. As for why that’s important from a health perspective, see:

How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation

Loneliness & isolation do, of course, kill people. By:

• Accidents, e.g. household fall but nobody notices for a week

• Depression and resultant decline (and perhaps even active suicidality)

• Cognitive decline from a lack of social contact

Read more:

• The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need

• How To Stay Alive (When You Really Don’t Want To)

• The Five Key Traits Of Healthy Aging

So, what’s “community” to you, and to what extent can you find it online? Examples might include:

• A church, or other religious community, if we be religious

• The LGBT+ community, or even just a part of it, if that fits for us

• Any mutual-support oriented, we-have-this-shared-experience community, could be anything from AA to the VA.

Find your people, and surround yourself with them. There are more than 8,000,000,000 people on this planet, you will not find all the most compatible ones with you on your street.

Grow & nurture your community

Chances are, you have a lot to contribute. Your life experiences are valuable.

Being of service to other people is strongly associated “flourishing”, per the science.

Indeed, one of the questions on the subjective wellness scale test is to ask how much one agrees with the statement “I actively contribute to the happiness and wellbeing of others”.

See: Are You Flourishing? (There’s a Scale)

So, help people, share your insights, create whatever is relevant to your community and fits your skills (it could be anything from art to tutorials to call-to-action posts or whatever works for you and your community)

As a bonus: when people notice you are there for them, they’ll probably be there for you, too. Not always, sadly, but there is undeniable strength in numbers.

Remember it’s not the boss of you

Whatever social media platform(s) you use, the companies in question will want you to use it in the way that is most profitable for them.

Usually that means creating a lot of shallow content, clicking on as many things as possible, and never logging off.

Good ways to guard against that include:

• Use the social media from a computer rather than a handheld device

• Disable “infinite scroll” in the settings, if possible

• Set a timer and stick to it

• Try to keep your interactions to only those that are relevant and kind (for the good of your own health, let alone anyone else’s)

On that latter note…

Before posting, ask “what am I trying to achieve here?” and ensure your action is aligned with your actual desires, and not just reactivity. See also:

A Bone To Pick… Up And Then Put Back Where We Found It

Take care!

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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma – by Dr. Mariel Buqué

Intergenerational trauma comes in two main varieties: epigenetic, and behavioral.

This book covers both. There’s a lot more we can do about the behavioral side than the epigenetic, but that’s not to say that Dr. Buqué doesn’t have useful input in the latter kind too.

If you’ve read other books on epigenetic trauma, then there’s nothing new here—though the refresher is always welcome.

On the behavioral side, Dr. Buqué gives a strong focus on practical techniques, such as specific methods of journaling to isolate trauma-generated beliefs and resultant behaviors, with a view to creating one’s own trauma-informed care, cutting through the cycle, and stopping it there.

Which, of course, will not only be better for you, but also for anyone who will be affected by how you are (e.g. now/soon, hopefully better).

As a bonus, if you see the mistakes your parents made and are pretty sure you didn’t pass them on, this book can help you troubleshoot for things you missed, and also to improve your relationship with your own childhood.

Bottom line: if you lament how things were, and do wish/hope to do better in terms of mental health for yourself now and generations down the line, this book is a great starting point.

Click here to check out Break the Cycle, and do just that!

Wishing you a peaceful Sunday,

The 10almonds Team