FOMO. A ‘term’, that I, for a long time, lied about when people asked me if I knew what it meant. At 27, it appears as though I might already be “behind the times”; either that or unconsciously, I refuse to pay attention to things that aren’t directly related to me. Aren’t we millennials the worst?
FOMO is an acronym that stands for “fear of missing out”. Sound familiar? Not to say FOMO wasn’t a ‘real’ fear prior to the invention of personal social media outlets, but there’s no lack of scientific and social evidence that suggest that Facebook, Instagram and other popular platforms have taken the prevalence of FOMO to new heights. Unfortunately, it’s not just FOMO. Personal social media has been shown, time and time again, to elevate social anxieties and stressors, loneliness and to even alleviate boredom. Despite whether or not you think you are negatively affected by personal social media, we live in a highly distracted world, and social media, it seems, has provided an outlet where we are both hyper-attentive and hyper-inattentive to ourselves; giving “distraction” a whole new meaning. Hypnotherapy can help decipher and relieve this paradox.
It’s 2017. The odds that you have at least 1 personal social media account is high. This article is not meant to deter you from social media or to convince you that Facebook and Instagram are ruining your life. Personal social media is not all bad. In many cases we use Facebook and Instagram to communicate with our friends and family and these platforms have provided a way to express ourselves in new and innovative ways. Hypnotherapy can work with you to get the most out of your social media experience as well as to help you use it; not abuse yourself with it.
Stop procrastinating and wasting your time
Ever been in the middle of doing or starting something, and stopping, for whatever reason, to look at your Facebook newsfeed? Reading the same postings over and over again? I know I have. And the worst part is that I didn’t even realize what I was doing. In a highly distracted world, Hypnotherapy provides an environment to deeply ruminate over our behaviour and why it is exactly we do the things we do. Considering social media outlets, many people browse platforms for hours without knowing or realizing how much time has passed.
Using techniques in Hypnotherapy, we can show you how to be more mindful of your usage and to be increasingly aware of how much time you actually spend on your account(s). We do this by creating an environment for you to visualize yourself becoming increasingly aware of every time you open Facebook, Instagram or whatever else. This, in turn, will help you recognize what is happening, to ask yourself if you really need to be using the app at this time and to remind yourself to be aware of how long you’re on it. Ideally, this allows you to obtain more positive outcomes of your usage and to stop interrupting and sabotaging yourself in other activities.
Boost your self-confidence & manage anxieties
On social media, we tend to compare ourselves to others, whether we know them or not. Additionally, the increase and accessibility of celebrity influence places a lot of pressure on people of all ages to think specific physical attributes and/ or lifestyles are more desirable than others. Not only that, but the invention of “likes” has developed an entirely new dimension of self-affirmation. This mentality, whether we consciously realize it or not, affects the way we view ourselves, and can make a dimension of our self-confidence seemingly dependent on the views of others.
Hypnotherapy can help you build, manage and recognize self-confidence through discovering that internal “spark”, our self-happiness, and how to effectively wade through the dirt and sludge that seems to build-up and cover it, preventing us from recognizing just how great (to say the least), in all aspects, we actually are. When we constantly are looking at others, it so happens that sometimes we forget to look at ourselves, and this can make that “spark” seem smaller and increasingly dull.
Our job as Hypnotherapists is to guide you through intense self-reflection; through abstract and direct visualization we create an environment for you to remove yourself from the bubble of life that is often times very difficult to see out of. This not only gives you new perspectives and understandings of how you actually view yourself but also illustrates and develops tools to be more self-confident and better able to manage personal anxieties; to bring out the best you.
This newsletter was written by Amy MacKay, the newest Hypnotherapist to join the Morpheus Clinic team! Amy has been at the clinic since February 2017 and has been loving meeting and working with all new clients. Check out her bio here.
One of our Client Care Coordinators published this post.