social media – That Wellbeing Bug

For a long time, I have been fascinated with personal development. Whether it’s reading self-help books, or motivational autobiographies, through to trying out the latest ‘self-care’ or ‘personal development’ fad, I’m there at the forefront of all the trends. To date, I have dabbled in daily meditation through Headspace, The Miracle Morning, Marie Kondo’s tidying tools, affirmations and visualisation, not to mention others. I have regularly started up new hobbies (netball, choir, volleyball, triathlons, half marathons, Spanish) and taken courses (yoga teacher training, a Masters in Sport and Exercise Psychology), all in the name of challenging myself, getting out of my comfort zone and developing myself personally.

To my family and friends (indeed, to the outside world in general), I look like a driven ambitious, confident woman who isn’t afraid to push beyond her limits. And don’t get me wrong, I really like that I want to do these things!

But if you look at the real story, it isn’t that pretty. It involves me starting big and difficult tasks, only to give up in despair. It means me taking too much on that I have no time for myself and eventually have to cancel something. You can find me berating myself, saying to myself ‘why are you so lazy that you can’t stick at anything? Why do you always quit things?’

Things are going pretty well for me at the moment, personal development-wise. I have a job where I’m pushing myself regularly and learning new skills. I teach yoga part-time. I have a blog where I’m posting new content regularly and developing my writing skills. I’m exercising regularly and setting new goals for myself. And yet, every now and then I find myself in an existential crisis where I say ‘This isn’t enough! You must do more! You’re only teaching yoga four times a week? That’s nothing – take on another one! And why aren’t you volunteering with a charity? How are you even contributing to the world? How are you even furthering yourself?’

I sort of came to the conclusion that the problem wasn’t how many things I was taking on, how much I’m furthering myself, how much good I’m doing for others and the world. I realised that my obsession with personal development came from never feeling like I was good enough. I realised that I could take on all of the things and run myself in to the ground and achieve achieve achieve, but I would still have that little voice in my head telling me that I’m not good enough just as I am.

That’s the balance that I – and all of us – need to strike. It’s really really good to push ourselves, to set goals and to do good for others. But when this comes from a place of inadequacy rather than an appreciation and love for ourselves, a capacity to say ‘no’ when we’re feeling overwhelmed, and the ability to feel proud of ourselves, it’s all for nothing.

I think a couple of things contribute to this. The first is social media. We can scroll through our newsfeed and find a handful of our friends who are pushing and challenging themselves in different ways, and we feel guilty for not doing that too. It’s important to remember that everyone is at a different stage in their journey and has different priorities. Also, there are a million and one different things we could to to develop ourselves; we can’t do them all! And the second is, for me, living in London. I am surrounded by people who do not stop, who pride themselves in moving and achieving constantly. It’s a lot of pressure not to feel lazy when you want a relaxed Sunday afternoon, when you know that there will be other people moving seamlessly with the fast-paced lifestyle that London demands of us. I think that this pressure to be ‘doing’ all the time can be really detrimental to our self-esteem and our mental health. I think of my parents, or indeed any of my friends who don’t live in London, and they don’t have this same affliction. I try to remind myself that living a fast-paced lifestyle is fun and awesome, but not sustainable, and that it’s important to kick back and be in the here and now regularly.

I’m taking slow and deliberate steps to be happy and thankful for who I am right now, and proud of myself for the things I achieve. I have cut down my time teaching yoga to 2 classes a week rather than 4. I make sure to only say ‘yes’ to the things I really want to do, and to tune in and listen to whether it’s coming from a place of fear, or love. When I find myself feeling inadequate, feeling like I should be doing more, I make a promise to myself not to schedule more things for myself until the feeling has passed and I can think rationally. Making a list of all the things I’ve accomplished in the past couple of months helps too.

I hope that I – and you – can strike a good balance between pushing ourselves and loving ourselves.

Do you have this problem as well? What do you find works for you? What is this obsession we have with ‘achieving’ all the time anyway?

C x

CONTENT WARNING: Discussions of rape in this blog post

I just finished reading ‘Asking For It’ by Louise O’Neill. The book is a young adult fiction book about a teenage girl who suffers a horrific gang-rape (the evidence of which is then posted on social media for all to see), and the consequences of this trauma on her, her family and the small town in Ireland where she lives.

I finished this book a week ago and I still can’t stop thinking about it, so I thought I would write a book review to start a conversation about consent, victim-blaming and the influence of social media. DISCLAIMER: I mostly refer to rape below in terms of female victims, as that is what is portrayed in the book.

This book is split in to two main parts: the first focusing on the life of Emma (the protagonist) before the rape, and the latter chapters detailing her life one year after. What I thought was really interesting about this book was that Emma was not, in general, a likeable character. O’Neill details how Emma is mean to her friends, steals from them and craves attention from boys and other girls at school. Her life is a constant striving to be the best at the expense of everyone else. When I’ve read other novels about rape, the protagonist is painted as an angelic creature who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or who fit the generic ‘criteria’ of rape by saying ‘no’ and being aggressively forced in to sex. This novel paints a much more nuanced, and I would argue realistic, portrayal of the absence of consent. Emma, the main character, had been drinking heavily and taking drugs at the party, and had previously had sex (albeit not completely consensual) with one of her attackers. Not only that, but previously upon finding out that one of her friends was raped, Emma encourages her not to ‘make a fuss’ and not to use the word ‘rape’. Perhaps because she wasn’t seen as a particularly nice person to begin with, many of her friends told her that it must have been her fault, or that she was lying.

For me, this created lots of uncomfortable feelings when reading the book. On the one hand, I believe that it’s never consensual sex when one person is unconscious and cannot remember anything. However, it made me realise how easy it can be to place blame on the victims of rape for drinking too much, or the choices they made on that evening. And if that person has other negative qualities about them, it’s all too comfortable to say ‘they deserved it’ or ‘they were asking for it’.

I’ve definitely had my fair share of nights out where I’ve drunk too much and passed out. Thankfully, none of them have resulted in rape. If they had, I wouldn’t have deserved it, no matter how many mistakes I’ve made. Rape doesn’t only happen to the ‘good girls’ – and there isn’t anyone who deserves to be raped. I think this book does an excellent job of questioning our assumptions when it comes to this topic.

The other aspect of the novel that really affected me was the fact that Emma’s rape was publicly displaying and debated on social media – pictures of her in vulnerable positions, unconscious and being taken advantage of, were posted and subsequently commented on with abusive and hurtful comments. Even a year later, Emma is still haunted by these images, knowing that her family as well as the whole town has seen them, and she still replays all the hurtful things that were said about her. O’Neill does a brilliant job of weaving this in to the narrative, showing the constant slew of negative thoughts that are uncontrollable and take over Emma’s mind:

‘You OK?’ he asks me, but I can’t look at him. (He has seen the photos. He has seen me, pink flesh, slut, whore, bitch.)’

I’ve grown up mostly under the influence of social media, and I have seen how the protection of a computer can encourage people to say the most harmful things. I think social media really brings out these unconscious biases and prejudices that we would ordinarily never say out loud to the forefront – it’s as if typing in to a computer eradicates the censorship and thoughtfulness we have when speaking face to face. Not only that, but the vulnerability and exposure that Emma feels, knowing that the worst thing that’s ever happened to her, and something she can’t remember, was displayed across Facebook without her knowledge – it’s something that’s really stuck with me after finishing the book. I think that in this digital age, rape survivors are more afraid to speak out. The ease in which other people, even strangers, can find them online and target them with hate mail, is a scary prospect.

Ultimately, this book really made me think about different definitions of rape rather than the standard ‘she said no and he ignored it’. It made me realise that empowering and encouraging people to be confident about their own sexual rights, and to never feel like rape is something that you ‘ask for’ if you drink too much or wear certain clothing, is so important.

So if you are reading this and you are someone who feels like it is your fault if you are taken advantage of, know that there are good and kind people in the world who will believe you, stand up for you, and will help you realise that you are never ‘asking for it’.

If you have been affected by anything you’ve read in this blog post, there are a number of helplines and resources you can use:

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Sexualhealth/Pages/Sexualassault.aspx

http://www.nhs.uk/Service-Search/Rape%20and%20sexual%20assault%20referral%20centres/LocationSearch/364

http://www.rapecrisis.org.uk/