Social media can be a lifeline of connection for autism moms and a quiet source of stress, grief, and self-doubt at the same time. In this episode Lisa unpacks how comparison works on a subconscious level and offers practical ways to make social media work for you instead of against you.
But if we’re not careful, it can quickly become a source of stress, comparison, and negativity.Listen in this week to hear the toll scrolling on social media can have on your experience as an Autism parent, and how our brains are wired to compare ourselves to others.
Youll hear practical strategies that will help you reclaim your peace of mind, and my top tips for transforming social media from a stress-inducing scroll to a tool for support and empowerment.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:
- Why comparison is automatic and survival-wired, and how negativity bias and confirmation bias turn a quick scroll into a toxic soup.
- How autism Facebook groups, while valuable, can quietly drain your hope when you consume an endless stream of other families’ struggles.
- Three strategies, setting rules of engagement, curating your feed, and noticing how you feel, to reduce the scroll toll.
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TRANSCRIPT:
You are listening to episode 136 of The Autism Mom Coach, The Scroll Toll. Welcome to the Autism Mom Coach podcast. I am your host, Lisa Candara. I am a lawyer, a life coach, and most importantly, I am the full-time single mother of a teenager with autism. In this podcast, I am going to share with you the tools and strategies you need so you can fight like hell for your child without burning out.
Let’s get to it
Hello everyone, and welcome to the podcast. I am so glad you are here, and I’m so excited to talk about this week’s topic. For those of you who are listening in real time in October 2024, if you have not already, subscribe to my email list now. I am doing a stress less challenge for all of October for autism moms to help you reduce the sneaky habits that are adding to your stress.
The only thing you need to do to avail yourself of all of those resources is get on my email list, which you can do by going to the show notes or my website, theautismmomcoach.com and waiting for the pop-up and you can subscribe right there For week one of this challenge, we are going to focus on the impact of social media on our stress.
Social media is really a double-edged sword for so many people, and especially autism moms. On one hand, social media has been a tremendous source of support and connection and resources for us as we navigate this journey. Being able to connect with moms all over the world to ask questions, to get answers, and to see that we’re not alone has been a tremendous blessing for so many of us.
And so when I’m talking about social media adding to our stress, it’s not because I’m saying that social media is bad. It’s not bad in and of itself. It can have some negative impacts on us if we’re not being really mindful of our usage. So that’s really what I want for you. I wanna bring attention to some of the ways that social media may be creating more stress in your life and give you some practical strategies for reducing that stress.
So when I talk about social media, I’m really thinking about things like Facebook and Instagram, maybe even TikTok, any place where people are posting updates and things about their own lives, whether it’s the birth of a child or birthday party, Halloween pictures, pictures with Santa, that kind of thing.
So here’s what happens anytime we are seeing images posted by other people of their lives. We compare. Consciously or subconsciously, our brains are making a note, and this is totally normal. Comparison is a natural part of human behavior, deeply rooted in survival. Initially, as a part of assessing safety, we compare ourselves to the other people in the group.
Who’s bigger? Who’s stronger? Who’s richer? Who’s poorer? Who has the better job? Who has the better car? Whatever it is. Comparison is natural, and it’s almost an automatic part of human behavior, and it’s deeply rooted in our psychology. Humans have an innate drive to evaluate themselves by comparing themselves and their abilities and their circumstances to other people.
It’s how we measure our progress, how we measure our abilities, our safety, and our sense of worth. Just know, if you are going through social media and you are comparing your situation to other people’s situations, it’s natural. That’s what all humans do, whether it’s conscious or subconscious. And it’s important to note that it’s happening whether you realize it or not.
These comparisons happen subconsciously because the human brain is wired to process visual information rapidly. So as you’re just casually scrolling through, your brain is making a note. And because humans are also wired towards the negative and we like to be right, our negativity bias and our confirmation bias can make this a really toxic soup.
So imagine now you’re scrolling through social media and you’re seeing pictures of friends, neighbors, and family of neurotypical children and the things that they’re doing, and your brain is consciously making a note, “Yep, they have it better than us. Yep, my life is harder. Yep, nobody understands And all of this is confirming to you what you already believe about your own life, the feelings that you’re already having about the experiences you aren’t having, the milestones that perhaps your child has not met or has not met yet, the fact that other kids are progressing faster, the fact that other families are able to do things that your family isn’t able to do, like going to the mall, going on vacation, going to the movies.
This is all happening on a subconscious level, and it’s confirming all of those beliefs. So it’s not surprising then that you could get off of social media after that and feel like shit and not really even know why. So let’s talk about the comparison itself. Here’s what I see a lot of for myself, and I’ve had it with my clients, where I’m looking at posts and I’m comparing myself and my situation to lives of other people, right?
So my son’s classmates who are now going to things like homecoming, they are dating one another, they’re getting ready to get their driver’s license, and I’m comparing that to my situation with my son and feeling a lot of sadness and a lot of grief and a lot of frustration. And then the pendulum swings and I’m in an autism group, and I’m reading about some huge difficulties some families are having with their children and the struggles that they’re having.
And then perhaps I’m perceiving some of these struggles as being greater than the struggles that I’m having. Then I’m feeling sad for them, but I’m also feeling guilty that I think that my problem is a big deal because really I’m telling myself at this point that I don’t have really the right to be sad because somebody else has it worse.
And so then not only am I feeling sad, I’m also invalidating my feelings. And I see this with so many of my clients all of the time. And it doesn’t have to be with your friends and family members of neurotypical children. I also see it with other autism families. I have clients who are in a lot of different autism Facebook groups, and they’re seeing other families doing things that they’re not doing, and then they’re second-guessing themselves.
“Maybe I should be doing that. Maybe I’m not doing enough.” And mind you, this is all from getting on social media for a few minutes and looking at a couple of pictures, but all of this is happening so quickly and so subconsciously. It’s like our brain is building up a case, and with each image and each interpretation of that image, we’re building the case, and we’re usually building the case for what we already believe.
If you already believe that your life is harder, if you’re already feeling resentful of other people for having it easier, if you’re already believing that you’re not doing enough, if you’re already believing that you’re missing out and that your child’s missing out, a lot of what you see and how you interpret it is going to continue to confirm those negative emotions There’s another kind of comparison that I think that happens within communities, and Adam Grant coined a term to describe this when groups of people who you might think would be standing together because they seem to stand for the same thing are in battle, right?
They’re criticizing one another, they’re against one another in some sort of way. I see this happening within the autism community, whether it’s, you know, the fight over ribbons versus puzzle pieces. It comes out in all different flavors So what this can look like within the autism community is when you see posts that say things like, “I would never put my child on medication.
I would never let someone else take care of my kid. I would never tell my kid that they have autism. I would never allow my child to attend life skills classes.” Sometimes within these communities, you will see people who are expressing their views, and expressing what their view is, they’re also implicitly putting down another one.
I think it can be really toxic for us as autism parents when we’re consuming these messages over and over because we’re either in one camp or we’re in the other. So all of the scrolling, all of this comparison, it has us ping-ponging between feeling sad, angry, and resentful to guilty or, and… or unjustified in feeling the way that we do, or that we should just be grateful.
And this creates so much internal drama for us. One of my clients recently shared with me such a great story about this. When she came onto the coaching call, she was feeling really agitated. She and her family were leaving in a couple of days to go see the family, and she was going to be seeing her sister and her nieces who had just gotten back from this amazing skiing vacation.
My client saw the post from the vacation on Facebook, and they really triggered her because skiing is something that she loves and it’s something she would love to do with her children with autism, but it’s not in the cards right now. So when she saw these images, she was feeling really sad and a bit jealous and even a little bit resentful.
And at the same time, she was telling herself she shouldn’t feel that way because this is her sister, this is her family, and that she loves them, and that she should just be happy for them. And then on top of that, she didn’t want to seem like she was jealous or seem like she wasn’t happy, so in her words, “I forced myself to heart the image and write a nice comment,” so it would look like she was happy for them.
So this is actually a lot of drama for looking at post. Social media can force us to perform in ways that don’t actually align with how we feel. So here, just from looking at this one post, feeling sad, feeling jealous, and then layered that on with the expectation that she shouldn’t feel that way and the pressure that she was putting on herself to prove that she wasn’t feeling the way that she did and to act in a way that she didn’t actually feel creates a lot of drama and a lot of isolation.
Another example of some internal Facebook drama another client was having is that she has a family member of a child who was recently diagnosed, and this mom, like, did, like, the dive into autism. She signed up for every walk, and she’s posting pictures from, like, these different walks and these different fundraisers and things like that.
Now, it’s not about the images that are being posted. It’s about the interpretation, and our interpretation of these posts, like I said, they’re going to usually align with and confirm what we already believe or fear about ourselves. So just from looking at a mom’s posting about going to some different autism walks, this mom’s interpretation was, “She must be doing this better than I am.
She has time for all these walks. She looks pretty happy. She looks pretty excited. Maybe I’m being overdramatic. Maybe people think that I am making this up. Maybe she’s figured out something that I don’t know,” all from seeing images of parents and children at an autism walk Another big stressor I see for autism moms who are on social media is being in these autism Facebook groups where people are constantly sharing their struggles, which is exactly what they should be doing in those groups.
Like, I’m not saying anything against that. I’ve done it myself. But when you’re in more than one or two of these groups and you’re getting inundated with people’s struggles day in and day out, it can really tank your energy and deplete your own hope. So while these groups can be great in terms of resources and connection, I really do think that it’s important for us to be mindful of how much time we spend in them and to be really mindful of how much of this information that we are consuming because in this case, I don’t think that more is better.
In fact, I think it’s just the opposite. I wanna give you a really clear example of this. A couple of years ago, I was looking for a partial hospitalization program for my son for his severe OCD. There’s only a couple of these in the entire country, and I wanted to get as much information as possible, so I joined an online group called Parents of Kids with OCD, and it was a fabulous group, like, really helpful information.
And I went in there and I put in some search terms for the different hospitals that I was looking at. I connected with moms who had had experiences with their children who also had autism in these different places. I was able to get some really great information. Fast-forward, I applied to Bradley Hospital’s OCD program, and we are on the wait list.
And what we were told is the wait list at that point was about four to six weeks, and they said, “If you are accepted, you will get a phone call, and you will be expected to be in Rhode Island within a couple of days.” And sure enough, we got the phone call on a Wednesday, and on that same Friday, that was my son’s first day in the program.
We completely uprooted our lives and moved to Rhode Island for 12 weeks. So every day I would wake up and drive my son to the program. I would drop him off. Four hours later, I would come back, pick him up. We would go back to the hotel where we were staying, and at that point, one of the therapists from the program would come to the hotel and work with my son for an hour, and this happened every day for three months So during the course of that time, we’re having ups and downs, as you would expect.
I’m still in that Facebook group, and I noticed after a couple weeks that I couldn’t take it anymore because what was happening is the Facebook group was parents who were sharing all the challenges they were having despite doing all the work they had done. So you would see these posts where parents were asking for help, but they were prefacing the post with saying, “We’ve already tried X, Y, and Z,” which were exactly the things I was trying with my son at the time.
And to know that they had tried all these things and they were still struggling the way that they were struggling while I was in the process of trying to get my son the help, it tanked my hope. I was dropping my son off some days just thinking, “Why are we even doing this? Is it even going to work?”
Because in my mind, what was most prominent were all of the negative posts that I was seeing from the parents in this group, and this is not about the parents or the posts. The posts were exactly appropriate for what the group was. But for me, taking in and consuming the information and filing it under the fear that I already had that this isn’t going to work, it made everything harder and heavier for me.
So at that point, I muted the group, and to this day, I don’t know that I’ve ever gone back in, and if I do, it’s only going to be to find out very specific information. Because again, when we’re scrolling, even if we’re telling ourselves it’s for information, it’s for education, we are interpreting this information, and we’re putting it in a filing cabinet in our brain, and most of us are filing it to confirm what we already believe or what we already fear.
And if your belief or your fears as an autism mom are of the future, of things not working, of other people doing it better than you, having it better than you, then that’s probably what’s happening with the information that you’re consuming on Facebook or Instagram. Unless, of course, you’re just on there for the cat videos, and in that case, keep it up.
Those are amazing And then the impact of all of this connection is really an illusion. It’s the illusion of connection because really what all of this comparison does, in whichever direction it’s going, is it makes us feel more alone and less connected to the people in our lives. And I find this especially so with the people who we are secretly or not-so-secretly resenting, right?
It’s kinda hard to be around them after you’ve cursed them out from their Facebook posts because they seem to have the perfect life. That actually creates disconnection where we might not want there to be. So this is all to say social media is great in a lot of ways, and it could be even better for us if we become more mindful about its impact on us and the way that we use it.
So for that, I want to give you some strategies to help social media work better for you. First, decide what your rules of engagement are going to be on social media. When will you be on social media? So it could be things like determining the times of day that you will be on social media, the times of day that you won’t be on social media, when and where you won’t be on social media.
For instance, when I’m watching a show with my son, I will not be on social media. When I’m out to dinner with other people, when I’m anywhere with other humans that I can interact with, I won’t be on social media. You can decide all those things ahead of time. And again, to make the point about how social media can cr- actually create disconnection, if you are face-to-face with real, live humans and you are on social media, you’re actually detracting from the ability to connect with the human in front of you.
So for you, think about what your rules of engagement will be. Number two, what I recommend and what I do, curate your feed. You really do get to decide what you let in and what you keep out, and I suggest that you do that as much as feel good to you. It could look like leaving certain groups, unfollowing accounts, and muting posts.
You don’t need to unfriend anyone. You don’t need to do anything dramatic. You can still curate your feed in a way that feels good with you without having any awkward conversations with your mom And then finally, become mindful of your emotions. Pay attention to how you feel when you’re on social media and how you feel afterwards.
If you spend your time on and after social media cataloging all the ways you think you’re doing it wrong, or researching all the things that you think you should do because somebody else is doing it, or silently cursing out your relatives or friends or the people who just don’t get it, it could be that social media is having a net negative impact on your mood and on your emotions.
So again, this isn’t about anything dramatic. You don’t have to detox from social media or delete your apps. This is all about becoming more aware of how social media might be impacting you so that you can be more mindful in how you use it. Any post, any group that is creating stress or guilt or any kind of negative emotions for you, it’s really not something that you need to invite into bed with you, which is where a lot of us hang out with our social media.
You really do get to decide that, and it’s in your power to decide that you are not going to expose yourself to more information that triggers you, whether it’s feelings of anger, resentment, jealousy, grief. You probably already have enough of that in your life without going on social media, so you don’t need to add to it.
And if your social media account is adding to your stress, adding to your anxiety, it’s time to evaluate it. All right. That is it for this week’s episode of the podcast. Again, get on my mailing list because if you’re on my mailing list, you are going to have the link to tomorrow night’s open coaching call where I am going to coach you and answer your questions about social media stress or really anything that’s causing you stress as an autism mom.
All right. Thanks everyone for listening. I will talk to you next week.
Thanks for listening to The Autism Mom Coach. If you are ready to apply the principles you are learning in these episodes to your life, it is time to schedule a consultation call with me. Podcasts are great, but the ahas are fleeting. Real change comes from application and implementation, and this is exactly what we do in my one-on-one coaching program.
To schedule your consultation, go to my website, theautismmomcoach.com/work-with-me, and take the first step to taking better care of yourself so that you can show up as the parent you want to be for your child with autism
