Some people are easily affected by what they see on social media. They’re prone to believing the things that they see online, and they allow it to affect their view of the world.
For example, a teenager may see a series of videos of ornate ways that other teenagers ask people to prom. They may then expect that all teenagers are/should be asked out in this way, and find themselves disappointed when their date, partner, or friend doesn’t put in the same level of effort.
Or, perhaps you see a video on a new shoe, or a new cream, or a new slang term, and you immediately buy the shoe or try the cream or use the slang term. Those are examples of a person that followers influencers and is also easily influenced by them.
That is its own separate challenge. Some people are more susceptible to this type of influence than others.
But what if you’re not *that* easily influenced?
What if you know for a fact that you’re not really someone that buys what influencers recommend you buy? You’re interested in what they have to say, but it doesn’t drive your purchase behavior. You’re “uninfluenceable.”
Or are you?
The truth is following influencers and being on social media frequently do affect behavior, even if you think you’re immune, Because, even if you don’t feel like you’re prone to buying products you see online, you can still be influenced by simply following these topics:
Increasing Interests – People that follow a lot of interior designers may not buy the products they offer, but the more their algorithm shows them interior designers, the more they look at their own home and feel they need a change. This is true about videos of sports cards, purses, face creams, even movies. People that see anime clips are more likely to watch more anime. People that see videos about dresses are going to be more likely to buy dresses.
Decreasing Feelings of Self-Worth – Similarly, the opposite holds true as well. A person that follows interior designers, for example, is going to start to think less of their home as they see that it doesn’t compare to the ones they see online. A person that follows people that sell or discuss purses is going to look at their own purses and feel like it’s not good enough. These are natural emotions to surrounding yourself with videos of things you see as better.
Branding – You may believe that you’re not easily influenced, but branding science is very real and extensively researched. If you see a brand, or you see a product, and you run into that product/brand again in your travels, you are more likely to use it. In your mind, you’re not being “influenced,” because you’re coming to the conclusion yourself. But your curiosity and desire to even consider the product because you saw it before indicates that you’ve been influenced against your will.
Unrealistic Expectations – Most people that spend a lot of time online think that the average person makes over $100,000 a year. They think that the average person owns a home. They think that the average person should be able to travel comfortably and often. All of these things are not true, but social media can change the reality that we have without us knowing simply because of what we saw online.
Imagine you’re following a beauty influencer. They show you all sorts of products – creams, lotions, makeup, and more. You decide not to use any of them. But then they show you a lipstick in a color you adore, so you buy it.
In your mind, it wasn’t being influenced, because you didn’t buy it “because the other person told you to.” But in a way, you did, because their recommendation excited you about that particular product.
Similarly, imagine you’re following people that teach basketball skills. You start to feel worse about how bad you are at basketball, and get motivated to try to be better. In a way, that’s good – you’re out there, improving a skill, getting healthy – but before that, you were feeling worse about yourself as a result of what you’re seeing online.
Either way, you’re still being influenced in ways that can harm your budget and your mental health, simply by spending time getting influenced by various social media algorithms.
No One is Immune to Influence
Whether we want things we didn’t want before, feel worse about ourselves, or expect impossible things from others, social media does have an affect on how we think and feel. The more things and people we follow, the more they directly and indirectly influence us, even if we generally consider ourselves to be not so easily influenced.
Either way, whether it’s learning to be free of social media or teaching ourselves to love ourselves more, it’s important to understand how and why our time on social media affects us, whether you’re the one being influenced or the influencer.
Anxiety is a mental health disorder. But it also causes a wide range of physical symptoms. Most of us have an understanding that when we’re anxious, we expect to feel sweaty, have a rapid heartbeat, feel light headed, and more. If you have panic attacks, this is even more pronounced, with chest pains, muscle weakness, and a wide variety of other symptoms.
Many of these symptoms, specially for those that have anxiety attacks, are caused not directly by anxiety itself but by the hyperventilation that anxiety triggers. Anxiety makes you breathe faster. As you breathe faster and more shallow (meaning, less full breaths). Typically, you breathe in, your body takes the oxygen and starts converting it to carbon dioxide, and then you expel it.
But when you hyperventilate, this causes you to expel more CO2 before your body has a chance to create more of it. Your body needs CO2 to operate efficiently, and when it doesn’t have that, your heart beats harder, you feel more lightheaded, and your anxiety symptoms get significantly worse.
Now, the most important takeaway of this is that the primary cause is too much oxygen and too little carbon dioxide, because your body isn’t creating it fast enough to account for how quickly you’re breathing it out.
But hyperventilation also causes one confusing symptom that can make anxiety much worse.
It also causes a feeling as though you’re not getting enough *oxygen*.
When you hyperventilate, you feel like you’re not breathing enough – like you’re not getting enough air. As a result, you either breathe faster or try to breathe bigger (like yawning) to try to get more oxygen in your system.
The result?
You make hyperventilation worse, which in turn makes your anxiety symptoms worse. One of the reasons that panic attacks can be so severe is that, during the attack, a person is typically trying as hard as they can to get more air all while they need to try to make more carbon dioxide. The symptoms get progressively more severe until they peak.
How to Address This Confusing Symptom
Psychotherapy is the best way to address anxiety and panic disorder, but a part of the psychotherapy process is education. The more you know and understand about panic disorder and its symptoms, the easier it becomes to try to prevent more significant attacks.
This is why part of treatment is education, and in this case, educating you specifically on this symptom – the idea that you are going to need to fight the urge to take deeper breaths, and instead remember to slow down your breathing (and even hold your breath!) could help reduce the severity of your symptoms dramatically.
Now, slowing down your breathing is unlikely to stop a panic attack that has already started. But the less severe your symptoms, the easier it becomes to feel emboldened to treat your panic attacks and anxiety. At Flourish Psychology, we want to be there for those that are struggling and help them with the next steps of bringing their anxiety under control. If you need help for yourself or a loved one, please reach out to our team, today.
Human beings are social animals. We need and crave connection with others, and benefit from feeling this connection on a deep level. It’s known in the world of psychology as “social support,” and it’s directly connected to us living longer and happier lives. The simple act of feeling closely connected to others can add years to your lifespan.
That social support can also be a tool that can be used to address psychological challenges, including some that are directly connected to the development of social support, such as social anxiety. As a result, it can be useful for people struggling with anxiety to deeply embrace their friendships, and use that as a way to help them overcome their mental health issues.
NOTE: Of course, one of the challenges of having social anxiety is that it can make it difficult to find and maintain friendships. We’ll address that later. But many people with social anxiety do have *some* friends, maybe one or two. We’re going to talk more about the benefits of maintaining those friendships, before discussing alternative steps.
About Friends and Confidence
One of the most powerful tools that we have to feel more confident around others is a deeper feeling of friendship with the individuals that are currently with us.
When we feel as though we have a few very deep, fulfilling, arguably unbreakable friendships, we tend to experience:
Less concern about the opinion of others. When we have issues like social anxiety and public speaking anxiety, we have a tendency to worry about what strangers think and that it might affect our social standing. But if we feel much more confident that we have deep friendships waiting for us, the anxiety that any mistakes will hurt us goes down.
More confident in ourselves. Many studies have shown that we have much more confidence when we have friendships that are truly fulfilling, and that confidence can and will seep into our components of our life, including how we interact with others.
Further social experiences in a stress free setting. It can be hard to talk to strangers. It can be hard to be in crowds. But social experiences are still social experiences. When you have some deep friendships that are really fulfilling, you are less likely to feel concerned about speaking to those individuals. As a result, you have more conversations, learn more social skills, and learn more about yourself – all of which are beneficial for addressing anxiety in other ways.
It gives you people that can introduce you to others and support you while you’re there. Social experiences beget more social experiences. You are more likely to meet more people through your friendships, and also have someone that can go with you to social events to help ease your anxiety while you’re there.
Sometimes, too, when we feel a lot of social anxiety a part of us actually separates ourselves from our close friends because we desire the experience of not having anxiety and of socializing with new people. In a way, it’s as though our anxiety makes us want what we are struggling to have.
But you may want to consider re-embracing those close friendships and building on them. The effects that it can have on your social anxiety – and your personal life – can be fairly pronounced. If you’re looking for something you can do to feel less anxious with public speaking and in social settings, reconnecting and building on your existing friendships can help.
Of course, for some people their anxiety is so severe, they struggle to have these friendships, or they often rethink them and worry that their friends may not truly like them. In these situations, you can try a few things.
First, voice your experience with those friends. Let them know, calmly when you’re not feeling high emotion, that you struggle with this and you are working on it, and want to know if they’re willing to work with you as well. Sometimes that reassurance can be of big benefit. In addition, there are many groups that exist to help you find individual friendships in a less tense setting. Trying to connect with smaller groups can be a good step towards addressing this anxiousness.
Of course, you may find that you still struggle – either you still have social anxiety despite deep friendships with others, or your anxiety is so strong you are struggling to make deep friendships at all. In those types of situations, reaching out to a therapist can help. Find out more about our therapy and mental health services for anxiety at Flourish Psychology.
Trauma can dramatically change not only our life, but the way our brain actually operates. As a result, often times overcoming trauma relies on addressing these cognitive and emotional changes, because only by doing that can you move forward towards a better future.
An example of this is “Alexithymia.” It’s a condition that doesn’t happen to everyone, and is not always caused by trauma, but when it does occur in someone with PTSD it becomes important to address it.
What is Alexithymia?
Alexithymia is a psychological condition characterized by difficulty identifying, expressing, and understanding emotions. Individuals with alexithymia often struggle to describe their feelings, differentiate between emotions and physical sensations, and engage in emotional introspection.
While alexithymia can occur in the general population, research suggests a strong correlation between trauma and the development of alexithymic traits.
Alexithymia is not classified as a mental disorder but rather as a trait or condition that affects emotional processing. It manifests in ways such as:
Difficulty Identifying Emotions – Individuals may struggle to recognize their own emotional states or describe how they feel.
Limited Emotional Expression – They may appear emotionally distant, struggle with verbalizing feelings, or display a restricted range of facial expressions.
Confusion Between Physical and Emotional States – Bodily sensations, such as muscle tension or an upset stomach, may be misinterpreted as purely physical discomfort rather than an emotional response.
Externally Oriented Thinking – A tendency to focus on external events rather than introspecting about emotional experiences.
Trauma, particularly chronic or severe trauma, can play a significant role in the development of alexithymia. This is especially true in cases of childhood trauma, abuse, neglect, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The connection between trauma and alexithymia is rooted in both neurological and psychological factors.
Neurological Impact of Trauma on Emotional Processing
Trauma affects brain structures involved in emotion regulation, including:
The Amygdala – Responsible for processing emotions, the amygdala may become hyperactive in response to trauma, leading to heightened fear responses while impairing emotional awareness.
The Prefrontal Cortex – Critical for emotional regulation and self-reflection, this area may be underactive in those with trauma, making it harder to process and articulate emotions.
The Corpus Callosum – Trauma, especially in early development, can impact the communication between the brain’s hemispheres, limiting the ability to integrate emotions with rational thought.
When a person experiences severe trauma, the brain may no longer be able to process emotions effectively, and the result is poor emotional processing.
Emotional Suppression as a Coping Mechanism
For individuals who have experienced trauma, particularly childhood emotional neglect or abuse, suppressing emotions may become a learned survival strategy. If emotional expression was met with punishment, rejection, or indifference, the brain adapts by disconnecting from emotional experiences to reduce psychological distress.
Avoidance of Emotional Triggers – Trauma survivors may unconsciously disconnect from their emotions to avoid pain, leading to emotional numbness.
Dissociation – Chronic trauma may result in dissociative tendencies, making it difficult to access emotional states and recognize them as personal experiences.
Hyperarousal and Emotional Overwhelm – Some trauma survivors experience emotions so intensely that they develop a shutdown response, numbing emotions as a form of self-protection.
Some of these issues may also be related to the type of trauma and the age it occurred. Individuals who grow up in environments lacking emotional support may develop alexithymia as a result of insecure attachment styles. When caregivers fail to model emotional recognition or discourage emotional expression, children may struggle to develop emotional awareness in adulthood.
For example, if the person experienced neglect, without consistent emotional validation, individuals may not learn how to recognize or describe their emotions. If they struggled with abuse, fear-driven relationships can create emotional dysregulation, leading to avoidance or suppression of emotions.
Alexithymia and PTSD
Alexithymia is frequently observed in individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Studies indicate that trauma survivors with PTSD often exhibit alexithymic traits, which can interfere with traditional talk therapy and emotional processing treatments. This can make trauma recovery more challenging, as individuals may struggle to verbalize distress, engage in self-reflection, or process traumatic memories effectively.
Managing and Treating Alexithymia in Trauma Survivors
While alexithymia can be a barrier to emotional healing, certain approaches can help trauma survivors gradually reconnect with their emotions and develop emotional awareness:
Mindfulness and Body Awareness – Practices such as mindfulness meditation and somatic therapy can help individuals tune into physical sensations linked to emotions.
Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) – This therapy helps individuals identify and label emotions in a structured, supportive environment.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) – Can help trauma survivors recognize patterns of emotional avoidance and develop strategies for emotional expression.
Journaling and Expressive Writing – Encouraging structured reflection on experiences can help bridge the gap between thoughts and emotions.
Trauma-Informed Therapy – Therapies such as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and somatic experiencing may help address underlying trauma and improve emotional awareness.
For those who have experienced trauma, alexithymia can make emotional healing more complex, but it is not a permanent condition. With the right therapeutic support and strategies, individuals can learn to recognize, process, and express emotions in a way that supports their mental well-being. If you’ve been struggling from trauma, reach out to Flourish Psychology today to speak to one of our therapists and get the help you need.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), typically referred to as EMDR, is increasingly becoming one of the most popular treatments available for addressing post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
Scientists have discovered that one potential cause of PTSD is poor processing after the event has taken place. Essentially, they’ve found that when a person experiences a significant trauma, their brain isn’t always able to fully process the event. EMDR works by essentially helping – in a calm environment – the person with the trauma go through and process the details of the event so that it can be move to long term memory and prevent excessive stress.
This process is extremely effective. But the way that it’s described often has some people worried that it sounds similar to some pseudoscientific treatments, such as hypnotherapy, and they’re worried that it could be responsible for “false memories” – where an individual, typically under the guidance of a therapist, remembers events that did not take place.
QUICK ANSWER: EMDR cannot and does not erase, alter, or place false memories. EMDR’s role is to change where existing, evidence based memories are stored in the brain.
How EMDR Works and How it Affects Memory Processing
During the overwhelming experience of trauma, a person’s memories of the event do not fully form the way other memories form. Instead, memories can be fragmented, emotionally charged, and difficult to process. Because the brain isn’t accurately able to process these memories, they begin to affect the person’s mental health.
EMDR aims to integrate these memories more adaptively by:
Reducing the emotional distress associated with the memory
Helping individuals view past events with less reactivity
Strengthening cognitive insights related to the experience
Since EMDR relies on memory recall and cognitive restructuring, it operates within the natural processes of memory reconsolidation – where memories are reactivated, modified, and re-stored in a way that aligns with new information. In other words, new memories are not being introduced, nor is a person trying to discover information that was not already there. Rather, they’re taking information that is already in their minds, and using the process of EMDR to store it all together.
Why EMDR is Not at Risk for False Memories
For a person to experience false memories, a person would have to be under very specific conditions that all have to align. Research suggests that for someone to have false memoires implanted in their minds, all of the following situations would need to be present:
The person would have to be given new information or provided with new possibilities that were not already present.
The person would have to be in a situation where they could be guided towards new beliefs, with leading questions, suggestive language, hypnosis, or because they are unable to recall any details of the event and are seeking answers.
Unlike some other forms of therapy that explicitly work to “recover” repressed memories, EMDR focuses on existing memories and the emotional responses tied to them. These memories are not hidden or repressed. They are simply very emotional. The person that has these memories already knows they exist, but is simply having a difficult time processing it effectively.
EMDR in the Hands of a Qualified Psychotherapist
Therapists that specialize specifically in EMDR are trained directly not to use leading questions, not to imply any event has occurred, and not to suggest that something is being missed or repressed. The goal of EDMR is to prioritize existing memory recall and use a series of techniques to reduce how emotionally charged the events feel, so that ultimately the brain can move the memories into their correct placement in the brain instead of these fragmented memories that cause significant stress.
Licensed therapists, trained EMDR, like those here at Flourish Psychology, know how to address trauma accurately and correctly and avoid any situation where suggestion or leading questions could alter a person’s thoughts and memories.
EMDR is and remains one of the most effective strategies we currently have for treating PTSD and trauma. But of course, it is important to work with people that have been specifically trained in this type of approach. If you’re looking for help with trauma for yourself or someone you love, please reach out to Flourish Psychology, today.
Location: 300 Cadman Plaza West Floor 12 - Brooklyn, NY 11201
Manage Consent
By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
