Month: September 2015

This Social Media Star Shows How Instagram Warps Our Realities

Author By Joseph Rauch, Staff Writer at Talkspace
Posted:
New York Magazine the cut image Lilli Hymowitz

16-year-old Lilli Hymowitz has lots of money and more than 20,000 followers on Instagram but struggles to live a happy life. Like many teenage girls, she deals with drama from boys and friends, divorced parents, and trying to find meaning in her life outside of the parties and selfies.

During a series of interviews with a reporter from New York Magazine, Hymowitz admitted she used Instagram to project something that didn’t match her self-image. The piece portrayed her as an embodiment of how social media creates alternate realities that can make us look more negatively at our actual realities. Continue reading This Social Media Star Shows How Instagram Warps Our Realities

The Post-Breakup Guide to Dealing with Social Media and Your Ex

Author By Joseph Rauch, Staff Writer at Talkspace
Posted:
Woman on phone with sunflower shirt

Social media makes breakups way harder than they need to be, so you might want extra guidance during the aftermath.

To help you deal with social media after a breakup (especially your ex on social media), we put together this guide by reaching out to therapists, dating/relationship experts and social media experts. For their distilled wisdom — and tips from Talkspace — look below:

Continue reading The Post-Breakup Guide to Dealing with Social Media and Your Ex

30-foot Mirror Wall in Flatiron Plaza Raises Awareness of Damages of Social Media

Author By Joseph Rauch, Staff Writer at Talkspace
Posted:
feature image for Talkspace social media event #ReflectReality

Last week, New Yorkers and tourists encountered a massive mirror wall in Flatiron Plaza. It was 30 feet long, three feet wide, seven feet tall, and ridiculously conspicuous. The west and east sides produced distorted reflections similar to those in a hall of mirrors and featured text such as this:

Talkspace social media event mirror wall

The north and south sides allowed pedestrians to see an accurate reflection: Continue reading 30-foot Mirror Wall in Flatiron Plaza Raises Awareness of Damages of Social Media

Did You See on Social Media? Our Neurosis Has Gone Viral

Author By Nicole Amesbury, Talkspace Therapist and Head of Clinical Development
Posted:
woman breaking up mental health issues

Check the news, blogs and yes, social media, and you can see people everywhere talking about how we are harming ourselves with social media. The medium presents a paradox — it connects us with the world while making us feel lonely, depressed and isolated.

We acknowledge this but are too dependent to break the cycle of compare, despair, like and share.

“I need to get my mind off of this.”

One of my Talkspace clients, Ashley, texts me around midnight on Friday. Continue reading Did You See on Social Media? Our Neurosis Has Gone Viral

The Mental Health Effects of Social Media Use

Author By Melissa Wildt, Talkspace Therapist
Posted:
woman dealing with body dysmorphia

Social media has transformed our culture into one of over-sharing. As we spend more and more time online, it is important we look at how this may affect our mental health.

#NoFilter? Not Really: The False Reality of Social Media

Through Facebook posts, tweets and Instagram photos, we peep a snippet of someone’s edited life. Sometimes we find ourselves judging our own lives with these updates, tweets and photos. The comparisons we make to our realities are unfair, because these snippets are a #filtered perspective of someone else’s life. There is no such thing as #nofilter. The comparisons we make can cause feelings of inferiority that lead to low self-esteem. Continue reading The Mental Health Effects of Social Media Use

3 Tips to Stop Social Media from Killing Your Intimate Relationship

Author By Regina Tate, Talkspace Therapist
Posted:
man and woman in relationship looking at social media

Technology may be revitalizing our lost connections and communications with other people – think of all the people from your high school you would never interact with if not for Facebook – but our dependency on social media is slowing killing our most intimate relationships.

Many millennials will disagree with this statement, but those of us age 35 or older can still remember when dating was more of a quality time experience. There were no distractions from phones, Internet, or social media. You went out and spent time with your partner, verbally communicating and learning about each other’s lives, interests and personalities. This was the way to connect on an intimate level, the type of intimacy necessary to sustain partnerships for years. Continue reading 3 Tips to Stop Social Media from Killing Your Intimate Relationship

Dear Therapist: Can I Drink Myself to Mental Health?

Author By Liz Campese
Posted:
Dear Therapist: Can I Drink Myself to Mental Health?

“The most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink and somebody to love you.” – Brendan Behan

– by Anonymous Talkspace User

Dear Therapist: Can I Drink Myself to Mental Health?

I’ve always been pretty educated about the health benefits of exercising and eating right. Having doctors in the family resulted in my having way too much knowledge about various health issues, and the impact of maladaptive behaviors that can cause them. But, strangely enough, I was never taught about the overwhelming health hazards of not drinking enough of plain and simple water.

The fact is the brain requires proper hydration to function properly, because brain cells have to maintain a delicate balance between water and other elements. If that balance is disrupted, cognitive health may be negatively affected. Continue reading Dear Therapist: Can I Drink Myself to Mental Health?

What do you get out of it? Compassionately Understanding and Changing Dysfunctional Behavior

Author By Liz Campese
Posted:
What do you get out of it? Compassionately Understanding and Changing Dysfunctional Behavior

We all do things that we wish we wouldn’t.We regret giving too much or not enough, being too passive or too impulsive, being too critical or not critical enough, or getting too angry or not angry enough. But with each of these, we wouldn’t be doing it if we didn’t feel like we were getting something out of it.

– Guest Blog by Gary Trosclair, DMA, LCSW / Psychotherapist and Author of I’m Working on It in Therapy: How to Get the Most out of Psychotherapy.

 

What do you get out of it? Compassionately Understanding and Changing Dysfunctional Behavior

Most often, at the deepest level, this “something” we feel that we get is protection against vulnerability. But that comes in lots of shapes and sizes—many of which may appear to be completely different from protection against vulnerability. Not to mention that it might be creating the very situations we fear. I’ll get to all that, but first let me clarify something essential to understanding this. Continue reading What do you get out of it? Compassionately Understanding and Changing Dysfunctional Behavior

5 Ways to Support the Family and Friends of a Loved One With Cancer: Keep Hope Alive When The Path Is Uncertain

Author By Liz Campese
Posted:
5 Ways to Support the Family and Friends of a Loved One With Cancer: Keep Hope Alive When The Path Is Uncertain

Imagine someone you love dearly – your child, parent, sibling, or another relative – being diagnosed with cancer. It’s hard to place yourself in that position, and to think about what you would do if it were to happen. What support would we need in place? What would we do if that were our family member?

– by Carrie Miller, LCSW / Talkspace Therapist

Childhood cancer is a topic that is close to my heart, as my now 6 year old nephew is a survivor of Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia. He was diagnosed at the age of 2. The moment that my sister and her husband got the news that “something isn’t right”, their hearts sank. They were terrified and had questions that the doctors could not yet answer for them; they were stuck in a hospital two hours away from home and had to leave another child with the grandparents to be there. The worst part was they were not sure about what came next. Calls went out to other family members, friends, and anyone else who could send support and offer a helping hand. Continue reading 5 Ways to Support the Family and Friends of a Loved One With Cancer: Keep Hope Alive When The Path Is Uncertain

What Should I Do? The Difference Between Advice And Therapy

Author By Liz Campese
Posted:
What Should I Do? The Difference Between Advice And Therapy

“Words of comfort, skillfully administered, are the oldest therapy known to man.” – Louis Nizer

– by Ken Fields, MA, LMHC / Talkspace Therapist

There is a big difference between advice and therapy, and this blog post will address that difference. As a therapist, I have received a fairly large amount of inquires from people asking what they should do in a particular situation. For example, “My spouse is having an affair, what should I do?” Or, “I don’t like my job, what advice can you give me?” Continue reading What Should I Do? The Difference Between Advice And Therapy