How I Deal with Triggering Moments on Social Media

Can I be real honest here? Engagement announcements are triggering moments on social media for me. Weddings? Love them and will watch your wedding video trailer a million times and follow your vendors to see more. But the actual engagement? It sends me into a really dark place. I often wish there was a trigger warning for engagements in the way we have about other traumas because of my relationship with engagement announcements. For me my trigger warning would be this but for many others I know fertility, pregnancy, career moments are others.

While these triggers take on uniquely personal feel, I’ve learned that really they all boil down to a few key things we have to remember as we fight to urge to spiral. Although I have to continually practice these methods for dealing with triggering moments, they have helped me progress tremendously and genuinely celebrate for someone else.

The Mute Button is There for a Reason, Use It

I am fast and loose with the mute button on all social media. It’s there for a reason. We all need breaks and sometimes simply muting helps us save our relationships in real life.

When I got engaged, I was actually really shocked the news resulted in quite a few unfollows before I even blogged about the engagement. (No one even knew I was dating someone which was a constant fight in our relationship.) While it was weird, honestly? I get it now. I’m not too proud to say that for someone I don’t have a big interest in announces an engagement or baby, I do unfollow. For those that I am closer to, I simply mute for a little bit after sending a (genuine) message or congrats.

You are in control of your social media feeds. You do not need to be willingly subjecting yourself to something that you know is a potential trigger. If someone confronts you about unfollowing, be forthright about it. Communicate your trigger in a way that expresses joy for them but that you have to protect your peace. Simple as that. However, do you really want to be friends with someone who confronts you over unfollowing on social media?

Also just routinely have a social-media free weekend. It will do wonders for your mental health!

Your Timeline is Beautifully Yours

Have you ever wanted something so badly and once you had it, you realized it wasn’t that great? That’s how I feel about anything I’ve ever forced to work in my life. I hit milestones and checked things off the box and knew it didn’t feel right. That’s when I stopped thinking comparing my destination arrival time with everyone else’s.

Sooner or later in life you’re going to stop hitting milestones at similar times in life. (I find this most common post-college.) Learn to get comfortable with your own journey and timeline. What that looks like for you I don’t know, but you’ve seen most of my timeline. I still don’t see a relationship, much less marriage, kids (truly don’t have any interest in this), owning a home, etc. in my future. However, for almost all of my friends they have crossed off all of those boxes. But guess what? We don’t want the same things in life.

Your timeline doesn’t take away from someone else’s or vice versa.

And that leads us to the next one….

Remember What Your Values and Goals Are

My friend Jessica was talking to me and said something that really laid out what our goals and values are in such a non-shaming way. Her focus is family and mine is career and we shape our lives accordingly. Thus, none of our timelines (outside of career discussions) really align. And this doesn’t make either of our lives better, just different.

Your life tends to go in the direction of what you value most. Consciously and subconsciously. Don’t force yourself to try to adapt to something that isn’t meaningful to you. I don’t value owning a home and for a period of 2020 I was getting together my finances to buy a home. Now I look back and realize I was trying to align with the “By your 30’s you should….” lists. (Those lists also say you should have $50K in an emergency savings account in addition to your regular savings, 401K, stocks and bonds, etc.)That’s not for me and until it feels genuinely for me, I’m not interested in it.

Does my life currently align itself to achieve what my goals are?

That’s the question I care most about when I think about these triggering moments.

Remind Myself It’s Not All About Me

Yeah so like, people don’t think about you (or I) as much as we think they do. Those moments we can’t forget because we did something dumb? Yeah, you’re the only one thinking about that. Most of us are pretty self-absorbed (not even in a bad way) and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in Chicago, I am just one of millions of people and whatever embarrassing moment I have in front of someone truly doesn’t matter. My friend Melissa always reminds me of this when we’re shooting content and I get self-conscious.

So why do I say this? Because when it comes to triggering moments on social media I have found we tend to absorb them as an affront to ourselves. In reality the person most likely has no idea what is even going on in your life. Instead of spiraling into personalizing news and finding ways this is some sort of personal attack. Sometimes news is just… news.

If you’ll notice I started with the actual social media solution I use and then it shifted into mental work? That’s a result of now two years of therapy. While social media is the manifestation of the trigger, I (we) need to do the work offline and internally to find out how to navigate these moments. Unfortunately as much as I’ve tried, I cannot remove people getting engaged from my life. Thus, I can either get bitter or better and well, we choose to do hard work here.

Knowing how to handle triggering moments on social media takes practice which unfortunately means you’ll have to have multiple opportunities to remember these things. But one day you’ll be presented with a situation where you’ll see how much you’ve grown and ability to handle these triggers.