Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Subscribe: Spotify | RSS | More
Tony explains "Doomscrolling," or when one feels like they can't break loose from continually scrolling through newsfeeds, or social media despite the fact that the more one scrolls, the worse one feels. Tony references the article "Understanding Doomscrolling," by Simone Scully https://psychcentral.com/anxiety/what-is-doomscrolling#tips-to-stop
Visit http://tonyoverbay.com/workshop to sign up for Tony’s “Magnetize Your Marriage” virtual workshop. The cost is only $19, and you’ll learn the top 3 things you can do NOW to create a Magnetic Marriage.
With the continuing "sheltering" rules spreading across the country, PLEASE do not think you can't continue or begin therapy now. http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch can put you quickly in touch with licensed mental health professionals who can meet through text, email, or videoconference often as soon as 24-48 hours. And if you use the link http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch, you will receive 10% off your first month of services. Please make your mental health a priority, http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch offers affordable counseling, and they even have sliding scale options if your budget is tight.
You can learn more about Tony's pornography recovery program, The Path Back, by visiting http://pathbackrecovery.com And visit http://tonyoverbay.com and signing up to receive updates on upcoming programs and podcasts.
Tony mentioned a product that he used to take out all of the "uh's" and "um's" that, in his words, "must be created by wizards and magic!" because it's that good! To learn more about Descript, click here https://descript.com?lmref=bSWcEQ
--------------------------------------------------TRANSCRIPT------------------------------------
[00:00:22] Hey, everybody, welcome to the virtual couch. My name is Tony OVERBY. This is episode number 323. I did that all backwards, but I still am a licensed marriage and family therapist and continuing by popular demand. If you go to Tony over Baker workshop, I have an hour and a half marriage communication workshop where I talk about how we show up in relationships, the fact that just being part of the human race, you are emotionally immature coming out of your childhood and your adolescence, and all of a sudden we meet somebody and we just want to get it right. We have this these deep seated abandonment fears or wounds. And so we're trying to show up in a relationship and make sure that we don't mess it up. And then over the process of relationships, life happens. We we get jobs, we have kids, people get sick. We have to move. We have financial pressures. And that's when we realize we are two different people in this relationship with two completely different experiences growing up. Even if during the courtship and early on in our relationship, we felt like everything was so easy. And it's easy because you're, quite frankly, you're not dealing with a whole lot of things right out of the gate. I mean, you're dealing with the things that newlyweds or people early in a relationship deal with. But when stuff starts to go down, when stuff starts to happen in your life, that's when you find out, Oh, we have different opinions and it is so normal, so natural to not truly know how to effectively communicate.
[00:01:39] And if you are the person that feels like, no, my marriage is a breeze, like this has been a piece of cake. Does your spouse have a voice? Do you truly understand and know them or do you feel like, of course I know what they're thinking because if you do, that may mean that they don't feel like they are able to express themselves because you are often probably telling them, No, that's not what you mean. No, I know. I know you better than yourself or that's not what I meant. Or anyway, I could go on and on. I love that stuff so much. I think you owe it to yourself. There's a dramatic term to go to Tony over Macomb Workshop. There is a small fee, $19 to get that workshop, and I lay out a lot of tools right out of the gate to help you just understand what a real healthy relationship can look like and then what some of those tools are to get there. So that was a long, unplanned ad for Tony YouTube.com slash workshop. So go check that out and let's let's get to today's topic. This one fascinates me so much because as I talk about the concepts around things like acceptance and commitment therapy and noticing our thoughts and noticing our behaviors and what we're doing and how the fact of what's wrong with me or I am.
[00:02:46] So fill in the blank, I'm a piece of garbage or I'm dumb, or that zero of that. If you are giving yourself that kind of self-talk, negative self-talk, zero of that is helpful or productive. And I haven't really done this intentionally. But if you look at the last few topics, I tackled Shame a few weeks ago because I just feel like we turn to this shame. We turn to this. I know I shouldn't be doing this. What's wrong with me? I'm a bad person and sometimes we do that by default and I can have people in my office and I know they probably get annoyed, but when they're saying and I know what's wrong with me and I shouldn't have thought that, should I? And they're saying those things and I just it's hard to not just say, I want to reframe what you're saying or thinking about every five or 10 seconds, because, again, nothing's wrong with you. You are the only version of you that has ever walked on the face of the earth your first time. This is your first time going through life as you in this very moment. So instead of though I know I shouldn't think this way, I am thinking this way. So check that out. And then we can look at your thoughts and your emotions and your feelings and really try to dial in and figure out what is your body trying to tell you but the things that you're feeling or thinking or doing, what is your body trying to tell you? And then being able to look at that with curiosity toward yourself.
[00:03:58] So none of that involves shame. Shame is there. It's implanted in us from our childhood because as I mentioned in this episode, a couple of weeks, if your parents weren't meeting your every need, if they were not at your beck and call, which, by the way, no parent is going to be because you are a kid, you're a toddler, you're an adolescent, you're a teenager. And in those moments, you are emotionally immature. So if your parents don't give in to your every desire, you feel like, Oh my gosh, I'm asking for these things. I would love to have licorice every day for dinner. I would love to be able to not have a bedtime or a curfew ever. I would love to be able to just go out and never check in and touch base because I should, because I'm responsible. I'm a teenager, but I'm emotionally immature. So when the parent doesn't meet your needs, it is not because something is wrong with you or they hate you or you are broken. It's because they are parents. They're people just doing people things there. Everyone is going about their life trying to to do their best or make sense of the world. So when people don't meet, your needs are immediate. Default goes to shame because in a childhood situation, if I didn't get that bike on my birthday, I a kid has no idea what that means for parents to be strapped financially or the fact that you maybe already have a bike, but you want the cooler bike.
[00:05:10] So they're thinking, okay, you don't really need the cooler bike. So those things feel like they must not be giving me those things because something is wrong with me. I am broken. I'm a horrible person. Their shame shames of our. So we often just beat ourselves up. And so I notice more and more that especially there's a lot going on in life and I feel like this isn't you could make this an evergreen podcast. You can probably pull up a news article or look at an old fashioned newspaper on literal newsprint, and you can find a lot of negative things that are going on and that can cause people to really want to tune out the want to just avoid. And so we have plenty of things to tune out with and to avoid with. We have every show and series and movie known to man at the tip of our fingers, and we have devices in our hands that have the power to launch rockets, but they can also play incredible games and you can get a game just within seconds. And so the things that will cause us to distract ourselves from life are just everywhere. You have to be very intentional about taking action on things that really matter.
[00:06:16] Now, what can also happen when you have technology in front of you and you can just start scrolling through things, even if you're starting down a path of looking for information or even doing something that raises your emotional baseline. I don't know if you've had that experience where all of a sudden you're just reading things about the news, about current events, about tragedy, about death, about all of these heavy, heavy topics. And I want you to just take while you're listening to this episode today, this is not me saying, hey, it doesn't matter. You can't do anything about it anyway. This is absolutely not me saying that I want you to be able to take action on things that are important to you. And I could give you a motivational speaker speech like, nobody's business is going to say that, hey, just by starting to believe and think certain things in your mind that you are starting on this process of change and all those things are true. But what I'm talking about is that when you are starting to feel or you're starting to get all up in your feelings, and those feelings are around this doom and sadness and just feeling like life is just not a fun place right now, not a good place. That, of course, those emotions and those feelings and those reactions are absolutely normal and human. I go back to that.
[00:07:30] You're the only version of you, but what do you do with those when you notice that you are just scrolling endlessly down through social media? And I'm not even talking about just comparing yourself with others, but I'm talking about a concept called Doomscrolling. And Doomscrolling is it's a term that was just starting to become part of the zeitgeist in 2018, where it first appeared on Twitter. I'm going to refer to an article on Psych Central called Understanding Doomscrolling, and this is written by Simon Scully. And someone says Doomscrolling is easy, but it can have a real mental health impact. And it's interesting in the mental health field and profession, we're watching certain things happen in real time. This concept of Doomscrolling is not in any diagnostic manual, nor is a concept that we're going to try to get to if I have enough time today called trauma dumping. But these are things that have only been talked about or brought up or conceptualized in the last couple of years. But as you start to talk about what they are, you'll see that we've been doing these things for a very long time, but now they're starting to have significant impact to our mental health. So Simon says it gives the example of it's 1130 and you should go to bed, but you think, what is the harm in checking my phone quickly? And as you do, a news notification pops up and the headline grabs you instantly.
[00:08:43] So you start clicking and you start reading. And if that is not been your experience, then bless your heart. And I have talked about things like sleep hygiene. I know that in a perfect world, your bedroom is only for sleeping and leave your phone outside and we can do all of the things like, well, it's my alarm clock. And if that truly, if you really don't want your phone in your room, then you can buy an alarm clock for under ten bucks somewhere. I've actually literally bought them for my clients when they've just said, okay, I need my phone out of my room. But if you accept the fact, all right, I've got my phone in there and there are times where I'm going to look. There are times where I may be going to text a friend or a loved one or I'm going to look at something funny. But how often, when you become emotionally compromised, when you are halt, hungry, angry, lonely, tired, do you pick up that phone and you're just going to check real quick and you start scrolling, you start reading things. Someone then says you might have more questions, so you click on another article, then another, and before you know it, you're down a rabbit hole and you're checking on one suggested article after the next, and you're unable to pull yourself from what you're reading because you just need more information. Someone said, If this has ever happened to you, you've experienced something called Doomscrolling, which, despite being a newer term, again showing up on Twitter in 2018, it's a very real thing that can affect your mental health.
[00:09:59] So how do you define Doomscrolling? Doomscrolling is this habit of scrolling through an excessive amount of news stories on the web and social media despite it causing negative emotions? And I think that's one of the most interesting things that when you are scrolling through, whether it's social media and you're starting to do the comparison thing, or why is it my life that way? Or That person seems so much happier? Or if you are just. Scrolling through newsfeed after news feed and it starts to cause negative emotions again. That's the difference, Simone says. It's different from just reading the news or staying informed because the behavior can become somewhat persistent. Someone quotes a licensed clinical social worker named Shannon Garcia from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who says Somebody who reads the daily online paper and then goes about their day is not doomscrolling, but somebody who finds themselves reading seamlessly into endless news articles and finds it hard to disengage from the resulting emotions to the point that it affects their daily functioning. That is doomscrolling. And so I want to normalize what this can look like, feel like, or that I would imagine most all of us can identify with just mindlessly scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and just looking for something. Now what are you looking for? Let's talk about it.
[00:11:07] I feel like this goes back to that concept of where we we constantly want just the next novelty, the next a bit of excitement, the next bump. We want the next bit of news to make us feel better at times. And so we continue to scroll because we're looking for just something that will just click and make us feel certain or good or that the world is okay. And when I talk about that need for certainty and this is when I was mentioned earlier that it's almost as if I've been doing a series of podcasts leading up to this. When I talk about the feeling of certainty, our brain thinks that it knows what it's looking for. It thinks that it's looking for the certainty of when you solve a math problem and you have an answer, or when you've been looking for your keys for a long period of time and you find them, that is the brain's idea of certainty. So when you feel like nothing is going right in the world, or even your relationships or you as a parent or whatever, that you don't like your job and you're scrolling through and you're looking for something. I feel like that's a little bit of our brain tricking us into wanting that dopamine high, wanting to find the thing that will give us just the right bump of this feel good chemical. So as we just continue to mindlessly scroll and we don't feel good, we're tricking ourselves into thinking I'll find the thing that make me feel good.
[00:12:20] Then I can go to bed. But then the more that you're scrolling, it's almost as if the more you're ruminating right there in real time, you are ruminating in front of a screen and it is making you feel worse. So what do you need to do to be able to disengage? And I boy, I want to go so big with this. And this is some concepts that I've been writing about trying to speak about more often, but I think it's the way that we handle our thoughts. So there are there are ways that will not work. Number one is I feel like to say, what's wrong with me? I am broken. I why am I doing this? Why am I continuing to scroll? It makes me feel bad because then I feel like we're almost then repeating the pattern. We're in the circular thought process. Let me kind of reset or reframe this. Here are the things that I think we do that we could do better when it comes to our thoughts. The first thing I think we do is we tell ourselves, Man, I should not be thinking these things. And again, first of all, nobody likes to be should on. But even more important is that psychological reactance, the instant negative reaction of being told what to do. When you tell your brain, don't do that, your brain's survival and protection.
[00:13:19] The mechanism it has is to say, I better do that. Even if you talking to yourself, do not think of a chocolate cake. My brain is literally doing it in real time. My brain is saying there must be a reason that if this person is trying to eliminate chocolate cakes from our memory, it must be because there is a significance around chocolate cake. I will think of chocolate cakes. So psychological reactance, instant negative reaction to being told what to do. We cannot tell ourselves, okay, do not do this, just stop doing this. And we've tried. And trust me if I love when somebody comes into my office and they'll tell me an experience with a friend or maybe an ecclesiastical leader or a previous therapist who has said, you know, I got to I just got to put this out there on the table. Have you ever thought about just stopping these behaviors that you don't want to do? As if the person struggling with the behavior in a therapist's office is saying, holy cow, that is the one thing I have not done is thought about not doing it. So just telling yourselves that don't stop, don't do not think this our brains survival is dependent upon us saying I must do this thing so that doesn't effective. One of the other things I feel like that we do that is the I know what's wrong with me. So why am I thinking this again? You're thinking whatever you're thinking because you are thinking it because you are.
[00:14:32] You're a human being. You're the only version of you. And in that moment, the first time that you're laying in bed on that particular evening, scrolling through thing, story after story, picture after picture, and based off of the day that you had and the life you've led up to that very moment, that is why you're thinking that thing. It's just the thought that you're thinking. So instead of trying to figure out why, why am I thinking this? We need to say, check it out. These are my thoughts. So I can't just say don't think it. I can't say I know I shouldn't be thinking it because I am. And then quite frankly, this is where I feel like the concepts of OC every and every time I think this, I just need to think this other thing now that can work on occasion, but it's still given too much. Every time I think about this tragedy, then I need to think about a happy thing. So unfortunately, if we do. That kind of mental gymnastics long enough, there's a chance that we are going to put those things into a relational frame. So if every time I think about the death of someone important to me, then I think about the fact that there will be a sunrise that can make me feel wonderful in that moment and give me a nice clarity. But then down the road, all of a sudden you're sitting in front of a sunrise, and now you think of this person that had passed away and you can think, Oh my gosh, I can't even have a sunrise in peace.
[00:15:44] But now I go back to this sadness or this tragedy. So I believe strongly that one of the most important things you can do is when you recognize that you are having a thought or a feeling, then you note it, you notice it. Okay, that's interesting. That's a thought, that's a feeling, that's an emotion. And then at that point, it is important to just disengage and just be mindful, come back to the very present moment and slowly do something else. So I give you that whole preamble because when you find yourself doomscrolling, then don't, of course, then say, Oh, don't stop. I got to stop this right now because your brain's like, I've got to keep doing it. And if you think, what's wrong with me, nothing. You're a human being and that's just what you're doing. And then instead of, okay, when I think about this, I need to think about puppies, or I need to think about sunshine and feel full of flowers that might say, Oh, yeah, no. Okay, I like flowers, like puppies. But then we're starting to create this relational frame. So instead when I notice that I'm thinking these things, I notice that I'm doomscrolling. Then at that point I'm going to watch my hand, turn my phone off, and I'm going to lay my head on the pillow, and I'm going to now start breathing in through the nose, counting one out through the mouth, counting too, and just try to get to ten and then repeat.
[00:16:52] And before you know it, you are very present and hopefully maybe you're falling asleep. So back to Doomscrolling, Simon says the signs of Doomscrolling checking the news multiple times a day again. And this is if it makes you feel less than or bad or what's wrong with me? Spending long periods of time reading news stories, feeling the urge to check the news repeatedly because you feel like you'll miss something important. Reading multiple articles about the same news topic, fixating on negative articles for hours, feeling on edge or sad most of the day after reading the news, neglecting other responsibilities because you're repeatedly checking in on the day's headlines, or because of how the news affects you emotionally and having a hard time sleeping after reading the news. And then you can add into those signs of doomscrolling any of those things where you can put on replace news with the social media aspect as well, that if you are continually going back and checking social media because you're worried that you may have missed something, if you feel this urge to to check social media throughout the day, if you spend long periods of time on social media, if you are just continuing to write, I'm going to every one of us, I feel that every one of us does this to a point of all of a sudden I see someone and then I see this situation and then I click and then I want to go back and check their account, their feed.
[00:18:02] I want to look at their pictures. Then I want to see their friends. I want to see what that context is that I feel like that's a similar vibe. It may just seem like curiosity and maybe it is for a while, but does it start to move into almost this concept of obsession, or does it move into a concept of man? What is why don't I have this life? They look amazing, that looks fun, and I am not doing those things because that can then fit into this concept of Doomscrolling. So why do we do it? Shannon Garcia then says When scary things happen in the world pandemics, mass shootings, racial injustice, things feel out of control and that's scary. And then, she adds, reading the news can be a way of reassurance. Seeking to reduce our anxiety as a 2016 review also finds it says Subconsciously, Our brains may think if we keep reading the news, maybe we'll see something that will make us feel better or provide an answer. Tell us how to stay safe. But the problem is there isn't always new information or positive news to make you, she says.
[00:18:51] When this behavior becomes compulsive, all you might really be doing is just consuming more and more bad news over and over, and that will keep you in a state of hyper arousal. And and at that point, that will cause more anxiety. And remember, when you are anxious and your heart rate elevates and you become this hyper state of hyper arousal, your brain is flooding with the fight or flight chemicals, cortisol, the stress hormone. And as you do that, you are removing the ability to be incredibly present and logical and to think through things that tap into that part of the brain that can look for use reason and logic. And you're more in this fight or flight or freeze. And so that can be why then it makes us feel even worse or makes us feel even more scared. And so we're using the same tool to go around in circles to try to get out of that feeling of of uncertainty or fear by trying to find something that will make it feel better by continuing to scroll doomscrolling. She talks about Doomscrolling during the COVID 19 pandemic. The pandemic has made doomscrolling more of an issue because the pandemic evolves so quickly. And I think that is something that I get to talk about in my office often with people that just the fact that it really as much as we look back on hindsight and we had these these heads up, these warning signs, the COVID was coming to your estate near you, a town near you.
[00:20:08] You went from that time where no one you knew had it all of a sudden, seemed like pretty much everybody had had it. You had maybe had it. Now you've had it once or twice, but it really did come on quickly. And Garcia explains, we were relying on. The news updates to stay informed. We've set ourselves up to be looking and reading and checking. I know I did. I wanted to know all the the stats and data and the latest numbers and what's the the latest variant and what do I need to know? So she just said that likely created a habit of checking the news more often. And then that habit became hard to break as the pandemic stretched on. And she said, We've also just found ourselves on our phones and computers a whole lot more. One survey found that screen time in the United States increased by 55% just from 2019 to 2020. That's a big jump, increased by 55%. And she said the pandemic also coincided with a rise in misinformation which fueled emotions like anger, fear and anxiety that kept us reading. I got to watch that boy during the pandemic, continuing to meet with a lot of people on a weekly basis, whether in person virtual, you would see how things became more polarized and where people started off with a cognition, a belief. And then the more that I feel like people were afraid or scared, then the more they looked for confirmation that their belief was right.
[00:21:21] And now we're heading down this echo chamber of I only want to read and find the things that will make me feel better about the way that I feel. So I'm going to look for any information that will boost your my point. And they also need to find things that will make the other person's side wrong. And so I felt like that is what led to a lot of the polarization. I would see that literally in my office. I would see it in families and couples relationships. And so when you lay out the fact again, pandemic hits quickly, people want to make sense of something that is hard to make sense of. And then we have this fear and we don't like to feel fear. So we're trying to make sense out of something that, quite frankly, a lot of people were trying to make sense of, that it didn't make a lot of sense. And so then that would lead to a rise in misinformation, which does fuel emotions like anger and fear and anxiety. They just kept us reading and reading and reading. So the conditions that seem to be worsened by doomscrolling consuming large amounts of negative news or social media can lead to worsening of mental health conditions, particularly if you already have a history of things like depression, generalized anxiety disorder, OCD, PTSD, for example, one 2020 survey found that excessive media consumption about COVID 19 led to increased levels of anxiety, as well as stress, sadness and fear.
[00:22:34] And then another study out of Germany found a connection between the frequency, duration and diversity of news consumption to intensify depression symptoms and pandemic related activity. So how does it affect our brain? Garcia talks about our brains being designed to protect us and look for threats. So Doomscrolling is basically telling your brain that there are limitless threats that we need to be aware of. Therefore, your brain remains on high alert. Remember, anxiety in a nutshell is there to protect you. But then when we become anxious and we start creating narratives or creating stories of what could and may happen that most likely will not happen, that we can really, really run with that anxiety and we can start to create scenarios that we our brain thinks. That's a good point. I better prepare for this thing that may never happen in 20 years from now. And so it just causes our anxiety to spike. So if your brain and we accept the fact that it is there to protect us and look for threats, again, it's a don't get killed device, then it is going to remain on high alert when you are just continually reading about constant threats in your in your environment, she said. Your brain is continually being exposed to high levels of stress hormones like cortisol, and that is what causes that hyper arousal.
[00:23:42] So new research is just starting to explore how Doomscrolling could cause what trauma practitioner and trainer Laura Cowdery refers to as hyper arousal from Doomscrolling. She has a book called Lifting Heavy Things Healing Trauma One Step at a Time. She explains how you might become emotionally numb or physically frozen in one spot and then even start to lose track of time and bodily needs while doomscrolling. So how do you stop? Like any habit, it's difficult to stop doomscrolling abruptly. But in the article, Simone talks about things you can do to find balance, make a schedule. It might help to set up a routine with yourself, and then when you will check the news and try to set limits around how long you will, Garcia said, I found I was doomscrolling in the mornings on my phone before getting out of bed, she said. So I decided not to bring my phone in my bedroom anymore. It forces me to consume news at a different time of day, and that works for me. And she says, If you decide to do this, consider turning off news notifications to help keep yourself on your schedule. I have a funny to me funny story about that. I take notes in my sessions on an iPad and at one point I did need to turn off news notifications. I think they came default. So I would be sitting there in front of a client and I had all my the dings or bells or whistles that all been turned off.
[00:24:51] But then I would get all of a sudden a news alert, and it was hard to not just glance at it. And I even got to the point where I felt like, Oh, the client sees that. I looked down at my notes, I'm not writing anything. And does it look like I am now reading something else, or am I just do all this? And I probably did put out that energy or that vibe of feeling like I just became not as engaged because I'm trying to read this story because it's in front of me, so I had to turn off those, she says. Mix up your activities if you're feeling the urge to check the news again, even though it's only been a few minutes. Doing another activity you enjoy instead. For example, pick up a book, read, go for a walk, pet a dog, call a friend, chat. I'm always a fan of. When I notice that I am wanting to do something, then just give myself grace. And then if I want to check my phone then yeah, I will then just engage in something else. It can be anything, laugh, do push ups, whatever it takes and you're starting to create these new neural pathways, she said. Outsmart your algorithm. I like this one. When you read bad news, particularly on social media, your algorithms are going to keep recommending other stories on the same or related topics.
[00:25:51] You can switch things up by seeking out the good news. This works, I will tell you, she said. I recommend my clients find good news sources. She says one called Good News Network or follow positive news accounts on their social media. And there's also an article she links to a campaign out of Iceland that aims to replace the habit of Doomscrolling with what's being called joy scrolling. And it's funny if you are a tik tok viewer at all and you study that tik tok algorithm, that is it's fascinating. Equal parts, fascinating in equal parts, scary because one of the articles I was reading, I think a podcast I listened to, talked about there over 1000 data points when you were watching something on Tik Tok and because it is this continual scrolling that you don't actually have to select anything, that every thing that comes up in front of you that it's logging, how much time that you spent on that particular video and then these data points are is it men, is it women? Is it funny? Is it angry? Is it left leaning? Right leaning? There are so many data points and so it's using those in real time to then cultivate what it's going to deliver to you. And I know this because every now and again it'll throw up something that I think is probably not something that I'm really interested in. And it's almost a race for me to get to the next video to move off of that, because I don't want the algorithm to say, Oh, wait a minute, he's lingered on this for a little while and it can become pretty empowering.
[00:27:09] But now to the point of where my entire TikTok thread feed for you, page is full of people dancing and I don't dance. But when you watch a couple do really fun good dancing, I think, holy cow, that's so fun to watch. So I've got lots of that little kids swearing. I don't know why that just cracks me up. Don't. That's probably a guilty thing to admit. And then just funny pets, cats, dogs doing hilarious things. So now it's almost the point where that is all tick tock. It's like I pull up my account. They're like, Oh, we know what to give this guy. A couple of couples that just bust out and dance all of a sudden, a couple of little kids saying funny things and people laughing, and then a dog and a cat falling down or doing hilarious things. And now I'm to the point where I'm pretty satisfied with those things. So you can't outsmart that algorithm. Let's recap. Someone says, Being aware of developments in the world, good and bad, is part of being an adult. But finding balance can help you feel better and maintain your mental health and of simple steps to break the habit aren't working. You might consider reaching out to a mental health professional, so here is a perfect plug in for better help.
[00:28:10] So it is truly go to Betterhelp.com slash virtual couch. They have the largest network of licensed therapists, personalized counselor, matching text calls, video chats, all available, and people have asked for how much and they're better helps putting out there. It can be 60 to $90 a week, so it can be pretty affordable too. And then you can get a discount by going to virtual betterhelp.com slash virtual couch today. All right. Hey, I appreciate you spending some time with me. We did not get to the concept of trauma dumping. Maybe that's something I was to say. You can Google just don't get lost in all the stories or we'll cover that a different time. But as always, I cannot thank you enough for the support. The numbers of the podcast continue to go up every week now. It's just phenomenal. And check out the other podcast, Waking Up to Narcissism. That one is just reaching a lot of places and helping a lot of people as well. So I'm just grateful for my listeners. And if you have questions, show ideas, interested in having me come speak anything like that, shoot me an email through the contact form on my website, contact@tonyoverbay.com. And taking us out, per usual, the wonderful, the talented Aurora Florence with the aptly titled song When We're Talking About Doomscrolling. Now let's talk about how things are good. It's wonderful. We'll see you next time. One of the.
[00:29:20] Compressed emotions flying past. Start heading out the other end. The pressures of the daily grind. It's wonderful. And that's the question, Rob. A ghost isle floating past the midnight hour. They push aside the things that matter.
[00:29:40] Most to the world.
[00:30:20] Exciting news, a discount price, a million opportunities. The chance is yours to take or lose. It's worth. Phones are always on the back burner until.
