I know what you are thinking, do our brain change after sitting at home for more than a month. The heading of this write up came to me when I was reading some research paper on psychology, maybe it was somewhere there in the back of my head. This write up is about what I have observed during the lock down with the COVID 19 outbreak. Got to say we are going through a tough time; God bless the lost souls.
Coming back to the point of this write-up. For the past few weeks, I have been sitting at home out of my daily routine like everyone else, I guess. But I observed some changes around me, which led to some other changes in my brain. The first change is in the way I observe people, the people in the social media. Staying at home with less entertainment will make anyone take a quick peek in our mobile and to go through other's status in WhatsApp or people’s stories on Instagram. And all that filters, cooking videos, motivational speech, and stories about some random guy making something, or someone doing something exciting with their life or even making a tiktok video. – this is what I see in the social media and this makes by brain go into a weird level of satisfaction and makes me think, I should also do something productive. So, I took my old camera to take some pictures- if you are wondering why camera, I used to do photography back in college. Anyway, after that, I did some cooking which I felt was good but not good enough. That’s when the twist happened. I couldn’t keep it to myself. Quickly I posted them on my Instagram page and waited for the likes and comments. This made me sky-high. It was like that guy in the movies who does drugs and make this face with his eyes closed while injecting the drug. And the post I put up on Instagram was like that too, after it worse off. I was there at the verge of posting another post of a spring roll I made that day. I know what you are thinking by now. It's not the same shit about how bad social media is to your life- Hell no !!
What change happened in my brain after social distancing took place was how we all portrait ourselves in online platforms. You might have seen Facebook and Instagram posts featuring perfectly baked sourdough bread or colour-coordinated wardrobes refreshed by spring cleaning. Or retweets of parent-made, elaborately executed home-schooling plans, replete with 50 creative activities for every age group. And you might have wondered: “How do these people have the time, energy, and focus to do all of this while facing the pandemic and dealing with the mounting daily stressors resulting from it?” The most likely answer is: They don’t. They just need to project a perfect image to help themselves feel better. Or more specifically, they do it because it makes them feel better. In a more psychological representation of the idea, psychologist call it “perfectionistic self-presentation”. I’m not saying that people posting perfect images of their quarantine lives are deliberately creating a false reality online. A minority of them might indeed be presenting fiction as truth, but I suspect that most people are feeling pressured to be perfect or at least appear perfect. This pressure is fueled by our competitive and image-conscious culture and has been further exacerbated by social media.
As a psychologist I do know one thing – perfectionistic images are getting more in our society and can be seen so physically. Thus, creating people who tend to ruminate, worry, and be self-critical of themselves and others. When stressed, they are prone to anxiety and depression. More than anything, perfectionists fear that they are not worthy of love and acceptance unless they continue to clear an ever-rising bar of excellence. Therefore they strive hard to make themselves feel worthy and loved by doing all these things in the social media platform, which is not really necessary indeed.
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