Here are the show Notes as I read them:

This is Dr. Mike from LEVELUPMENTALHEALTH.COM.
Today in my first Facebook Live I’m going to give you FIVE TIPS about setting limits for yourself with social media so that you can have less anxiety now that we are being ordered to stay at home or shelter in place in the midst of this COVID-19 crisis.

So, who am I you may be asking?
My name is Dr. Mike Feldmeier, I am a child and adolescent psychiatrist as well as a general adult psychiatrist.  I run the blog LevelUpMentalHealth.com a blog about promoting mental health and connectedness in an always-on and digitally distracted world.  Throughout my career, I have been treating mental illness with an understanding that our digital lives have a very real impact on our real-life mental health and well-being.

As I said before I want to talk to everyone about the importance of setting limits with social media.  With the current situation with Coronavirus, everyone’s social media feeds are being flooded with bad news–images of people rushing to the stores as more and more restrictions are being put into place to prevent viral spread, and frequent anxiety-provoking press conferences are continuously going.  Over time, this is going to have an impact on your mental health, as you are constantly exposing yourself to traumatic imagery.

Being too reliant on Social media can also take us away from our own ability to mentally process something stressful and can serve as a form of avoidance–this prevents us from making sense of what is going on in our own way and can prevent us from making the most of our time.  I’d like everyone watching (or Reading) to take a moment to check in with themselves–How are you feeling? Are scared? Are you Worried?  Are you Angry?  Do you feel numb?  Its important to go ahead and acknowledge what you’re feeling.

As a lot of people are stuck working from home or even being laid off the likelihood of excessively checking social media and the news is very high and its normal to have an urge to check.
There are some things I need to acknowledge. Coronavirus is a real threat to human life and that is expected to provoke anxiety.  I don’t want to diminish the impact it has had on our entire world at this point and (I will Stress) you should comply with federal and state guidelines. Being forced to stay home from work is resulting in an economic slump, some people are losing jobs, others having difficulty paying rent.  People who are working from home are also juggling homeschooling their children and continuing to do their jobs– can be stressful in itself. Being stuck at home is going to become boring fast and what do we do when we are bored? We check social media, and sometimes we do so in a mindless/automatic way. We don t even realize that we’re doing it. But Exposing yourself to traumatic imagery will result in a continuous stress response, which could have long term negative effects on you.  We’re talking catastrophizing, panic attacks, depression, insomnia, and generalized anxiety to name a few things.

So its important to regulate this. 

Here’s what to do to limit social media’s effect on us to reduce anxiety : 

5 Tips:

1. Set clear time limits on how often you are browsing social media or traditional media – Understand that both outlets are completely filled with news about COVID-19 and if you look at these media sources YOU WILL be seeing traumatic images-Its okay to check social media or the news daily but try not to get sucked into hours and hour of browsing through death charts, reading about symptoms, watching clips of fights in supermarkets over toilet paper– hold yourself to those time limits — for some people that is going to look like just checking in the morning and the early evening. That’s it. You don’t need more than that– you know what you need to do – you need to practice social distancing and you need to stay at home.

• There is a difference between staying informed, and becoming obsessed with developments

2. Do not browse social media or the news right up until bedtime – you need to allow your brain time to calm down or else you will find yourself unable to sleep and then what are you going to do?  A Consistent sleep schedule is important while out of our normal routine. 

3. Be careful not to stress shop online too much.  We often do this to provide ourselves some stress relief, but understand that this is shortlived.  Not going to last forever, its not going to solve anything. Instead try out some Mindfulness techniques – Can be found on youtube.   Some forms of distraction can be fine – I’m a fan of productive or creative forms of distraction rather than binge watching shows through a streaming service.

4. Focus on a productive task; use the next 2 to 6 weeks to better yourself in some way. I know we all have something we would like to improve about ourselves – take as an opportunity to work on that.  Examples: working on financial goals, weight loss, improving family relationships, reading more. Ask yourself this: “Do you want to let this whole thing put you into a negative place or do you want to come out of this as a better version of yourself?”

5.  Use this time to interact with loved ones – play a board game with your children, facetime/skype with your grandmother, call a close friend – its especially important to stay connected during this time.

For any parents listening: If you have kids it becomes even more important that you keep a certain level of calm when dealing with a world wide disaster – they are looking at you for guidance.

To review, my Tips are:

1. Set clear time limits
2. Don’t browse right before bedtime
3. Don’t stress shop
4. Be productive and make a goal
5. Reach out to loved ones

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