😅 Social Media for the Anxiously Attached — with Becca Piastrelli

Amelia Hruby [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients.

Welcome or welcome back to Off the Grid, a podcast about leaving social media without losing all your clients. Or as I've started to think about it this season, a show for self-employed babes, friends, folks, cool kids, people who have a complex about maybe not having been cool kids, a show for all of us who want to share our work and make money online without social media. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. I am the founder of Softer Sounds podcast studio. And here on this show, I share stories, strategies, and experiments for growing your business with radical generosity and energetic sovereignty.

Amelia Hruby [00:01:09]:
Today on the podcast, I'm doing something a little different than our regular programming because I am resharing an episode of another podcast where I was interviewed all about social media, anxious attachment, and how we can create community and grow our businesses without being on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook or any of the the apps. I've never done this before on the Off the Grid feed. I don't think it's something I will do often, but this conversation that I had with Becca Piastrelli of Belonging Podcast was just so open and honest and mutual and vulnerable. And as I listened back to it, I was like, folks at Off the Grid really have to hear this too. So thank you to Becca for sending me the interview. Thank you to Becca for creating the amazing Belonging Podcast, which I used to produce and highly recommend subscribing to and tuning into.

Amelia Hruby [00:02:09]:
In this conversation, you can expect to hear more about my journey with social media, how it felt to be on Instagram as much as I was, and particularly my anxious attachment and my decision to leave Instagram. You'll also hear about the surge of creative energy I had when I exited social media, and then the loneliness that arrived as I looked around and tried to figure out where I belonged if I wasn't online in the ways that I used to be.

Amelia Hruby [00:02:42]:
Becca and I also have a really deep and honest conversation about how we want to be seen and the need to be seen and where we go to be seen, and the ways that our personal and emotional well-being are connected to and influenced by our online presence. Because I'm me, I also sprinkle in a bit of information about surveillance on social media platforms and how they can lead us down these paths of misinformation, toxic algorithms, and capitalism. And so that is wrapped into this as well.

Amelia Hruby [00:03:20]:
But I really hope that you will stay tuned in for this conversation. I hope that you enjoy it. I hope that you'll go check out Becca's podcast, Belonging. I will be back on Friday with our June forecast episode, and then I have a few more amazing surprises up my sleeve for our last few episodes of Season 3. So without further ado, I bring to you my conversation with Becca Piastrelli, which we had for Belonging Podcast and now is getting the Off the Grid feature here on this feed. Enjoy.

Becca Piastrelli [00:03:59]:
Amelia Hruby, welcome to the Belonging Podcast. Thank you for being here.

Amelia Hruby [00:04:03]:
Thank you for having me, Becca. It's a joy and an honor.

Becca Piastrelli [00:04:06]:
To orient people to who you are. You used to produce this here podcast.

Amelia Hruby [00:04:12]:
I did.

Becca Piastrelli [00:04:13]:
You have a podcast production studio called Softer Sounds. And if anyone is looking for the best of the best in podcast production, Softer Sounds.studio is the best. And you've mentored me in trying to understand more about what I'm doing here with this podcast, who I'm trying to reach. It's been so powerful to work with you. And you also have this kick ass podcast called Off the Grid, which I highly, highly recommend if you are a business owner, content creator, anyone who's trying to get your message out in the world because it's a podcast about doing business without having to be on social media, and it's one of my favorites. So I wanna talk to you about social media as someone who is on it.

Amelia Hruby [00:04:59]:
I embrace that.

Becca Piastrelli [00:05:00]:
Yes. So there's something I love about your podcast is that you're, like, maybe you haven't left yet. And I'm, like, I don't know if I'll ever leave. I can't put pressure on myself, but I wanna speak into this tension I feel with someone who has fully who has this perspective on social media that has made a decision that is not my current decision to educate me and educate all of us. And I think my goal from this conversation is to feel deeper clarity in what it is I'm doing and where it is I'm going. So my first question to you is what has been your relationship with social media, Amelia?

Amelia Hruby [00:05:43]:
Over the years, it's been a wild ride. I would say that I'm a pretty typical millennial, and I got on social media in college. No. I got on Facebook in high school. I got on Instagram in college. And I started building a personal brand there in my twenties. And I put a lot of time and energy and love into it. I sold courses and stickers. I got a book deal. I sold my book.

Amelia Hruby [00:06:13]:
I invested, again, so much time and money into Instagram, into paying for brand photos, paying for social media strategy. A lot of that was focused around selling my book. And through that process, through that decade of being on social media, I just started to really deeply feel how it was not aligned with my values and how my relationship with these apps had really become one of codependency and anxious attachment. I was always looking to them for approval. I couldn't be away from them. I was constantly checking and feeling unworthy in the process.

Amelia Hruby [00:06:53]:
And that realization combined with some really, I would say principled issues I have with surveillance online and the ways that these apps track us, not only on our phones but across all of our digital activities, those two things combined eventually led me to the decision that I had to leave all social media apps, which I did in April of 2021. And since then, I, in some sense, haven't looked back. I run a business that's not active on social media. I live a life that's not shared on social media. It's shared online in a lot of places, but not on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, any of these popular apps that we talk about.

Amelia Hruby [00:07:43]:
But you know, it's interesting you asked about my relationship because now I run this podcast about leaving social media, so I'm still in relationship with it in a really interesting kind of way. It's kind of like I went through a breakup, and now I'm an advocate for how toxic some relationships can be, and here I am.

Becca Piastrelli [00:08:02]:
As someone who's like, yes, totally codependency. Yes, totally toxic relationship. Yes. Totally, all of that stuff, like surveillance. Yes. And, also, I'm addicted. And I'm also receiving something that I would code to positive in it. So I hear you saying these words, and I wanna hear more of them about if there's any aspect of what you just shared about the relationship that didn't feel good or right for you in a more specific way that helped you pull the plug?

Amelia Hruby [00:08:36]:
Yeah. So I think that I can definitely speak more to that moment of realizing that I was anxiously attached to social media. And for me, anxious attachment was a long term pattern that I had in every romantic relationship that I had been in since high school. And so I had gone to quite a bit of therapy to help me heal that and to help me tap into what secure attachment could be like, particularly for me in a romantic relationship, but also in friendships.

Amelia Hruby [00:09:12]:
I really struggled to believe that people cared about and would continue to care about me. And so the anxious attachment piece is I would just be checking in all the time, and I would be highly attuned to any shift in a dynamic. And I would panic. And then I would, it's almost like scratching a wound. Like I would pick it a scab or a scar in a relationship until it was so infected, such a problem. But actually, it had started out just as a paper cut. It was all about just me struggling to believe in, again, my value, my worthiness, the strength of these relationships. And so therapy helped me with all of that.

Becca Piastrelli [00:09:58]:
Bless it.

Amelia Hruby [00:09:58]:
Therapy helped me recenter in my own experience, helped me detach from a lot of projection I was doing that was causing these issues, helped me communicate more honestly about my feelings so I could share when I felt hurt when I noticed something without turning it into this big thing, unless it needed to be a big thing, but I was typically escalating things that perhaps could have been resolved. And because I had gone through all that therapy, it felt like a light bulb moment. That took a long time.

Amelia Hruby [00:10:28]:
But then when I saw it in social media, in my relationship with social media, I couldn't unsee it. And that has been how a lot of shifts have happened personally for me. It's really, really slow and then all of a sudden, I get this clarity. And once that's there, once I'm really aware of a misalignment, I can't live within it anymore. For me, it's like I'm so allergic to places of my life where my actions are not aligned with my values. And I think other people can live in that tension a lot more, or it's a lot murkier for them. But with social media, it became really clear to me, and I had to go. Again, it it was a long process. I was so invested there for a decade, particularly on Instagram. But once I saw that, I was out within a couple months.

Becca Piastrelli [00:11:18]:
Thank you for sharing that. I relate as an anxious attacher working on it for the rest of my life.

Amelia Hruby [00:11:26]:
It's a lifelong journey.

Becca Piastrelli [00:11:29]:
Yeah. I am struck by the idea of, is it possible to have secure attachment with social media? How has life been like since you left?

Amelia Hruby [00:11:43]:
There've been many stages of how it's felt since I left. So I like to be really clear that I don't think leaving social media radically, dramatically changed my life. It was a big change, but at the end of the day, the mundane aspects of my life were all the same. The same partner before and after, the same family before and after. I did change jobs, which was sort of related, but not related to that. But it was a big change. And I think when we're in that moment of asking ourselves, we're like, "This will change everything" or sometimes, "This will fix everything." And I don't think leaving social media necessarily does that at all.

Amelia Hruby [00:12:26]:
But for me, when I first left, I had so much creative energy because I had been pouring hours and hours of every day of my life into this app. It wasn't there anymore, and so I was just pouring it into other places. I sent more newsletters out in the three months after I left social media than I have since then combined. I was just creating and flowing and I felt so abundant. And then I crashed. I came back down to earth and I realized how unsustainable the demands on my productivity and creation were just staying in this endless cycle of content creation. And for me, I like to think of it as I came back to a more human pace with myself.

Amelia Hruby [00:13:13]:
My experience with social media was a lot about creating for social media and engaging with responses on social media, and so I had ramped that up. The dial went all the way up to 10 or beyond when I was doing my book launch and then the months after that. And when I left, I had to slowly turn that dial back down and then find the place where it actually felt really good to be creating and sharing for me.

Amelia Hruby [00:13:42]:
And then after a while, the loneliness set in. I think that that's a big piece of why we stay on social media. It's where we connect with people we know and love. And in the beginning, everybody was excited that I left and I was better at sending texts and I was better at reaching out. And people were like, "Oh, you're not in social, but I'll just text you this Instagram reel that was hilarious." And after six months or so, that kinda died back down and it was on me to figure out first of all, what relationships am I gonna prioritize maintaining and how am I doing that? And it's been a rocky path, I think. There are certainly friendships that are not as close because I'm not there to see their stories, comment on what they're up to.

Amelia Hruby [00:14:33]:
And then there are other friendships that are significantly deeper because we are both putting in that outreach effort, sharing what's really going on without the veneer of the photos and fun and funny things and all the memes kind of between us. That said, I still text memes to a lot of my friends all the time, but I think that was a big shift. But I would say now, on the whole, my nervous system is much more regulated. My creative process is much more in conversation with what I want to create than with what I think will perform well according to an algorithm or an audience. And I personally think my work is better than ever because I've leaned into the formats I love rather than feeling forced into the formats that will perform well.

Becca Piastrelli [00:15:24]:
Thank you. I'm noticing so many feelings coming up for me.

Amelia Hruby [00:15:30]:
Yeah. Please share. I wanna hear about them.

Becca Piastrelli [00:15:32]:
I'm like, "Aw!" so the story I'm telling myself is because I'm a Leo sun, there is a very visceral, maybe it's anxious attachment too. I have a very visceral need to be seen that I'm also working through right now in my circle that I'm really working through of this story that I'm not seen enough, that people don't see me, or that I'm not revealing myself. And I can't quite tell if it's just a sort of flash in the pan quick dopamine hit or it's actually medicinal of when I reveal myself in my truth, it's still curated. But on social media, it feels good. And if that was taken away, where would I get that? And I literally say, this is so real, Amelia, "Where would I get that?"

Amelia Hruby [00:16:26]:
Yeah.

Becca Piastrelli [00:16:26]:
Particularly because I just moved to a new community. I moved to a new community that's much more rural. And what I'm finding in this community is Instagram is the way I'm finding out about the farm events and the spiritual witchy mama meetups and I'm finding out about the things I wanna find on Instagram. And I'm also sort of letting people know I'm here and calling people to me on Instagram. So I can get into that sort of digital alter space of being like, "It's a spell" and it works for me sometimes. And then I become luteal and then my hormones change.

Amelia Hruby [00:17:14]:
Yes.

Becca Piastrelli [00:17:15]:
And I'm fucked up. I'm not okay. I'm comparing. I'm convincing myself of stories that I know aren't true but can't believe that they aren't that they are aren't not true. It's the toxic relationship side.

Amelia Hruby [00:17:31]:
Yeah.

Becca Piastrelli [00:17:32]:
So I find myself sort of, the pendulum swings every month between these experiences of being like, "This is beautiful. This is powerful. This feels really good" and, "This feels awful." And then there's the added layer of the story I'm telling myself is I need to be on it for my business, for my work, for this podcast, for people paying me money for the services I provide. And that's a tricky one. I've listened to and been coached enough by you to know that that's actually not a true truth, but it's a sneaky one. Right? That I talked to so many makers and space holders who are like, "I just have to be on it." So that's where I'm at listening to you. Any thoughts?

Amelia Hruby [00:18:21]:
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I mean, it resonates with my own experience, and I'm sure it speaks to how other people are feeling. I think I'll speak to that last business point first, then I'll go back to the community aspect. I think those are the two strongest narratives and experiences, like use cases, where we're like, "Social media is great. It's great for business and it's great for community building." That is what was promised to us on all of these apps, and it's many of our experiences of them. I don't know anyone who's left social media publicly who wasn't really invested and in love with their experience on the app at some point, and then that shifted. Of course, there are people who never got on them and never cared about this, but they're not listening to my podcast. They're probably not tuning into this episode. They're like, "I don't get it, you guys."

Becca Piastrelli [00:19:17]:
Right. That's like a different experience. Yes.

Amelia Hruby [00:19:19]:
Yes. Exactly. I think in terms of business, part of what I'm hearing you say is that it's working well enough. With our marketing, there's no promise that anything's going to work, whether you are on social media, you are writing a newsletter, you are SEO optimizing your website, you are all over Pinterest. Each of us, we choose the marketing channels that we feel like we will succeed at for many reasons. That's gonna be what are our strengths, what do we enjoy doing, where is our audience, are the people we're selling to, where are they hanging out? And I think for many people, the answer to a lot of those questions is still Instagram. And at that point, yes, the whole argument of my podcast is if you don't wanna be there, you don't have to be there. This belief that we have to be there, I think, is false. I think that's a myth.

Amelia Hruby [00:20:13]:
But the other thing I say is if you're not there, you have to do other things. And I think for a lot of people, the frustration and annoyance of being on social media is still less than the labor and effort of doing the other things it would require to grow and sustain your business without it. And that's a choice I understand. I think that's a choice that all business owners are making all the time, especially those of us who are small business owners or solopreneurs, we're just like running doing our own thing by ourselves or with a couple trusted partners. We don't have a whole marketing team to come up with a plan for shifting off social media and executing it for us. Right? If we're gonna do all that work, it's gonna be us. And I understand not wanting to divest from that space or not being able to, because for many people, it will mean a monetary hit for a while, and not everyone can take that.

Amelia Hruby [00:21:14]:
I'm a Capricorn rising, I'm a really pragmatic person. I'm not coming at this from a place of idealism, that this is a decision we should all make. I think that it really does depend on the business and the other aspects of your life that are going to determine how much time and energy you have to put into marketing. And for some of us, it feels so bad that it's no longer a choice, and then that's also where Off the Grid is really. I'm trying to show up and serve other options and possibilities so that for those of us who hit that point where we have to leave, like it's an urge from within or without, I want there to be other pathways forward.

Amelia Hruby [00:21:55]:
And then the community piece, I mean, I feel that really deeply. I also moved six months before I left Instagram and I was in a new community and I had found out about a lot of things by following local stores and people on social media. And it was challenging to step away from that. But what I will say has been a really interesting experiment and shift for me is that when I was most active on social media, I was living in Chicago and in the beginning when I moved there, nobody knew me and, like, I was meeting everyone anew. And by the end, almost everyone I met already knew me through Instagram and was encountering me through this sort of preconceived understanding of who I was based on my personal brand on the Internet.

Becca Piastrelli [00:22:51]:
Feeling that.

Amelia Hruby [00:22:54]:
It was a mixed bag. Sometimes it was awesome. I was like, "Oh, I don't have to tell you I have a podcast. I do this. You already know. Great." And sometimes I was like, "Oh, I don't know if I needed that. I wanted to have a different interaction with you, and you're purely coming at me through this perspective and some things you projected onto my Internet presence." So it was a really mixed bag. Again, those highs and lows. And living here now without social media, when I meet people, they have no clue who I am. I don't matter to them any more than any other person they're meeting that day, and I get to choose to disclose things about my work or my life or who I am on the Internet or not.

Amelia Hruby [00:23:37]:
And I'm gonna since you've been very vulnerable and open, I'll be really vulnerable and open. Sometimes, as an Aries sun, I get those moments where I'm like, "Excuse me. Don't you know that I matter on the Internet?"

Becca Piastrelli [00:23:48]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Amelia Hruby [00:23:48]:
I'm like, "Hello? Like, people listen to me. Why aren't you listening to me?" So that's my own wounding. I own that, but sometimes it's really annoying. I'm like, "Well, if I was still on Instagram, you'd know that I was important."

Becca Piastrelli [00:24:03]:
Yeah.

Amelia Hruby [00:24:06]:
And that's where me and my ego just have a little conversation, and we let it go and we move on. And that's currently kind of what I've been swimming in around these questions of social media and community.

Becca Piastrelli [00:24:21]:
I almost cried when you just said the word, "and community." And you took a deep breath, because, obviously, that's what I talk about all the time. It's a big, it's a wound. It's my work. And because, I think you were sharing earlier about how, thank you for talking about the loneliness setting in and some people you've maintained relationships with and some you haven't.

Becca Piastrelli [00:24:45]:
Because there's a cultural enrollment and the place we go is Instagram, at least for millennials, for the most part. And so if you're opting out of that, of course, there's an inherent loneliness and, it's like, "Is everyone hanging out without me?" That's one of my favorites book from Mindy Kaling.

Becca Piastrelli [00:25:03]:
Yeah. They are.

Becca Piastrelli [00:25:05]:
And it's like, yes. And so I asked myself if I can handle that in this season of my life. And I'm hearing you say the pain of staying was worse than the pain of leaving. Yeah. I'm really sitting with that. And I'm also curious, I shared I have this story that I'm seen. It's a pathway, at least for 2 weeks of the month, a place where I can feel seen. And it feels deeply nourishing to me. So maybe I'll just ask you, if I left where else could I feel seen?

Amelia Hruby [00:25:51]:
Well...

Becca Piastrelli [00:25:51]:
I feel embarrassed that I just asked that. I feel so embarrassed because it's like, "Oh my gosh. Wow. That's what I think and feel."

Amelia Hruby [00:25:59]:
Yeah. Well, I'm sitting with you in that. I think it's very, I wanna say real, but I think what I mean is I think many of us are walking around feeling like we've never been seen by our families, which has created a very deep wounding in us. And for many of us who were indoctrinated by our own consent into social media, that is where we covered up that wound. I don't think it healed it at all because I think the platforms and the way they function actually aggravate that wounding. But it's where we go to feel seen and that feels good because we haven't felt seen for a long time. And it's where we meet friends and encounter or connect with chosen family. And I think that we somewhat falsely contribute that to platform when it's really about the relationships.

Amelia Hruby [00:27:02]:
But to more directly speak to your question, where do you go to feel seen? A big part of my journey was that I don't think I could have left social media if I hadn't been in a very securely attached partnership. I feel deeply seen by my partner, JJ, and that's been really healing for me, especially because when I made this move, I mentioned I left Chicago. I moved from Chicago to Nebraska where now I live very close to my family for the first time since I went to boarding school when I was 16. And it brought up a lot of that wounding around, oh, the way they see me is really different than the self image I had constructed by living in Chicago for seven years and establishing myself there.

Amelia Hruby [00:27:53]:
And I had to do a lot of work to integrate those different self images and to really stand and stay true to myself and to be fluid and flexible and be like, "I can accept that they see me this way. I can know myself to be a different way, and I can live in relationship in all of this." In terms of where do I go to be seen now, I go to my podcast, I go to my friendships, I go to my partnership. And what I've really leaned into is cultivating a life where I have a lot of different types of relationships that see different aspects of myself.

Amelia Hruby [00:28:34]:
Through my journey with secure attachment and releasing anxious attachment, part of that was realizing that I couldn't rely on one person to perfectly see every part of me. The only one who could do that is me. And perfect is a bad word there. At the end of the day, being seen is about me seeing myself, and I need the beautiful mirrors of relationship to reflect that self back to me. But I go to my podcast to get to meet those marketing mirrors. I go to my relationship to meet the mirror around so many aspects of myself that I don't even share publicly. I go to my family so that my inner child can be mirrored back to me, parts of my life I don't even remember.

Amelia Hruby [00:29:18]:
I have so many friendships from high school who mirror some of my most rambunctious fun years back to me. I have friends who I know through my business who mirror that back to me, friends who could care less about my business, who mirror my more spiritual and witchier sides back to me. And so it's interesting in the way that I think social media can kind of give us that hit. And I guess maybe my question back to you is, what parts of yourself do you feel are seen on social media? When you say, "That's where I go to be seen," I know many sides of Becca. So, what are the sides of Becca that are being seen on social media?

Becca Piastrelli [00:30:04]:
So interesting that you asked that because I've had a lot of my friends and even clients when I meet them in person, which is rarely, but that's changing because that's what I want. Yeah. Much changes afoot for me, which is why I feel brave to have this conversation. A lot of the feedback I get is, "I do not see these parts of you online and I'm craving that. You're really sassy. You are obsessed with pop culture. You are hilarious." And I've realized I've cultivated a persona that is not not me. It's my deep work. It's lineage built. It's so important to me. I have a very serious topic. You and I changed the intro music to this podcast to the clapping from the woman moaning in the cave to try to shift just a deeper seeing of me. Just to say that thing. I think people long time listeners might appreciate knowing that. Anyways, what was your question?

Amelia Hruby [00:31:08]:
What parts of you are seen on social media?

Becca Piastrelli [00:31:12]:
It's a curated part. There's a part of me that wants to feel taken seriously so that I reveal on social media. There is a part of me that wants to be seen as a teacher. There's the parts of me that want to be seen as like, it's always changing. I'm such a dynamic person, manifesting generator, just always, always, always shifting. But right now, I want people to see my new life because I want to see me in my new life.

Becca Piastrelli [00:31:41]:
I was talking about this with my friend, Hillarie Maddox, when she interviewed me about the first four months of landing here in a new place and how I was posting on social media beautiful farmscapes and the donkey and the chickens and my child running around the lake. And I was getting a lot of text from my friends because they are watching my social media saying, "It looks so beautiful. I'm so happy for you." And I would text them back, "I am not okay. I am not okay. My child is grieving. I am grieving. I am not okay."

Becca Piastrelli [00:32:15]:
And then they'd say, "But it looks so beautiful on social media." And I'd say, "I'm doing that to show me that this is beautiful and that this is my life." So, really, what I was doing is, this comes back to, "I see myself." I was posting to feel seen and also remind myself that in this emotional turmoil of a really intense life transition, I had a beautiful life. Which I could make mean really messed up stuff or I could make mean a really beautiful way I figured out a way to soothe myself. I'm realizing in this moment, I wanna feel seen by myself by watching my Instagram. And is that healthy?

Amelia Hruby [00:32:59]:
Well, I love what you said there, like, "I could make that mean really beautiful things or really messed up things." And I think sometimes it's okay to not make it mean anything. You have the self awareness. You're like, "Oh, this is what I'm doing. That's interesting." And you can just keep observing and being with yourself. I think that since there have been photographs, humans have been portraying themselves as they would like to be seen and in ways that they want to see themselves.

Amelia Hruby [00:33:31]:
And so I think that on one level with Instagram, we just have a different technological method, frequency, intensity of that. On the other hand, I think where it gets challenging is it's not simply, you know, a camera roll that's on your phone. It's not just a record of photos. It's also a engagement space where other people are coming in, having thoughts and feelings about what you're sharing and where part of your impulse for sharing is also has to do with having a business and making money. So a lot gets wrapped into that space, and then there's an algorithm surfacing it to people, or not. There there are a lot of other layers that social media apps bring beyond just the media aspect. But what I'm hearing you describe is I think an impulse that goes back before Instagram.

Becca Piastrelli [00:34:25]:
Yes.

Amelia Hruby [00:34:26]:
And I'm not here to judge that one way or another or any way at all.

Becca Piastrelli [00:34:32]:
Oh, thanks, Amelia. Yeah. You feel very safe to talk to you about it. And I think for those of us who are grappling, because I know I'm not alone with this, it's so important to find space within ourselves or in listening to this or with beloveds where we can just be honest about what it is we're doing.

Becca Piastrelli [00:34:56]:
I'm glad you brought up the the different layers. And I've made a note that says, "How does it aggravate the wound? In my deep dive that I do every few years about what's messed up about the design of these apps, as someone who comes from the tech world and has a partner who's still in it and really trying to leave. And being elder millennials, or I identify as another millennial, who saw the beginning and saw the trajectory of the way technology has gone. So what I had read, and I'm gonna try to paraphrase this, is an analysis on how the brain perceives a feed of photos and how it's that compare and despair syndrome a lot of us get that I always get on day 27 of my moon cycle.

Becca Piastrelli [00:35:49]:
Our brains are primitive animal things. They cannot upgrade with the next iOS. They just don't do that. Yes. There's progression in the brain with culture, but it just doesn't move that fast. I love to remind us of that every day of our lives that we are not machines. And so the brain is looking at a feed of pictures. Let's just talk about Instagram because that's the that's the place. And it's all the different people that you follow, which could be hundreds, if not thousands, their lives. It's like always in August, I'm convinced everyone's in Italy. Everyone's in Italy in August.

Amelia Hruby [00:36:29]:
They were last year, for sure.

Becca Piastrelli [00:36:30]:
They really were. "Everyone's in Italy and I'm not!" Or, like, "Everyone's engaged." That's a big one for that time of your life. Where everyone's having a baby when I was going through miscarriage after miscarriage and such grief. And I just was like, "Everyone is pregnant." The phenomenon I'm speaking to is that our brains can't actually see that that one person posted that one time, the time they went to Italy and they haven't posted anything else. And then that one person is sharing their life and then that one person is sharing this. But last week it all just looks like everyone is doing the thing and I'm not.

Becca Piastrelli [00:37:09]:
And that really hit something in me as someone who has that tendency towards feeling like I don't belong. I'm not in the cool girl club. Everyone's doing something cooler than me. Like, that's when I know, "Yeah, let's let's look at that." When I realized the algorithm is designed with knowing that about the human brain that wants, that keeps you sort of in it and that fucks with us. So that helped me, and then and then also the curation of it, the highlight reel. That it's not everyone's real life. So I'm curious if there's anything else that maybe comes to mind about how the design of these platforms aggravates the wound.

Amelia Hruby [00:37:56]:
Yeah. A few things. Well, I think that going way back in social media, just even to Facebook, even to the earliest platforms, I think that social media gave us access to other people's lives in a way that's not always supportive for us, especially if you're an anxiously attached person. I found that any boundary work that I tried to do to establish between me and people I was struggling with codependency, like social media just made it way too easy for either person to just breeze past all that, see directly into my life, me see directly into their life. And I think that really aggravates a wound. This constant instantaneous access to curated views of other people's lives and worlds can be harmful, especially if you're someone who struggles with belonging.

Amelia Hruby [00:38:54]:
I also think that the ways that social media algorithms are programmed to primarily keep you on the apps, which means that they have learned over time, whether the companies say they designed them this way or not, through machine learning, they have learned that more controversial things, more shocking things, more upsetting things are what are going to hook us and keep us going, scrolling, going deeper. And there have been studies that have shown now that if you stay on YouTube long enough, you will end up either on a far right or far left corner of it just through the content that you're served on the side panel when they're recommending what to watch next.

Amelia Hruby [00:39:43]:
There are studies, I also believe, that have shown that if you set up a Instagram profile that is conceivably for a young woman, and then scroll in some sort of normal way, I don't know exactly how they determine that, but, it will eventually be served disordered eating content, like pro-disordered eating content. Again, these are studies I've read about online, so I'm sure there is much more nuance than I can present in this brief moment. But the ways that the algorithms have learned to incite us, I think aggravate those wounds around belonging, around getting to know ourselves, being centered in what we believe, who we are, coming to decisions about those things.

Amelia Hruby [00:40:31]:
Then we get into the spread of fake news, particularly on Facebook, the way that we're trained, I think, with that, like, animal brain to trust and believe people that we love, unless that is broken and harmed and that becomes a trauma we have to recover from. But when we see those people sharing all these things, it's our instinct, in my experience, to believe them. But it's very easy for them to just be sharing things that are completely not true, either about the world or about their own lives.

Amelia Hruby [00:41:02]:
And so I just think that the swirl of misinformation and an algorithm that's designed to upset you in some way or another, and it can learn you. So it can learn that FOMO is one of the things that will keep you scrolling the most and it will just serve you up, those photos, right? Meta has made very clear that they look at what you look at and they show you more of that. So if you pause on that photo because you're really upset about it, they'll be serving you more baby photos every day. And so I think that this is how even sometimes when we do all the therapy, we put in all the work to be able to walk away from that moment to support our best friend through this big transition in their life even if it's something we're grieving that we don't have. Maybe we can do that for one person we love, but can we do it for infinite people on the Internet?

Amelia Hruby [00:41:58]:
I don't know how to cultivate that skill. And I don't think it's a deficit in us that we struggle with that. I think that has to do with the platforms. It has to do with the platforms, that has to do with the feed that you're mentioning, has to do with the algorithms that I'm bringing into this equation. And we haven't even gotten to all the worthiness wounding and belonging wounding around what happens when you post something and nobody likes it, which I think is honestly, one of the first wounds people encounter. So those are just a few of the ways that I think these wounds we're talking about around belonging or around codependency or anxious attachment are really aggravated and worsened by social media platforms.

Becca Piastrelli [00:42:39]:
Thank you. I needed to hear all of that. I'm remembering how manipulated I felt by Instagram in my early postpartum days. Because many new parents who are up in the night or in that place of timeless time that feels very isolating are on their phones, breastfeeding, feeding their babies up with a colicky child, whatever it is, and they go to their phones. And especially because I was a postpartum mother in 2020. So it was like just me and my phone. And, I remember, first of all, being assaulted with all these things I had to purchase, which felt like, "I'm at such a tender time." And I just I felt very angry for all these parents who are probably on a reduced income, being on leave, feeling like they need to buy all this stuff.

Becca Piastrelli [00:43:41]:
But then I remember I kept getting fed reels about children choking and sudden infant death syndrome over and over and over again, and then things I could buy to ensure that wouldn't happen.

Amelia Hruby [00:44:01]:
Of course.

Becca Piastrelli [00:44:03]:
I'm looking at you, Dechoker. F you. It was so messed up. And I remember it was a moment where I was like, "Don't do that to me. I do not consent to that." I forgot about that. So, yeah, there you go. There's an experience that felt messed up.

Amelia Hruby [00:44:24]:
Yeah. And I think that when we're in those vulnerable moments, the times we feel really vulnerable like when we're up, when we're a new parent, or when we're up with a child, or it's the middle of the night and we're up for any reason

Becca Piastrelli [00:44:37]:
Yes.

Amelia Hruby [00:44:38]:
We want to connect. We go to our phones to connect. That's the urge. And when we do that through social media, just so often, that drive for connection ends up steering us in a really different direction. And it's really challenging, especially in those moments to have the fortitude to be like, "Oh, I see what's happening here. It's manipulating me. I'm not gonna do that," etcetera, etcetera. You could see it in hindsight, maybe even the next morning, but when you're in it at that moment, when you're really vulnerable and you really need connection and that's what you're seeing, I just think that is really harmful for us.

Amelia Hruby [00:45:22]:
And you are not the first person I've heard have a similar experience, particularly in those postpartum months or years. I've talked to a lot of people who end up stepping away or leaving social media during that time because they just see so acutely how targeted they are and how vulnerable they are to that targeting, even if they don't think of themself as a person who is vulnerable to that. And I am not a parent, so I haven't had this experience, but another reason I left social media was I realized that I didn't trust my own taste and desires anymore. I just kept buying things that everyone around me bought. And they would arrive at my house, and I would be like, "Why did I buy this neck pillow?"

Becca Piastrelli [00:46:08]:
What am I holding in my hand? A freaking Stanley Cup. Why? It leaks. It's stupid.

Amelia Hruby [00:46:16]:
Exactly. Yeah. So many things. And I mean, I was a micro influencer for a period of time. I shelled out SponCon. I am as guilty as charged and I will own that and recognize that. If you ever bought Parade underwear because I recommended it to you, my apologies. I mean, I love some of my Parade underwear. It wasn't a false recommendation, but also, I have so much of it even to this day. Nobody needed that much underwear. So I just think that we are all vulnerable to culture. Vulnerable is maybe a hard way to put it, but we are all impacted by culture. We are all shaped by our relationships with other people. That's a part of life. That's one of the joys of life, and it can be a joy on social media as well. I don't know anyone who hasn't met a good friend on the Internet.

Amelia Hruby [00:47:10]:
I think the Internet is magical. I am not a Luddite personally or politically. I love the Internet. It's been a portal to so many amazing things in my life, including meeting you, including this conversation. And I think that it's just important to bring intention and awareness to why we use social media apps, to be in touch with how they make us feel, and to realize that we are not trapped there. We can leave them. We can step back. We can step away entirely if it is not the right thing for us or for our business. There are other ways to connect with community. There are other ways to market and share your work if that is the path for you or if that's what you want to do.

Amelia Hruby [00:48:01]:
Don't let Meta or TikTok or the influencers you follow or your other business owner friends convince you that you have to be on social media. That's not true. You may have a harder path or a different path if you leave social media. You may have a way easier path, but there are other paths, and I think that's what's just most important to me for all of us to remember. And I think that's what liberation is. It's just actively choosing the path that we're on and whether or not that social media is a part of that for you and your liberation is not anyone else's to judge.

Becca Piastrelli [00:48:41]:
That's a beautiful point to end on. Thank you so much for this very raw and honest and tender conversation. I think what I'm taking away is how my anxious attachment is being played out on social media, how I am making it the place that I am only seen instead of, perhaps, one place that I'm seen. Where else I can feel seen? I am reminded of the toxic harmful ways it preys upon my vulnerabilities. And I'm inspired to expand my perspective on what is possible for connection in my new life in this community so that I don't feel so tethered to one experience, one way of doing it. And I have to remind myself, just what you said. I can choose a different path. I can choose a different path. So I appreciate you and what you shared and what that brought up in me.

Amelia Hruby [00:49:52]:
Yeah. Well, thank you for inviting me into this conversation, and I really appreciate everything that you shared and the invitation to share and to really dig into what is underneath these stories we're telling ourselves about social media because it's never quite what we expect or sometimes what we're willing to admit to ourselves. So thank you for joining me and admitting all these things to everyone listening today.

Becca Piastrelli [00:50:19]:
Hello!

Amelia Hruby [00:50:24]:
Thanks to all of you for listening.