Paradoxically, it can also create environments of extreme isolation, feelings of disconnection, loneliness and isolation; it can be the key causative factor of stress, generate feelings of inadequacy, fuel ongoing self-doubt, create addictive patterns, mimic situations of collective bullying, reinforce negative self-beliefs, drive a harsh inner critic, perpetuate a negative body image and thwart therapeutic efforts. How do we navigate these multiple paradoxes and how do we assist clients for whom these incongruities are accentuating attachment anxiety, creating resistance for repair, compounding traumatic symptoms and eroding self-esteem?

This intellectually stimulating and practical seminar allows us to consider how:

• Digitally enabled social connections can have a positive impact on our mental well-being -via their capacity to reduce stress, boost our sense of self-worth, validate beliefs and values, provide pleasure and reduce loneliness or sense of exclusion
• Social media, apps and devices can act as a transitional object and a form of self-soothing which can offset broken attachments or loss of connection
• While simultaneously acting through a sense of social comparison, intrinsic to the use of social media and the impact it can have on shame and the decline in self worth
• Excessive social media can increase vulnerability to becoming addicted to apps and devices, as they facilitate immediacy, alleviate boredom and allow considered self-perception that changes beliefs about body and appearance and make our clients (and ourselves) feel more dissatisfied with themselves and their lives, exacerbate loneliness and link to mental health problems

The workshop draws on Attachment Theory and Object Relations to frame a neurobiological understanding that corresponds to Social Media use. This helps us understand social media interactions as a reward-driven response system together with an attachment based coping behaviour and the implications we can draw for clinical work. We also use case vignettes and discussions to specifically focus on the ‘social comparison’ facet of social media to:

• Discuss how social media provides an opportunity to curate our lives in sharing aspects of ourselves that we value and allows us to have a sense of belongingness. However, concomitantly in sharing aspects of our lives there is an increased risk of exposure and intense scrutiny by others which renders social media a potent instrument for social comparison, and thus a source of shame.
• Comprehend how ‘continuing scrutiny’ of the social media gaze prompts shame-based anxieties manifest in behaviours including curating and editing profiles, airbrushing and filtering pictures – which in extremity conditions can have severe consequences including hazardous body-modifications, depression and an increased risk of suicide
• Understand how the use of social media has become a powerful substitute for the reflection and mirroring of the primary caregiver as a way to validate our sense of self and to seek approval from others
• Evaluate how these paradoxes present in the clinical space and can be worked with and understood from an attachment perspective
• Understand the ‘language of shame’ and its connections with social media dynamics – we will also understand when ‘therapist gaze’ can accentuate the feelings of scrutiny that the client experiences

© nscience 2022 / 2023