I see people for hypnotherapy to overcome digital burn out.
As a clinical hypnotherapist, (AHA), psychotherapist, mental health professional (PACFA) and naturopath (ANPA) I help you fast.
Do you go down the rabbit hole?
Spend endless hours waiting for the circle of doom?
Are you always checking your social media?
Is your digital footprint greater than your nonelectronic social interactions?
I get it – I really do.
I had one of the very first personal computers in the UK in the 1980’s, when we had to program them ourselves. I’ve spent tens of thousands of hours running my businesses electronically.
If you have digital burnout however it means your electronic life has taken over your real life.
Some symptoms of digital burnout are:
- You’re tired because of staying up too late at the keyboards or playing games.
- Your social media friends became more important than your real-life friends.
- You are taking to heart and believing silly comments that people make on the internet that have no real facts to back them up.
- You’re stressed, anxious, angry, depressed, feel isolated, hopeless and possibly suicidal.
- You may even have a constant sense of FOMO
- You’re checking your phone when you’re walking, driving or crossing the road.
- You’re with your child or walking the dog and are distracted by your phone, failing to connect with them.
- Your family and friends feel neglected.
You may have one or more of these symptoms associated with your electronic overuse.
How does it happen?
Sure, the internet has been a communication miracle, but it’s important to remember it’s mainly a marketing tool now. (1)
Google, which claims it has 95% of searches, feeds you what it thinks are your interests to connect you with sellers that pay to advertise or google pushes its own goods. It says it’s impartial but that’s not true. Therefore, a lot of the information you get in searches is biased and wildly inaccurate.
Most social media is one dimensional, so people often make angry, nasty and false comments that they would never get away with, if you were faced to face with someone.
You are flooded and targeted with social comparatives such as – someone is richer, smart, more successful, better at a game than you. This can make you feel “less than”, so you feel anxious, depressed, a failure and rejected. (2)
What if my work involves being online?
Electronic work is as valid as any other and we are all making a living. You may even have a line manager that is trying to force you to spend more time connected, even when you’re not at work.
You end up feeling that you’re at work all the time, so you never get enough rest and family time.
Because you need the money to live you put up with work conditions that wouldn’t be accepted if you went to work in an office or factory.
You may even run your own business and are trying to do everything yourself to save costs. It’s called boot strapping, and you’re always on call.
This can lead to major physical and mental health problems because you aren’t having enough rest and downtime. (3)
Lossing reality testing on the internet
‘Reality test’ is a phrase in psychology that describes your ability to tell what is and isn’t real. It’s a basic essential skill that we need to maneuver life, keep us safe and allow us to identify opportunities.
Because the internet is full of opinions of someone trying to sell you something or fact less jibber jabber, there is a danger you can mistake that information as real facts. You begin to substitute reality testing with coerced fantasy. (5)
This damages your mental health and then your physical health because you are no longer maneuvering the real world, are anxious and in danger.
A large part of what you read on the internet is opinion and misinformation, particularly if you hold minority views and have been targeted. (4)
In truth our digital foot is so accurately recorded that we’re all targeted all the time by search and social media.
Your reality testing skills are best operated and rebalanced and restored when we’re using all five senses – sight, sound, feeling, smell and taste, and you aren’t connected electronically.
Digital addictions
An addiction is when you rely upon something that is other than yourself to feel whole. If you don’t feel whole without it, you are addicted.
Taking the phone to bed, checking your social media several times a day, believing all that you read on the interval, desperately trying to get your Facebook friends approvable are all digital addictions.
Younger generations who have only ever known the existence of the digital world are highly susceptible to digital addiction. It may have been one of your major sources of information, even greater than their parents. (6)
We can particularly see the detrimental effects of this with the number of child and teenage suicides due to cyberbullying. (7)
How can hypnotherapy help digital burnout?
Remember at the beginning I said how “Digital burnout is a stress response.” Well hypnotherapy can help you ramp down the level of stress fast.
What we also help you do in hypnosis is look at your present life from a distance so you can gain greater perspective. What seems really distressing in addiction in the light of day will look different.
I also teach you to step away so you can restore a well-balanced sense of reality testing.
Hypnosis is a deeply relaxing and comfortable way for you to change the way you think, feel and act.
We will help you change your life fast with hypnotherapy, psychotherapy or counselling so pick up the phone and give us a call now 0403 398808
References
(1) Nicas, J. (2017, January 19). Google uses its search engine to hawk its products. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-uses-its-search-engine-to-hawk-its-products-1484827203
(2) Marsh, E., Perez Vallejos, E., & Spence, A. (2024). Overloaded by information or worried about missing out on it: A quantitative study of stress, burnout, and mental health implications in the digital workplace. SAGE Open, 12(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440241268830
(3) Nicol, A.-M., & Botterill, J. S. (2004). On-call work and health: A review. Environmental Health: A Global Access Science Source, 3, 15. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC539298/
(4) Measuring receptivity to misinformation at scale on a social media platform. (2024). PNAS Nexus, 3(10), Article pgae396. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae396
(5) Mittal, V. A., Dean, D. J., & Pelletier, A. (2012). Internet addiction, reality substitution, and longitudinal changes in psychotic-like experiences in young adults. Psychiatry Research, 208(3), 155–160. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22925309/
(6) Ding, K., & Li, H. (2023). Digital addiction intervention for children and adolescents: A scoping review. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, Article 10049137. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10049137/
(7) Arnon, S., Brunstein Klomek, A., Visoki, E., & colleagues. (2022, June 27). Association of cyberbullying experiences and perpetration with suicidality in early adolescence. JAMA Network Open, 5(6), e2219193. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2793627
