@oikonomia I second the other user. Therapy can be an excellent place to explore aspects of identities and how culture/religion/ethnicity/sexuality imbues certain pressures on us. If possible, find a black therapist or at least somebody who is very multiculturally humble and won't need you to teach them. Ask up front if they are experienced in exploring intersectional identities.
@oikonomia I think you can hide your old friends Instagram accounts so you don't see it regularly while scrolling. Then you don't have to unfollow and cause any potential drama. Make sure you are following people who are living a similar lifestyle as you now so it becomes your normal.
Sometimes I look up my old friends to see what they're doing, and I used to get jealous about how much fun it looked like they were having and how glamorous it was. But now I am far enough removed from it that it doesn't happen as much. I still get jealous, but now it is short-lived and I end up feeling sad for them, because I know they are still stuck in that mindset and underneath it all they are unhappy.
@oikonomia Hey fellow black fitness girl! As an alternative to deleting my Instagram, I chose to fill my feed with women who look like me doing stuff that I want to do - mostly black female powerlifters and bodybuilders although I follow some non black POC lifters and other black female athletes (runners, yogis etc) too. That helped me shift my internal monologue from the things I’m missing out on to the opportunities I get to realize now that I spend most of my free time at the gym - instead of feeling bad watching videos of women at a bar because I’m not out on a Saturday night, I’m feeling good watching videos of women hitting bench press PRs and thinking about what I can learn from them and put into practice during my next workout.
I think being a black woman who’s into fitness can be lonely because we don’t necessarily see a lot of people who look like us either at the gym or on social media, unless we are intentional about cultivating that community. My IRL gym circle is mostly white, but carefully curating my Instagram feed helps keep me mindful of the fact that I’m not the only black woman who’ll sacrifice a night out in favor of having a great workout, which is really validating for me.
@gjohn This is excellent advice. I’ve always found it easier to chase after a goal than to flee a bad habit. Because it’s hard to run anywhere useful if you’re always looking back over your shoulder at whatever you’re running from.
Choose who you want to be. Find new heroes. Focus on becoming the person you want to be, not the Insta-girls you don’t want to be. They are irrelevant. Not bad, just irrelevant to your life now.
@gjohn Late to the party but just wanted to say how amazing this advice is. I'm not a black woman but I so relate to feeling conscious about how I should look i.e. the amount of muscle I have.
I follow so many bad ass strong women, it reminds me of why I do it and why I love it. I'm trying to learn to never try and please anyone else but me. As you can't please everyone even if you wanted to. So I just have to do me.
@gjohn Omg yes! I recently followed this black female power lifter and now I just go on her page when I wanna feel inspired. It’s great to see so many women lifting now but it can be a lonely space for a black girl like you said
I honestly get so excited when I find black female pages of people that are into all different kinds of fitness like yoga, powerlifts, etc, going to try and find more of them to keep reminding myself that I’m not alone in this
@oikonomia If you’re interested here’s a list of black women climbers you can follow! Black women are super underrepresented in climbing and it’s amazing to see so many strong climbers rise up. There’s also @browngirlsclimb and @meaganmartin89 who’s a pro climber and and Ninja Warrior and all around badass.
@oikonomia I have my phone set a 5 minute timer on instagram daily (it's crazy at first but you get used to it). The 5 minutes gives me enough time to watch my close friends' stories, posts, without veering off into the popular page!
Another way I've heard of people curbing social media is deleting the app altogether and just using the website from the mobile web browser
@bbrocket196 Funnily enough I was getting a lot of FOMO being on the lindekin app and seeing all the things career wise people had achieved that I hadn’t, I thought I was just unhappy with my own career progress, but I deleted the app and I don’t really feel that way anymore. I just sign on quickly on the browser when I get an email about an invite or message or something, then I log out without looking around
I hadn’t thought of applying that to Instagram, thank you!
@oikonomia One thing that can help is turning off notifications so you choose when you can see stuff. Let your friends know you won't be checking as often so not to be alarmed about a delayed response. Those notifications are meant to be addictive, so turning them off is half the battle. It really sounds like you have figured out what makes YOU happy and are moving in that direction and that's more than many other people ever figure out.
