Mental Fashion (Episode 68)

🎧 Trend or Truth? Why Mental Health Became Social Media's Hottest Topic - A Real Talk Guide to Separating Authentic Struggles from Online Performance! Join us for a no-filter discussion about the explosion of mental health content on social media and what it means for those facing genuine challenges.

Through candid analysis and evidence-based insights, this episode exposes how viral mental health trends impact real people while offering practical guidance for building authentic resilience in a "trauma-core" world.

This essential episode explores:

• Why the gamification of mental health diagnoses undermines those with clinical conditions
• The dangerous impact of treating triggers and trauma as social currency
• How performative vulnerability differs from genuine mental health advocacy
• Why romanticizing mental illness creates barriers to real healing
• The critical difference between temporary stress and clinical diagnoses
• Practical strategies for developing true emotional resilience
• Building healthy boundaries between social media and mental wellness

Perfect for: Teens navigating mental health content on social media, parents concerned about online mental health trends, mental health professionals addressing social media's impact, and anyone seeking to understand authentic wellness versus performative struggles. Plus: Essential guidance on supporting real mental health needs while avoiding harmful trends.

Transcript

Welcome to Mindshift Power podcast, a show for teenagers and the adults who work with them, where we have raw and honest conversations. I'm your host, Fatima Bey, the mind shifter. And welcome, everyone. Today, we're gonna talk about what is mental fashion. We're gonna talk about something that I I've been seeing everywhere.

It's on social media, it's in schools, casual conversations, sometimes at people's jobs. And that is just like we have fashion trends and clothing, we seem to be treating mental health like it's the latest TikTok trend. I'm gonna dive into why this matters and why it's a big deal. And just as an FYI, this is being recorded in December of twenty twenty four. In the future, some of these trends may be different.

But I promise you the same principles that I will talk about today, the same principles apply. So no matter what year you were listening to this, it will apply because some of these same people will still be around doing the same thing. So let's start off talking about the social media effects. So social media is a tool, and it's one of the ways that this happens, but it is not the only way. So please keep that in mind when you're listening.

Algorithms reward sharing emotional struggles. This is not good, but it's what really happens. And I want you to think about that when you see stuff fly across your TikTok, your IG, your Facebook, your whatever. Just pick a pick a platform. There are algorithms that determine there are systems that determine what is shown in front of your face.

And unfortunately, emotional struggles trend, so they get shown in front of your face more than politics sometimes. There's a difference between reaching out for support and performing trauma for likes, which is what a lot of this stuff is, unfortunately. There's a rise in self diagnosis based on viral videos instead of actual diagnosis, and there is a difference. For example, when did having a bad day turn into saying that I'm depressed. I have depression.

No. You don't. You're just having a bad moment, and now you're turning it in turning it into a label. So let's talk about collecting labels, which is the trend of treating a diagnosis like a collector item. For example, the TikTok diagnosis collection, I'll call it.

You've probably seen those TikToks or other videos that are POV. You have ADHD followed by totally normal things like getting distracted sometimes or having a messy room. Suddenly, your FYP is full of ADHD content, and you start thinking, oh my god. That's so me. Next next thing you know, you're telling everyone that you have ADHD, adding it to your bio, and making it a part of your personality, all without ever seeing a doctor.

Self diagnosis. Then a week later, you see videos about another condition, and the cycle starts all over again. It's like collecting Pokemon cards, except these are serious medical conditions that affect real people's lives. It is not a good thing to wear these labels that don't actually apply to you because people who struggle with ADHD, people who are truly neurodivergent, they have real struggles. It's not easy for them to do what some of us call, quote, unquote, normal.

So why should we minimize their struggles by being selfish enough to wear them as false labels and claim conditions that you don't have? Another example this is relative to is the bio builder. Let's talk about social media bios. You know, the ones where it's where it says she slash they slash them and a butterfly or a smiley face or some other emoji. ADHD slash anxiety slash depression slash DID slash autism slash OCD with a rainbow at the end or some other emoji.

Oh my god. Could you give us a bigger red flag to run away from you? Ninety percent of the people that have buy have all of this in their bio don't have a single one of those diagnosis except maybe one. One thing might be true. She, he, or they.

And the rest are labels that they picked up from somewhere because they're trending or because they give them attention, and they need a label because they don't know who they are. So they find ones to slap on themselves, mostly for attention. It becomes a badge. It becomes like a badge collection of all these different titles. Let me see what I can get for attention.

Let me see what I can slap on myself. Where the most labels you list, the more interesting and valid you seem. But here's the thing. You really are already interesting without turning mental health conditions into accessories. Having anxiety isn't a personality trait.

Being neurodivergent isn't a social media aesthetic. These are real issues for people, and they're real daily struggles. They're not tokens for you to collect online identity. I really want you to think about this because some of you do this and you're listening to me right now. You know I'm talking about you.

You do this. I want you to stop, but I want you to understand why you should stop. So keep listening. This hurts people with the actual diagnosis of these things. Here's why.

If we keep hearing the same thing over and over again over basic things, well, that word loses its power. It loses its power that you have PTSD when you you you're just upset about something. That's not PTSD. Somebody who's going through actual war, who's actually been raped, who's actually been, you know, beat up by a gang of people, who's had their house broken into while they were in it. These are traumatic things.

Everybody's trauma doesn't look the same, so I just named a few that are pretty obvious ones. But these are traumatic things. Don't minimize that by slapping that label on for yourself when you haven't been through that. That minimizes it for them. Because, see, now, for example and I've used this on on other episodes as an example.

When someone cries rape and they weren't actually raped, they just had sex with a bozo and regret it and don't wanna admit it. But they or they cry rape because they wanna get back at the person because they rejected them, whatever. It minimizes the effect of that term for those who are actually raped, which is a very, very traumatizing thing to go through. You minimize it for neurodivergent people when you pretend that's you and it's not. You minimize their struggles.

That's selfish. Please stop. That that goes into, it hurts them because we don't believe them. It hurts them because now the water's the word's watered down, and we just don't think it means anything anymore because it's been overused. Anything anytime you take a word and you overuse it, it always loses its meaning.

I don't care what topic you're talking about. When you overuse a word, it loses its meaning. It loses its impact. Its definition doesn't change in the dictionary, but it loses its impact. And that is why it hurts people.

Let's talk about the word triggered. And in a couple years, this might not be a trend, but right now it still is. And the word triggered has become casual slang, and it shouldn't be because it's a legitimate mental health term. It actually is. And there are there are people who are genuinely triggered.

But let me explain to you the difference between being triggered and just not being happy about something or being upset. So when a person is being legitimately triggered, it activates a genuine trauma response. Your physic your body physically reacts with symptoms like panic, flashbacks, rapid heartbeat, or feeling like you're in actual danger. It's an involuntary response to often often related to PTSD or serious trauma. People who are truly triggered usually need to remove themselves from the situation and use specific coping strategies they've developed with usually mental health professionals.

That is what being triggered actually looks like. Using it as a trend saying I'm triggered when you really mean I'm annoyed or I don't like that is like saying I'm triggered by people who drink milk before cereal. When that TikTok sound triggers me, please stop. Being uncomfortable, grossed out, or irritated is not the same thing as being triggered. Do you see the difference?

Please don't minimize. Please stop using that word. Stop minimizing actual people who are triggered genuinely from genuine trauma. Stop minimizing their experiences by misusing the word that applies to them. It's very, very selfish.

And if you really dig a little deeper, it's actually arrogant. We can learn to express ourselves without minimizing clinical terms. And again, I'm gonna say when we use the word triggered for every minor annoyance, it makes it harder for people with real trauma to be taken seriously. And that's the damage that you were doing every time you misuse that word. Someone who has been someone who's and I'm gonna use this as an example because it's a harsh one, but it's true.

Someone who was molested by an uncle who always smelled of a certain cologne every time he raped her is going to be triggered when they smell that cologne on someone else. They're not being dramatic. They're being brought back to that memory of repeated rapes. That's what real triggered looks like. Not you being annoyed because you don't like the sound of that music or she got on your nerves or just being upset about something.

Triggered goes far beyond just being upset about something, far beyond discomfort. Because when that person is triggered and they smell that cologne, it brings them back to their PTSD, really, and they might start hyperventilating. They might need to just, like, leave the room and get sweaty. They'll have different physical responses. But that's a real thing for people, And it's so selfish to take that and wear it as your label so you can get some attention.

Please stop. Another thing I wanna talk about related to this topic is toxic positivity versus toxic negativity. And I'm gonna talk about explain to you what exactly what both of those are. So toxic positivity is those people who are good vibes only. Now I'm not saying that everyone that says good vibes only is practicing toxic positivity because that's not true.

However, I would say at least 60% of the people saying good vibes only mean I don't wanna deal with nothing, so let me sprinkle sugar on this shit and pretend it's chocolate. Yeah. That's what I said. That's what they do. Some people with toxic positivity, they'll post they'll say good vibes only.

They'll post on Instagram or whatever platform, choose happiness, and they'll find quotes that say something like that instead of dealing with the real stuff. They avoid the quotes and the things in the post that deal with the real stuff. They avoid people like me because I'll make you deal with your stuff. They try to sugarcoat the garbage, sugarcoat the bad instead of actually dealing with it. This is toxic.

And these are the same people that will try to sugarcoat everything when you try to talk to them about something real and uncomfortable. The one who says, just be grateful, when you're struggling with a tough situation. That's toxic positivity. Or as I like to say, you sound like a damn airhead. It's when people act like you should never feel bad.

And if you do, you're just not trying hard enough to be positive. That's a load of crap. You need to deal with stuff. It's gonna feel bad and it's gonna look bad sometimes. But once you deal with it, that's when you can sprinkle on the positivity.

Because then you'll have something to actually be positive about instead of the fake positivity, which is toxic. It's toxic because sometimes the reason it's toxic is because sometimes we're not dealing with the issue, and we're sprinkling positivity on it instead of actually dealing with it. And guess what happens if you sprinkle sugar on a wound? It doesn't get better. So when you try to sprinkle toxic positivity on your issue, it actually just gets worse because you haven't solved the problem.

Toxic positivity doesn't solve problems. It helps them to fester. It's like putting a band aid on a broken arm and saying, there. Oh, better. Got a pretty sparkly band aid.

That doesn't solve it. Now let's talk about negative, toxic negativity. This this is the other extreme. This is where everything is literally the worst crowd. The ones who make their entire personality about how awful life is.

They post about having a mental breakdown because their coffee order was wrong, or they're literally dying because they have to wake up for school or go to work or go to this meeting they don't wanna deal with. They compete for who has it worse and turn every minor setback into proof that the universe is against them. It's like they're collecting tragedy points in some weird game of whose life is more dramatic. Both of these people are mentally imbalanced, are mental extremists. What does that mean?

That means that they go to the extreme instead of being balanced, which is the area in which things work because everything in life that works has balance. And everything that's broken, something's imbalanced. And people with a toxic negativity and toxic positivity actually cause more problems than they solve. When you are constantly focusing on how bad life is and trying to compete for the worst life story, they're the same people that are in chats, group chats that are always making their story more tragic than another as if it's a competition. I want you to think about this.

If you are this toxic negativity person or toxic positivity person, and maybe I am talking about you, It's not too late for you to change that, but I want you to take a dive deeper. Why do you do that? Why do you go to that extreme instead of being in the middle where the problems can be solved? I want you to ask yourself that question deeply and honestly and then answer it. And if you don't know how to answer it, get some help with from someone who can.

So what's the healthy middle ground? It's okay to have bad days and good days. Guess what? That's normal. You're going to have bad days.

You're going to have good days. If you are a human, it goes with the territory. You can acknowledge when things suck without making it your whole identity. That's when you're balanced. You can work on getting better without pretending everything is perfect.

That is what balance looks like. Real strength isn't in being permanently positive or permanently negative. It's in being honest about where you are and then still moving forward. Building resilient versus playing the victim. Let's get real for a second.

There's a huge difference between going through stuff and making going through stuff your whole brand and what you're all about. And if we're really honest, 90% of that is a need for attention. And even if you know it's because you need attention, I want you to dive deeper as to why you need attention that badly. You see, real resilience and playing the victim are two different things. So I wanna explain to you what that means and what that looks like.

Resilience. Real resilience is like building your emotional muscles. Yeah. Sometimes things are genuinely hard. Maybe your parents are divorcing.

Maybe you're dealing with a breakup or friend trauma. You're stressed out about school or college or work. You know? Maybe you got some real stuff going on that's hard to deal with because that happens. Those feelings are totally valid.

It's valid to feel bad about it. It's valid to to have a moment of of discouragement. Notice I said moment. It is valid to to have some bad feelings sometimes. But instead of posting aesthetic sad quotes and collecting sympathy likes or being the most tragic person in your group of friends.

When you're resilient, you're actually doing something about it. Maybe you're talking to a counselor, talking to someone at church or the mosque or or in the neighborhood or the community center, learning better ways to handle your stress, or finding healthy ways to process your emotions. Either way, you're getting stronger. You see, resilience doesn't look like perfection. It looks like moving forward regardless.

And you can fill in the blank as to what that regardless is. That is different than playing the victim. So let's talk about that. Playing the victim is like wearing your struggles like they're designer labels. Again, back to the fashion reference.

Because that is what we often see people do. And when you play the victim, I can't stress this enough, you are really damaging. You're hurting real victims of the thing that you're pretending to be a victim of. And it's selfish. So when you're playing the victim, you're wearing your struggles like they're designer labels.

It's when you're adding traumatized besties to every caption, competing for who has it worse in the group chat, and basically turning every minor inconvenience into your villain origin story. Like, oh my god. My mom asked me to clean my room. She's literally so toxic. Girl, shut up.

Boy, shut up. Your mom is not being toxic. She's being a mom, and you're being a drama queen. But you're also doing damage to those who really do have toxic parents and live in abusive homes, where they're mentally being abused and their parent is toxic. That's a real thing.

Why are you furthering their damage by taking on the labels that belong to them? It's selfish. Here's the thing. Life is gonna throw stuff at you either way. I like to say life is gonna throw you rocks.

You can either let them crush you or use them as stepping stones to climb. The choice is yours. You can use the challenges in life to level up and get stronger, Or you can collect them as pity points on social media or in a social gathering because not all of it's on social media. Sometimes it's in person. But like I said, either way is a choice.

But only one of these options actually help you to grow and get ahead. Health struggles are real and valid. Please do not minimize them by misusing the labels that belong to them. If you're not sure if you will if one of these labels belong to you, that's okay. Seek professional help and find out.

There's nothing wrong with that. Maybe you did hear something about HDAD and you are seeing yourself in that post, and maybe it is true. And if so, that's okay. Figure it out now so you can get help for it and learn how to deal with it. But don't just slap on a label because you saw it somewhere and it's trending right now.

You're the next fool. You're the trending fool when you do that, and it's selfish. It is important to build genuine coping skills, but we usually need help to figure out what that is for us. You can either talk to a professional, or sometimes it's just as helpful to talk to somebody else who's been through the same struggles that you've been through and find out what their coping skills are. And this is why it's good to listen to podcasts.

And this is where social media can be extremely helpful when people go on with social media and and talk about their struggles. I love to see it when people talk about their real genuine heartfelt struggles on social media because it can help those who are going through it. I wanna clarify that is not the same thing as those who are using that same struggle label for their own attention grabbing. Please listen to this today and know the difference. And I'm hoping that you take this lesson, you take this message today, and really ponder what applies to you.

And here's a little assignment for some of you. If you are a social media user and you're wondering if this applies to you or not and you're questioning it first of all, if you're questioning it, that's actually a good thing. Then it it means that you're willing to to see if you need to make changes. You're it sounds like you might be willing to grow. That's a good thing.

So if you're not sure if this applies to you or not or whether or not you are being toxic, take a look at your social media. Look at what you put out there. Are you putting out woe is me, look what I have, attention grabbing stuff? Are you putting out things to encourage others? Are you what what are you putting out?

What are you putting out? Toxic positivity? Everything's great all the time. We'll pretend like no problems are real. We'll brush them under the rug.

And then why we then wonder why we trip over that rug. Duh. Because that's what people do with toxic positivity. And if you're not a social media person, I have a tip for you. What comes out of your mouth?

If you take everything that comes out of your mouth and you were to put them into two different buckets, one that builds and one that tears down, which bucket would have more in it? I just want you to think about that. I hope that you got something out of today's episode, and I want you to go back and listen to this again later and share it. Please share it because a lot of people need to hear this right now. Thank you for listening.

Thank you for listening to Mindshift Power Podcast. Please like and subscribe to my YouTube channel at the mind shifter. If you have any comments, topic suggestions, or would like to be a guest on the show, please visit FatimaBay.com/podcast. Remember, there's power in shifting your thinking. Tune in for next week.