The Pinterest Beast

by: Courtney Hollingsworth, LPC, EMDR Trained Therapist

I love Pinterest. I used to bookmark tons of web pages, have draft emails full of links for easy access. Thanks to Pinterest, I can keep all that information handy in one place and organized! And I can search for resources of all kinds in one place. It’s an awesome tool.

However, this wonderful tool also comes with a sneaky and nasty beast. You may have noticed him or heard him while scrolling through pins. He may be so sneaky with you that you haven’t noticed him lurking between homemade play dough recipes and decorating ideas that cost a year’s salary. He has many names: Comparison, Envy, Self-Doubt, Esteem crusher, Mommy Guilt, and many more. He whispers in your ear in first person: “Why can’t I do that?”, “I’m so lazy,” “My house should look like that,” “If I were a better mom, I would _______,” “I need more,” “I need less,” “I’m not enough,” and variations of “If my kid doesn’t know all his colors, numbers, shapes, alphabet, and multiplication tables before entering preschool, he will grow up to be a high school drop-out and become homeless.”

The Pinterest Beast isn’t alone, it has a variety of friends on other websites and apps telling us about how our lives, ourselves, are not enough. Social media has given us a great way to stay connected in our fast-paced and transient lives. It has also given us a chance to edit what is seen as I talked about in a previous blog here. And when we see the edited 5% of the lives of others, we tend to use it to judge 100% of our lives.

What if we lived our lives according to our own view of it? What would that look like? What if Pinterest was just a place to keep and find good ideas, and reject the ones that just are realistic or even good for our lives. Six months of freezer meals may be great for someone else and the idea is good, but it just doesn’t fit well in my life. Floor to ceiling bookshelves built-in around a door looks awesome in the picture, but my skills and my budget make it totally unrealistic. There is no judgement call on who I am. Be the you you want to be in real life, not the one your screen lures you into thinking you “should” be.