INTERNET TROLL DRAGONS

A young, mean-looking dragon holding a tablet. A speech bubble coming from the tablet shows a grawlix, a skull and crossbones, and a trollface.

Your brain is always listening to the voices of the people or bots on social media and the internet trolls who criticize you for sport. Unfortunately, this is happening at younger and younger ages. I have a nine-year-old niece who was bullied by an ex-friend on social media. Many of my teenage patients have taken or allowed others to take inappropriate pictures of them they thought were being shared privately. When those images ended up on the internet, my patients experienced intense embarrassment, shame, and often suicidal thoughts or behavior.

A number of celebrity patients constantly check the internet to see what other people write about them. It often becomes an addiction and hijacks their brains. Miley Cyrus used to be one of them. While going cold turkey has helped many of them regain their sense of emotional balance, Miley took a slightly different approach. On her Instagram Live show called Bright Minded, she talked about how the B in Bright Minds is for the Blessings/Curses of social media. I helped her understand how to minimize its curses by limiting her exposure to internet trolls. Rather than going cold turkey, she stays focused on the blessings of social media, which is the ability to connect with her fans in a positive and meaningful way.

On the internet people are often anonymous and write whatever unfiltered, mean, hurtful thought comes into their brains. Of course, there are many pluses to technology, but they do not come without a steep price for many people.

If your business is online, then your business has to manage the comments. If you are the one being attacked —as I have been brutally attacked over the years by colleagues —have someone else from your team manage your sites; it will help keep the Internet Troll Dragons at bay and out of your head.

When the Internet Troll Dragons are triggered, you believe every hateful word you read online, making you feel worthless, helpless, and untalented.

What do you need to listen to or leave behind? If possible, avoid reading comments so you don’t give the internet trolls a voice. Remind yourself that if people are taking the time to write something about you online, even if it’s negative, at least it means you’re doing something that’s making an impact.

OTHER PEOPLE’S DRAGONS ARE CONTAGIOUS

Three dragons standing in a row. The first is laughing uproariously with arms raised. The second is wearing a t-shirt that says 'Boss,' pointing at the viewer, and laughing. The third dragon is yawning with Zs floating from its head.

Your brain is always listening to the voices of many other dragons, including bosses, coworkers, religious leaders, politicians, store clerks, news reporters, and media personalities. We’ll look at those in depth in section 5. These dragons can be critical, hurtful, attacking, competing, and indifferent; or they can be encouraging, positive, comforting, and engaged. If you watch some news channels, the political leaders are the personification of the devil; if you watch other channels, they are saints, and you are a fool to think otherwise. If you look at magazines that highlight pretty, skinny models, you will think that is beautiful; if you look at other magazines, you will think a different look is most attractive. Where you bring your attention determines how you feel. As my wife likes to say to her single friends who tell her they meet only difficult men, “It’s not all men. It’s the ones you choose to give your number to.”

Everyone has energy that impacts the brains around them. Intuitively we know that negative people infect a group with stress, while positive people tend to increase everyone’s joy. But is there science to back that up? Over the years at Amen Clinics, we’ve done before-and-after brain imaging studies for a wide variety of interventions from medications, nutritional supplements, hyperbaric oxygen, meditation, hypnosis, and prayer.

One of the more fascinating studies we did was on qi gong (a centuries-old healing practice using targeted coordination movements, breathing, and meditation), where a qi gong master directed healing energy to five people. We performed before-and-after SPECT scans and QEEG scans, which measure electrical activity in the brain. The SPECT scans showed increased blood flow in four of the five subjects. The QEEG scans showed immediate changes in all of the subjects; I remember how amazed our neurology expert was when he was seeing the changes happen in real time on the computer screen.

We are often manipulated by television, radio, streaming services, social media, internet ads, magazines, shopping malls, and watercooler discussions at work. Be mindful of the noise you allow in your head.