Are you being traumatized by media? The most important relationship in our lives right now is the one we have with our phone. That relationship is informing all other relationships in our life, including how we see ourselves. Jenny Black is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in the State of Tennessee, the founder of Media Trauma Care, and the author of Inner Technology: How to be Human in a Digital World. She is currently writing a new book, Our Digital Soul: mental health, media trauma, and our relationship with the digital world, and in production on a documentary about the same topic. She coined the term “media trauma’’ and now specializes in training and education about how mental health is impacted by our use of media. She was selected to present a Media Trauma workshop at the 2019 AAMFT Annual Conference. Jenny’s other book is Unwritten Travels: an illustrated and guided journal for women. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.
Whether you or someone you love is grappling with their mental and emotional health, we hope you'll join us as we talk with some of the leading Christian counselors in our community as they share some of their expertise, help us learn how we can care well for those we love who are struggling, and how to better manage our own mental and emotional health during these difficult times.
Radio show podcast.
Jenny Black is a licensed marriage and family therapist from Tennessee. She's joined by her husband, Adam, and their two children, Brandon and Avery, who were exhibiting signs of media trauma. They are Co-Founders of Media Trauma Care a volunteer group of professionals dedicated to bring awareness and resources to care for those impacted by media trauma.
Starring Jenny Black
Jenny Black, a licensed marriage and family therapist and the founder of Media Trauma Care, explains that sometimes we set one goal for ourselves, but life has something different in mind. Instead, it gives us what we need, rather than what we initially wanted. This is an essential lesson in acceptance.
You had a distance to assess the health of the friendship.
Sometimes getting some distance is a good thing. But it can also be eye-opening, says Jenny Black, an author and a licensed marriage and family therapist. As she explains, social-distancing requirements forced us all to take space, which could have allowed us to assess the health of our friendships.
“Just like absence can make the heart grow fonder, absence can also help one realize that the relationship was not a good one,” she continues. “Social distancing has also been a gift for people in toxic relationships where it was difficult to set boundaries or for stated boundaries to be respected. Once we get distance from toxic relationships, we are much more likely to access our own resources and find the power to make different choices.”
Though normal, it’s important to remember that one of the contributors to optimal mental health is having the tools to meet the challenges we face, says author and licensed marriage and family therapist Jenny Black. Considering the last year has presented one hurdle after another, holding on to the roller coaster may be all you can manage sometimes. And that’s okay! It teaches us to practice an often underrated skill: patience.