Doing things that scare you can be hard, but it doesn’t have to be.
TikTok creator Ezra Butler (@lemon.squezzy) shows you that with his doing things you’re afraid of to show you it’s okay series where he goes out and does things others are afraid to do.
He posts videos daily to his 1.3 million followers, helping them do the things they are afraid to do and is a positive face on the platform.
Doing things others are afraid of
“My doing things you’re afraid of series initially was about fear foods because I was making eating disorder recovery videos. I was doing fear food and things so I thought I would branch it out into fears in general.
“As I have anxiety myself and I wanted to encourage other people to do the things that were holding them back from what they are wanting to do. So, I just asked people for suggestions on what they would like to see me do and it became a series.
“The series started in July last year and I did it for a while, but it kind of tapered off a bit. I brought the series back recently in July this year.
“I really enjoyed doing them and it was giving me a lot of confidence. I thought, well, I might as well bring it back as it was such a good thing for me and how it made my day so fulfilled.
“It made me feel good and pushed me out of my comfort zone, so, I brought it back and now I do it every day.
Helping others through TikTok
“I meet a lot of people out and about that watch my videos. They say that they watch them and it helps them. They always tell me what they have done because of it.
“They will say ‘Oh, I went out for lunch on my own yesterday and I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I hadn’t seen this’. I’m like oh my goodness that is really, really, lovely to know that. I never expected anything I am doing to actually impact people, but it does, and I love it so much.
“There is a difference between not wanting to do something because you genuinely don’t think you will like it and it is just not something you want to do versus you really want to do it, but you are held back by anxiety. That is, the things I always strive to do all the time.
“If I ever think I really want to do this, but I am too nervous I’m like you’ve got to do it. I don’t want to be held back by things”
Making TikTok a positive place for yourself
TikTok is like most other social media platforms, where it can be both a positive and negative place. With millions of active users, and an algorithm that fails to protect its users from harmful content, it can become a harmful environment.
It is the creators like Ezra that bring positivity to the app, by sharing videos that are intended to help others.
“I think TikTok is whatever people make of it. I think depending on what you see and what you post is depending on how your experience of TikTok will be.
“My initial experience of TikTok a while ago is that I really didn’t like the app. I thought it was incredibly negative, there was nothing nice there. It was just kind of a lot of people that were making videos that were quite harmful.
“I don’t tend to see much of that anymore, I know they are definitely out there, but I do think TikTok is one of those things where it gives you what you watch. So, if you watch something that is negative and you comment something like ‘this is really negative’ you are going to see more of that stuff.
“So, I think with TikTok the best way that I navigate my way through the app if I am looking on my for you page is if I see something that makes me feel bad or triggered, I just click not interested. If it is really bad, I just block the creator and you get less and less of it.
“Now I have kind of generated a for you page for myself that is really positive because what I watch is positive. Anything that I see that isn’t I just block it or say I am not interested.”
Feature Image Credit: Ezra Butler / @lemon.squezzy
Lifestyle Editor • Fourth year Journalism student
