2200 words is not enough: What we lose in ‘social media therapy’

Some time in 2018, I began posting content on Instagram. I was an intern at a private therapy practice that had no marketing direction, so I created my own. Having been in the music industry prior to becoming a therapist, I quickly picked up on the marketing techniques necessary. Drop some bite sized knowledge with a quippy caption, show your face every now and then, and voila, eventually a post will go viral. My viral post was simple but powerful, “Trauma is typically passed down through three generations, shoutout to the third generation going to therapy and doing the work to break the cycle.” It was written on a maroon background, with 70’s bubble font. I watched as the post picked up traction and my follower count grew. I finally had the recipe and was starting to gain therapy clients who felt like the right fit from my posts.

I continued to follow the recipe of dropping mental health knowledge in cute Instagram squares created with Canva. In 2020, the pandemic hit. Suddenly, we were thrown in to collective trauma. As therapists, we were both struggling and trying to help others through the struggle. Prior to the pandemic, my view on being a therapist was it was okay to go through my own mental health struggles as long as I stayed a few steps ahead of my clients in caring for my own mental health. That changed in the pandemic when therapists were on an even keel with our people. We were moving through the very trauma we were trying to help others move through. The barriers were broken down as clients invited us in to their bedrooms, while we met from curated corners of our own. As I attempted to make sense of the trauma I held in my body in the midst of the pandemic, I continued to post. My own attempt to cope and make sense of my experience resonated with others. My platform shifted to mental health advocacy.

I explained trauma in 2200 words. I explained dissociation in 2200 words. I shared my experience of being diagnosed with Autism and ADHD in 2200 words. I advocated for social justice in 2200 words. I explained the problems with our mental health system in 2200 words. I shared my internal experience in 2200 words. I responded to January 6th from my perspective as a Jewish woman in 2200 words. I shared about my harassment by a neo nazi group on that very post in 2200 words. I helped Texans through the trauma of the 2020 snowstorm in 2200 words. I lost my connection to myself in 2200 words and somehow found it once again.

As I found my stride in the Instagram mental health space, TikTok was exploding for therapists. Suddenly, therapists were sharing their dance and acting chops in videos about how to connect to your inner child. The move toward TikTok shifted Instagram too. As silly as I felt as a mental health professional who hadn’t acted since an early 2000’s production of “Hamletta” at creative arts camp, I knew I had to start making video content to keep up with the algorithm. I had to make videos to continue being seen.

I have a love/hate relationship with being seen. On social media, I can post and disconnect. I can allow others to see me, then disappear. I light the match and run away. On social media, we are seen by thousands of people, our posts our seen by potentially hundreds of thousands of people. Yet it’s easy to be seen without connecting. To avoid the parts of ourselves who have been seen. It is not like that production of ‘Hamletta’ where I risked the judgement of the audience in real time. It’s easy to see comments as words rather than people. As avatars instead of humans on the other end.

I became a therapist because I cared deeply for others. I wanted to help people process their sacred stories. To be a holding container for them. I wanted to be in connection with others for I deeply believe we heal in connection. I have seen the ways we can heal in connection. In marketing spaces they say, your clients need to know how to find you. We shouldn’t be ashamed of marketing because it brings us to the people we are ultimately supposed to be with. But what about when marketing becomes advocacy and education? What about when marketing goes beyond its role of getting us to our clients? What about when what starts out as marketing becomes something much larger?

There is a common trope in the Instagram therapist space, I am a therapist, but I am not your therapist (unless we are engaged in therapy sessions). This is good and well to say however a large piece of the advocacy on social media is putting out mental health information people might not have access to otherwise. At one time, I was able to disconnect from the information I put out. My writings were like small journal entries, working out my own view of mental health and sharing it with others in a manor I perceived to be destigmatizing. People sought out mental health content looking to connect, but in the way we offer it, does it actually make us feel more alone?

With accessible mental health information came a move toward self diagnosis. Therapists were privately freaking out in therapist Facebook groups, “I have a teen client who thinks they’re DID and it sounds like they got the info from TikTok?!” Two camps developed—therapists who encouraged self diagnosis, inviting curiosity, and therapists who claimed people shouldn’t be diagnosing themselves from Facebook.

I think there is a third perspective missing.

In digesting mental health information through social media, we find some aspects that deeply resonate and others that don’t. We forgot that 2200 words are being used to describe highly complex topics that entire books are written about. We forget that 2200 words are being used to try to get across a person’s full complexity. We forget that only 2200 words are being used to get across the full complexity of a mental health struggle. When we share short peaks in to the complexities of mental health, we make it seem like it should look or only looks a certain way. With the rise of self diagnosis, and folks coming to us resonating with and presenting how they see mental health struggles presented on TikTok, therapists jump too quickly to ‘they’re making it up.’ What if instead, we recognize the human in front of us is trying to get their pain across? The way our mental health system is structured, we have created a space where people believe their pain must be listed in the DSM to be legitimate. What if instead, we believe people when they tell us they’re in pain? What if we hold it with them instead of immediately trying to analyze and fit it in to boxes. What if we make all those who come to us believe they are worthy of healing? Of their pain being seen?

No matter the diagnosis, some things remain true.

We heal in connection.

Safety is the treatment.

If we hold these things to be true, we can witness and be with our people in their pain, letting them know and feel they are seen however their pain registers. However pain shows up in or out of the room.

If it is connection and safety we need in resolution, we can shift to normalize the okayness of our pain showing up in symptoms and the okayness of our pain seemingly not showing up at all. For whether or not we see it, we can trust it is there.

We can acknowledge that in our quest to feel seen or make others feel seen through social media, sometimes we lose the very thing we are seeking, the very thing that will heal us—connection.