A THERAPIST'S GAZE: The rise of insta healers and the actual impact on your mental wellbeing

Having instant access to a wealth of mental health professionals’ minds might be seen as a positive, but like everything, there is also a shadow side. Sharing useful information about mental health and healing is helpful but how often and how much you consume this information is when it becomes unhelpful.

Expecting to know how to understand and respond instantly to your mental health difficulties is the new normal due to ‘instant-gram’. However, as an audience, we often forget that these informative mental health posts, that can often trigger a new chapter of healing, always have hours, days, months of cumulative experience, studying, understanding and integrating behind them - that these posts are crafted. We have started to let the ‘fast fashion’ attitude overtake our mental health journeys. Instead of taking time to absorb and experience someone else’s craft and let it slowly integrate into our lives, we want it to appear as the finished product, another rung on the ‘mentally woke’ ladder. We see something, we want it, we get it and then it’s part of our life, then we move on and want something more recent: this is the ‘fast fashion principle’. But unfortunately, that’s not how psychological healing works and this is leading to ‘healing burn-out’.

‘Healing burn-out’ is a mixture of our capitalist society fuelled by social media. Our fast-paced product consumerism has translated across into our consumption of information to support our mental health journeys. We feel the pressure to absorb information around mental health so that we can get better (or rather be “perfect” as the social media culture implies - which is impossible regarding mental health). And because healing cannot be an instant process, we end up feeling not good enough or like a failure and this makes our healing process even more challenging.

Take this example, someone who is struggling with attachment issues and trust reads a post on their Instagram feed from a mental health professional (MHP) about attachment and trust and this causes them to become more aware of their relational patterns and triggers emotions. They then feel ‘bad’ for feeling upset, angry and lost and want to get rid of all of these emotions. They read helpful points on considering attachment styles from this MHP and perhaps save the post to their Instagram so the information is now stored in their virtual space and in their psychic space (mind). They feel that this means it is sorted because they understand and they then return to scrolling on their feed and come across another post by another MHP or healing professional and the same thing happens again.

Read,

feel triggered,

feel guilty or shame for this,

save this post on Instagram and in their mind and move on.

Even this happening once or a few times would be psychological draining particularly to our subconscious minds. We impact our subconscious minds through this scrolling but do not take time and space to let this new information assimilate. Even the information in one post could be a focus point for an individual’s entire time in therapy but instead we are looking at multiple posts in one sitting, potentially absorbing content equivalent to years and years of therapy work. This impact coupled with not facing or embracing our emotional responses most likely leads to a build-up of mental ‘gunk’ in our subconscious minds and then overflows out of us and impacts our lives as anxiety, depression, sleep issues. All because we threw some stuff in the cooking pot of our unconscious and left it simmering away without returning to stir it and check on it every now and then → scrolling through informative mental health posts on Instagram.

This process of scrolling and saving but not embracing can become a vicious cycle that leads to what I call ‘healing burn-out’.

‘Healing burn-out’ cycle (similar to the ‘perfectionism-depression’ cycle):

the expectation to absorb information straight away

↓

high pressure put on self when you (inevitably) end up not integrating instantly (it’s impossible)

↓

this feeds your inner critical voice that fuels depression/anxiety

↓

continue to feel low and not good enough, need to feel better about yourself and understand more about why you feel low

↓

search for and find additional informative and educational mental health accounts to follow and continue to overload your mind

↓

(back to the start of cycle) the expectation to absorb information straight away

The fact that one well-informed post can issue a new way of viewing your self speaks volumes of the power of Instagram as a tool for transformation. But mental health posts are the first step in your journey of healing transformation. You need to have time and space to reflect, take action and integrate.

And integration is a messy and unpredictable process, difficult to sit with on this ‘sharing in an instant’ platform. 

When teachers taught you something in the classroom you weren’t expected to hear it, watch it and then straight away know it and understand it. It takes PRACTICE and TIME: and practice involves lots of failures, misunderstandings and frustration, and this PRACTICE leads to integration which can only happen over TIME.

Unfortunately, the capitalist model of productivity is seeping into our mental wellbeing processes, as mentioned earlier with the example of the ‘fast fashion’ attitude to healing and also the ‘healing burn-out’ model (laid out above). Integration takes time which a capitalist model does not make space for. During this coveted time, background processing takes place which is essential for integration, and this requires rest, relaxation and pleasure.

INTEGRATION = TIME + BACKGROUND PROCESSING + REST

Healing is a two-sided coin that holds ACTION and INTEGRATION. And action is something that we are too familiar with, that leads to this ‘healing burn-out’. Integration is where it is necessary to focus our attention more and how we can prevent ‘healing burn-out’ and seek balance.

Integration is about giving yourself grace and space (which is self-acceptance) especially on social media when we are absorbing information at an increasingly fast rate and expecting our psyche to keep up. We know that the healing process is not linear so we must stop expecting that even from the first step of receiving information. Even the absorption process is not linear, not perfect. It often takes multiple attempts to understand or assimilate knowledge. We know this about education but don’t let ourselves embrace this about our more nuanced mental health journeys. In mental wellbeing, self-acceptance is the first step and also the continuous steps needed to support integration.

How to tend towards self-acceptance (an ongoing process):

→ noticing internal thoughts

→ receiving a supportive space from a therapist

→ receiving help and sharing in your communities

→ giving yourself time boundaries on social media apps even if you are seeking mental health support and tips

→ limit to how many new accounts you follow (think about following an MHP or healer as inviting them in to influence a slice of your precious mind AND your own understanding of it)

I view music therapy as a space where radical self-acceptance and resistance to the current capitalist model of healing can take place. Fluidity, non-linear, creativity as exploration, not production are key elements of music therapy. Compared to talking therapy where you are shackled by words, expected to fit your experience into boxes, structures, sentences and processes. Music therapy offers the ultimate freedom where you can explore without expectation or necessity. Music therapy offers space to also have fun, exposing that actually healing can be both enjoyable and challenging. You don’t need to be working to be valuable and your healing doesn’t need to be constant to be effective. There’s a space in music therapy that can prevent burn-out from healing that is not possible in talking therapy like CBT or counselling. Because there is no need to produce words, there is more space to feel, more space to connect, more space to play. And by taking the constant focus off healing and embracing connection and play, we can balance and release our expectations of ourselves and embrace who we are right in the moment. Music encourages you to be with yourself in the moment because the sound you make only exists purely in the moment that you are inhabiting.

Music therapy holds a space for play

reflection

slow integration 

and rest.

All things that you will not find scrolling on Instagram to support your mental health journey. A reminder to balance the action with the integration.

BOOKMARK THIS PAGE and revisit this post a few times over the next few weeks so that you can allow for absorption and integration. All this is not going to be taken in straight away. 

I will be writing in more detail about this here on my blog and over on Instagram as it is something I am very passionate in regards to the process of healing. 

To me grace = self-acceptance 

and that is a central part of my ethos as a therapist. It is the way I work using music therapy as a non-verbal space for self-acceptance and it is fundamental to a healing journey. Without self-acceptance, there is no integration and without integration only action, which will lead to the cycle of ‘healing burn-out’. So essentially accepting your self as you are in this very moment is your only ticket in to more moments in a life that you want to live.

Self-acceptance is not easy but it is possible. If you would like to work with me — click here or if you have any questions just give me an email grace@healing-with-grace.com. I would be honoured to support you in creating space for your whole self.

Here’s to your healing with grace.