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Is Therapy via Instagram Good for Us?
A closer look at what happens when therapists take to social media
For the nth time that day, I was being told to work on myself. “You can’t heal if you’re hiding from yourself,” the post said. I had only recently started following the account, but already I’d gotten tired of it.
The past few years have seen a steady and growing trend of the therapist as content creator. More and more therapists are now on social media to preach the wisdom of therapy. In some ways, this is great news. Historically a walled garden, talk therapy has a reputation for being too stigmatizing to try, and too expensive to afford. Now, in theory, therapy is being “democratized,” coming to a screen near you, at no cost.
There’s no doubt that therapy shouldn’t be a luxury reserved for the wealthy. Given the mental health crisis of the moment, anything that helps a therapists’ wisdom reach a greater audience would seem to be a blessing. Yet the trend is not without its downsides. As much as these accounts can be supportive, validating, and motivating, they can also be myopic and potentially harmful.
Instagram “therapy” (and more recently, TikTok) suffers from a lack of context. In a traditional therapy practice, the therapist gets to know their client intimately, over time. Any advice…
