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While it can be touching to see social media used for intimate revelations, when it’s connected to promoting a service or an offering, it’s still a marketing ploy, and smells of something quite twisted and manipulative, although I imagine it’s quite unconscious for the most part. When we write on social media, we are still tailoring an image of ourselves we want the world to see, wrapping our vulnerability in a way in which we still feel good about the image we present.

I’m so guilty of this. I like to gain people’s trust by writing about my struggles, and yet I still am aware of presenting myself in a good light, where I feel a degree of confidence that people will like what I write. And yet by doing this, I am perpetuating a larger dynamic that plays out in the world of people sugar-coating themselves, presenting an image that is not based on the whole truth, unconsciously spreading “not-enoughness” and the idea that our whole self is not lovable, only certain ‘acceptable’ parts. It reinforces the idea that to be a leader in a field, you have to be infallible and perfect and to be anything less, you are a fraud. And thank god this is not true.

I watch myself in my reactivity, my acting out my childhood wounds, my dysfunctional, addictive habits and I cringe with the possibility of “if only people knew” and at the idea of being a fraud. It’s lonely being a somewhat public figure, a canvas for people’s projections and realising you are encouraging it by your own behaviour. I feel inspired to do the work I do because these are the exact things that I struggle with.