Disappearing in Order to Be Seen
image shot at Aro Ha
This week I announced to my modest social media audience that I am going to take a break. Social media has been my primary platform for sharing and marketing my work, and it has been overall a very successful place to get the word out about who I am and what I do.
And yet…
Recently, it has been a major struggle for me to produce content.
Any small business owner marketing on social media knows the constant inundation of often mixed messages we receive for how to “make it” and be successful:
Be consistent.
Focus on quality vs. quantity.
Be authentic.
Be professional.
Show them behind the scenes content.
Behind the scenes is out. Post pictures of xyz instead.
Post to your stories X amount per day.
Don’t worry about the algorithm. Worry about the algorithm. Here’s how to beat the algorithm. The algorithm doesn’t matter…
This is all in addition to the constant bombardment of well-meaning folks alongside obvious scam artists reaching out to offer the secret to becoming rich and famous: the latest hack to beat the algorithm, how to get a million followers in one post, the secret to becoming you rich overnight… all while subtly implying you’re doing it wrong and they can show you why.
It’s exhausting.
What’s truly exhausting, though, is how even when you are “being authentic”… you still have to run everything you post through some strategy in order to get likes and leads in order to succeed. Which begs the question…
Can it really be authentic if you’re showing up the way someone else told you to?
That’s the question that’s been eating at me lately. Because even though I was sharing from my heart, I was still being heavily influenced by external pressures and expectations. I was running everything I was creating through a slew of filters and questions: Will this get peoples’ attention? Will this demonstrate value? Will this get people to sign up for my stuff? Is this what people want to hear? What do they want to hear? Who do I need to be and what do I need to do in order to succeed?
I’m a Millennial, which means I can remember a time where the internet didn’t exist, and social media wasn’t a thing. I remember being SO excited for college so that I could have a school email address, which would allow me to sign up for Facebook. Originally, social media was just a way to stay in touch with friends and connect with new ones. These were simpler times!
Then in 2013, nearly a decade after first getting on Facebook, I created an Instagram account. And slowly but surely, this app became a way to feed a deep, pervasive wound I’ve carried my entire life:
The need to be seen.
To clarify, I believe that we all need to be seen, and that’s not pathological nor problematic. It is how we exist, how we connect, how we belong to one another, and it is a crucial foundation for any sustainable, loving, and healthy relationship.
However…
My need to be seen has come at the expense of my Self.
Literally, I have lost myself in my quest to be seen as a means to validate my existence. For me, “being seen” means running almost everything through an external filter in order to confirm its validity: thoughts, experiences, needs, desires…
I could get into how and why this developed in me, and likely at some point I will (CliffNotes version: being raised by a people-pleaser and a narcissist). But for now, it is enough to illustrate how an app focused on capturing very specific snippets of life, then applying a filter and a quirky caption became both the best and worst thing that could have happened to this wounded part of me.
I became obsessed with documenting aspects of my life and putting them out there for feedback and validation.
[A]n app focused on capturing very specific snippets of life, then applying a filter and a quirky caption became both the best and worst thing that could have happened to this wounded part of me.
But I didn’t really see the problem until I created a business account and began to rely on the success of my content for actual life-sustaining reasons: to make money, pay my bills, and feed my family.
I opened my solo practice in 2020. Despite the pandemic, I did well as a naturopathic doctor providing traditional naturopathic services to my clients.
But in 2023, when I decided to focus solely on mind-body medicine and rebranded, things started to go downhill—or at least, that’s how it felt. Because this is when social media became everything.
I closed my in-person practice and began offering my services to people across the US and Canada. The only way to reach a broader audience, it seemed, was through a louder social media presence. And so began the journey of learning everything I could about social media marketing: running ads, refining my Instagram bio, curating my website, creating programs and offers, designing content, making my profile visually appealing, learning every trick and tip to beat the algorithm… the list goes on.
Between 2023 and now, I spent over $50k on programs, courses, coaches, and ads. And while I learned a lot, none of these investments brought me the fame and fortune they promised. I absolutely had starts and stops; I’d have a really good month financially, I’d get a slew of new clients, I’d have a post that would be really popular.
But this promised experience of success—sustainable, undeniable fame and fortune—became this ever-dangling carrot in front of me. It was right there, and yet always forever just out of my grasp. I could see it, I could smell it, I was for all intents and purposes doing everything right from what I was being taught… it should have been mine.
And yet? I couldn’t quite get there. And this is where that wounded need to be seen opened up and I began to struggle. What was happening? Why couldn’t I have what others seemed to achieve so easily? What was I doing wrong? And most importantly… What was wrong with me?
As the pressure built to be more, do more, post more… more, more, more… I finally came to a place where I just couldn’t anymore.
I was burnt out. I didn’t want to post. I was losing passion for my work, despite knowing deep in my bones it is my calling. A lifetime of compromising myself, watering myself down to fit some external ideal, conforming in order to ‘succeed,’ becoming someone I’m not in order to be seen… had resulted in an intense form of self-erasure.
And when the Self is erased, how could there be any passion, pleasure, or presence left to carry you forward? I was learning the hard way: there can’t be. And so, I decided quitting social media was the necessary next step.
A lifetime of compromising myself, watering myself down to fit some external ideal, conforming in order to ‘succeed,’ becoming someone I’m not in order to be seen… had resulted in an intense form of self-erasure.
At the time of this writing, I am three days in to my social media hiatus. In those three days, when I would normally be scrolling Instagram and stressing about what to post and when (when to post! That’s a whole other “strategy”!)… I am simply sitting quietly, with my eyes closed, and connecting to myself.
And in those silent moments with just me, myself, and I, what I have come to understand is that it’s not that what I learned in those courses and with those coaches was necessarily wrong.
The issue is that I have been missing. I am the missing ingredient—my essence, my presence, my style.
I have come to recognize the extent of my self-erasure from day zero of my life up until now, and have begun to gently but consistently simply sit in the presence of myself and see what it’s like to give myself permission to exist.
And I’ll tell you that at least for now: It’s deeply healing.
So while the journey I have been on with this side of my work has been challenging, triggering, and at times maddening…
It all drove me back to myself. Which is actually what my work is all about: Within every struggle we face is the gift and opportunity to find ourselves again.
So that’s what this break from social media is really about—not disappearing forever, not rejecting what I’ve built, not wallowing in self-loathing… but coming home to the part of me that got lost. The part that knows how to be still. The part that trusts that who I am, without the algorithms and the filters and the endless scroll, is already enough.
Because if the past two years have taught me anything, it’s this:
I don’t need to be seen by everyone.
I just need to be seen by myself.
And maybe that’s the only way I can ever truly be seen by anyone else in the first place.
