Who wants to be perceived? Not me.

Disclaimer: This is an excerpt from an online letter I sent to my best friend. It is painfully honest, and was likely written sometime in the middle of the night.

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It’s funny, but also not funny at all to think about the anxiety of feeling perceived online. I’m constantly thinking about my online presence. Being online publicly (especially on Instagram) is a rollercoaster. A rollercoaster that I didn’t realize I consented to when I post online. In some ways I hate it. On other days I think of the power and the access it’s given me in such a short space of time. It’s one thing to impact lives and get that validation every so often from a client. It’s a whole other thing to get that in hundreds of notifications and DM’s in a given week. This intensity doesn’t happen often with my online platform, but If I’m being perfectly honest— when it does, it overwhelms me and scares me.

Maybe I just feel ambivalent about Instagram. I kind of miss the good old days when I would record anything that moved on my camera phone and write privately on tumblr, fully living in relative anonymity. I think that’s why I like TikTok so much. There’s a level of anonymity and vulnerability I get to be a part of in a weird little community without ever having to post or do anything. 

There is a small part of me that wants to fully lean into the discomfort and anxiety of putting myself out there in the public online sphere. It feels like I'm battling my anxiety for the greater good by trying to show up and help people in small ways through my words. I worry that people see me as a narcissist, or motivated by purely external or monetary means. I have had actual panic attacks about things I post online, and hide my stress expertly under my freakish skill of compartmentalization. I stress that people in my real life - the ones that I’ll eventually see in person once this pandemic is over for good will see me so differently in a way I can no longer control.

I was just talking to my own therapist about this, but I often feel like an imposter. A literal child at the head of this ship she accidentally designed. If I knew when I started instagram that it would be what it is for me I may have thought twice (or three times to be honest) about doing it. I know from my own therapy clients that imposter syndrome doesn’t make me unique. It doesn’t seem to matter how many likes you have online. Or how many people tell you how great you are, or brands that validate you merely by acknowledging you. For me, worrying about whether or not people like me has never truly gone away. 

At least not yet. Growth comes slowly, and in waves.

Most days, I feel like the online world has just sucked me up and left me with only a shell of the person that actually knows how to interact outside of a screen. The reality is, in a span of a few weeks, that turned quickly into months, and now a year and change later, our world has turned completely upside down. We’re still trying to process an earth-shattering collective trauma that will be felt for decades to come. I know this much. 

Anyway. I told my own therapist that I would try to value the small moments in life. Meditate more. Take hot baths. Drink my favourite tea. Briefly, I think about how long the chain of therapists is. Does my therapist have a therapist? Does my therapist’s therapist have a therapist? I think about the therapists on my own caseload and immediately get overwhelmed at the scope of it all.

In moments like these I wonder, who are the people that exist without anxiety? What is their brain like? Is the Venn diagram of people who don’t have anxiety and people who can meditate effectively just a circle?