Why Instagram Gurus don't have the answers you need

As an (unfortunately) experienced social media user I can't help but have noticed certain beliefs and trends around mental health, emotional healing, spirituality and life in general that I believe aren't doing anybody, but trauma survivors in particular, any favours. As we all know and Elif Shafak eloquently calls out in her "How to stay sane in an age of division", social media is an echo chamber: it sends back our way the things we put out, so we don't have many options to see a diversity of opinions or realities on our feed. I am taking the time today to unpack 9 of these "universal truths" that we can find online and hopefully give you a more compassionate, human perspective, in spite of the algorithm.

1. Mindset is everything. If you have a bad life it's because you have a bad attitude.

Let's talk about context. Some people will have every opportunity to make life wonderful, all they need is a "can do" attitude and to get out of their own heads, but this is not everybody's reality. We cannot simply "mindset" our way out of trauma, poverty, abuse, unhealthy family cycles. A positive attitude helps, yes, but suggesting that's all that's needed is as good as victim-blaming. "If I can do it, you can do it" is only as good as people's circumstances (and capacities, but that's a conversation for another day) are similar. How about if instead of shaming the "negativity" that people with genuine reasons to be upset with life or the world feel, we advocate for our societies to provide the necessary care and attention for them to, with a positive mindset, make their way out of those extreme situations? It would certainly be of more help than just telling them to "do better".

2. We should all strive to be millionaires.

What if we pursued compassionate role models instead? People with more than one type of wealth. The idea that constant growth is something to aspire to or even possible, that becoming content or happy in our existence makes us mediocre, is a trap. It creates a need in us that wasn't there before. We have built a system where everybody wants to supervise the workers that collect the oranges, but no one wants to do the collecting. But we can't all be executive overseers, someone has to get the bloody oranges!

Yes, work is ennobling and can be meaningful so, by all means, be busy! Not just to make money but to actually give your community something it needs. But why is it that managerial positions are seen as higher up as the people who do the actual, relevant work? Learn new skills, expand your mind, learn to be a carpenter, farmer, plumber, carer, teacher, someone with practical life skills to bring to the table, help others where it's needed. Wouldn't it be best if we all strived to bring our communities back to the human level, instead of desperately trying to find ways to hack or escape the system so that we don't have to face the problems? We can all appreciate good ideas and having initiative is a vital life skill, but if we were all entrepreneurs we would starve. In the same way we can't run a hospital with just management staff (in lieu of actual doctors and nurses), we can't live in a world of CEOs.

3. Ecologism needs to be perfect or it's not effective.

So many people don't make better environmental choices because they've been led to believe it's either "go vegan" or nothing. However, while it's true that the more things you change about your consumer habits the more impact you'll make, it's better to make small changes than none:

• It's better to have one meatless day a week than none,
• better to buy even just one less plastic bottle a week,
• better to substitute just one of your products with its solid format,
• better to buy just half of your produce from local sources,
• better to cycle or walk to work just one day a week.

Start small, build up habits you know you can sustain in the long run and you'll effortlessly work your way up to more significant changes. All contributions have an impact, even if you can't see it first-hand.

4. If you love yourself you won't need anyone else in your life.

There is no shame in becoming our own safety net and community when our circumstances demand us to, when for whatever reason we can't count on anybody else. Otherwise, we need the people we love. We are built around communities and we are wired to connect with other people, it takes a village not only to raise a child but to nurture an adult. Healthy family members, friends, partner(s), pets, co-workers, neighbours, you name it. Needing a network is not a shameful thing or something we need to remedy about ourselves. Elena Codes has just the quote about this:

"Self-love is collective. A while ago I wrote this, and I decided I would need to add a whole book to it to discuss how it's not good that we believe we don't depend on anyone. To discuss how cruel it is to objectify ourselves and talk about "self-love" in the future and not the present. Love is allowing others to take care of you and understanding you need those people. Self-love is knitting a net of safety within which to make mistakes. It's understanding you will get hurt."

It is a sign of great inner strength and love to allow ourselves to depend or rely on the people we deem safe, to trust them. Mature trust is to understand these people might hurt us, yes, but also to trust ourselves to handle the difficulties that may come with the connections we make.

5. Healthy relationships are effortless. If you have problems, they're not "the one".

We can all probably agree that relationships aren't easy, so the idea that you will meet one special person and you will never ever argue in your life is nothing but a sanitized version of love that keeps us jumping from one person to another, never quite finding that perfect fit. The good news is you can take ownership of this and decide not to sit around until you find someone that fully fits you, you can get busy and build a good, authentic relationship instead.

This doesn't mean we need to do what our grandparents did and settle for ONE partner for 50 years even if they hurt us, but maybe throwing people away after the first fight isn't fully working either. We can't change people, but what we can do is find someone we like, someone that respects us and is as willing as us to build and grow, and then get to work. A conscious relationship is a wonderful space to grow and learn about yourself and another, about each other's limits and boundaries, it can feel like the safest place, but it definitely doesn't come easy. There's no "the one", there's the one you choose!

It's worth noting that there's no exact recipe for this. Different sexual orientations and models of relationships will require different things, but that's a conversation for another day.

6. Healing is an absolute state. The universe won't let you have anything good until you're fully healed.

Healing doesn't mean:

• nothing will ever phase you again
• your trauma won't ever resurface
• you won't be retraumatized.

Healing is not an absolute, irreversible state, and it becomes much more attainable when we see it as a way to go about life where we incorporate emotional responsibility and compassion into our relationships, where we look after ourselves, our loved ones and our surroundings, where we ask for help when we need it (professional or otherwise). During healing we do boundary work and we learn to respect other people's limits and where ours are, we relearn kindness and understanding towards others and ourselves. We also make space for all our feelings, stop thinking of them as good or bad, we forget guilt and we remember responsibility. Not one of these things is something that's just "done". It does get easier, you do heal specific traumas and soothe your wounds, you stop having to work on certain things because they come naturally. That doesn't make you "finished". You're not a dress, so there's no final stitch, life will continue to happen and you will need to use your skills again.

That's why you can't wait until you're "done" to accept love or compassion, you're always worthy of it, and the universe won't punish you for acknowledging that.

7. You can live with no regrets.

If half the time we have no idea what we're doing, how can we expect ourselves to make the right decisions every time? I can guarantee you'll make mistakes, you'll hurt others and you'll hurt yourself, you'll definitely "waste time". There's no right way to live that will avoid this, no matter how many parties you go to or how many countries you visit. However, that doesn't mean we can't live fully, it means we need to rethink what living fully means. I don't think it's making the right choices all the time, or making it to every fun occasion, I think it's learning to make our own choices and own up to them. Viktor Frankl might have a little tip for this:

"Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you're about to act now!"

To you, this may mean socialising more or getting a remote job to see less of people. It might mean opening up to sex or becoming more selective with who you sleep with. It might mean furthering your studies or going straight into the job market. However, whatever you choose and what a "full life" looks like to you, you will still screw up. So embrace it and be creative with it!

8. If you're not happy, you're doing something wrong.

Professor Edith Weisskopf-Joelson wrote:

"Our current mental-hygiene philosophy stresses the idea that people ought to be happy, that being unhappy is a symptom of maladjustment."

"[…] the incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading" "he is not only unhappy, but ashamed of being unhappy."

Social media is a portrayal of life's highlights, to the point where we're made to believe our entire existence should be "instagrammable", and that trials and tribulations don't make the cut. But despite our best efforts to sanitize them, our lives will continue to unfold in any way they need to. We'll feel the whole spectrum of emotions, and none of them, despite what we've been made to believe, are shameful or need to be remedied!

If unexplainable happiness doesn't need to be fixed, neither does fear, sadness or anger. What's important is that we don't idealize some of them and repress the others, but to make space for all of them within us, and to know which ones we need to pause on and consider and which ones to just let be. Our feelings are not our enemy and they're not good or bad, they're our bodies speaking to us. To try to fix them is to judge them, and so to judge ourselves.

9. Your trauma made you who you are, be thankful for it.

Bullshit. To paraphrase V. Frankl once more, we give meaning to our suffering, but suffering is not necessary for meaning, and when suffering is avoidable, the meaningful thing to do is put an end to it. To suffer gratuitously is masochistic, not heroic. To say you needed your trauma to become strong is like telling an Olympic athlete they needed to break their leg so their body could learn how to fix it: that healing power was already there! All the injury did was put the athlete in bed for a season.

You already had the strength to overcome your trauma, you didn't develop it after becoming traumatized. This said, I don't mean we should go through life without trials: we can't and we mustn't. But there is a difference between welcoming fair or natural challenges (like the terror of fleeing the nest or the death of a loved one) and being grateful about having been abused or neglected. No, thank you.

I could probably dive deeper into any of these topics (and I might do in future posts) but let's keep it short and sweet for now. My point with all this is that in the same way you wouldn't (or shouldn't) take medical advice from an unqualified Instagrammer, you also shouldn't take psychological, emotional or spiritual advice from unknown, often as clueless as you people on the internet (myself included). I have found wonderful comfort with certain accounts on Instagram that have truly helped me through my own processes (usually qualified professionals), but I have also found so many people preaching things as if they were undeniable facts, that my own experience has proven aren't always true. We need to take it all with a pinch of salt, knowing everyone speaks from their own bias. Read about different opinions, be open to new stories and experiences but above all, question them and yourself.

What do you think?