Hello You

On finding ourselves in a loud, algorithm-driven world

The desire to engage in a deeper conversation with the self takes place in therapy rooms more often these days. The lack of feeling deeply connected to the self has to do with how little we are unable to feel deeply and authentically in our bones.

 Instagram and other social media platforms are drastically impacting the pace we want to know ourselves, with self-diagnosis becoming a means to an end. While this can seem harmless, the rate at which we have access to mental health language online erodes our opportunity to sit with ourselves. Boredom is considered foolish, while quick interactions are seen as currency in today's landscape of relationships and intimacy. Today's generation of therapists are striving to advocate relational healing more then ever. Psychodynamic psychotherapists specifically hold conversations with the client’s self and their inner world by acting as a mirror, facilitating dialogue between unconscious parts of the client's self whilst carrying a relatively new responsibility of challenging and filtering out online mental health jargon entering the therapy room.

"You are what you eat" - algorithms designed to keep us engaged invariably inform the language we use to understand ourselves (Image credit: wix gallery)

Psychic deprivation can begun to be named in the post-modern world, when we observe whether society is modelling self-sufficiency or buying us out by externalizing our unmet needs to businesses that will guarantee us long-term well-being. Self-competence may look like 'purchasing a complete self' without the work of reality confrontation, emotional depth, revisiting our histories, and defenses that make us who we are in our unique personalities in adulthood. The competency to buy the right self-help content and digest the right language to appear 'self-aware' is a performative attempt to understanding ourselves. This attempt paradoxically deters from developing an authentic relationship with the self that begins with a felt sense of our patterns.

By witnessing the self as presented to us through online interactions, self-work can be perceived as an endeavor towards perfection quickly, but I wonder if we ask ourselves enough, “Who are we becoming better for in the long run?”. Perfection applies as a standard towards working for a better self, but one can lose their attunement to observe how they are naturally unfolding, when blindly following fantasies of an ideal self. Fantasies like these disrupt our ability to listen intently to our needs with a keen awareness of capacity and compassion for the self.

Authentic self-care begins when we become daringly comfortable with our unconscious mirror - attuning to our unmet needs better, to understand our capacity with nuance rather than through a one size fits all approach.

'Knowing the self' in the information era has become a higher order need in a technology-driven human world. The depth that lies in understanding the journey we navigate by meeting people and ourselves through circumstances, insight and conversation is missing. The promise for depth has become a fickle compromise within ourselves, as we begin to outsource our capacity to 'look within' using self-help books and self-care products or service as tools to keep our 'introspective muscle' alive. 

What happened to knowing the self as it unravels, rather than treating ourselves as a checklist that guarantees better faster.

Social media's praises for mental health support that became louder during COVID-19 has challenged the stigma of getting help, however the same online platforms have romanticized self-analysis. The therapy room is fantasized as a cornucopia of resources, promises of replenished hope in humanity, society, and healing of past wounds, and a space that pays for safety, trust, and love. This leaves therapists carrying the responsibility and weight of being pedestalized as all-encompassing providers in a world as complex as the one their clients reside in. The accountability of choosing self-awareness comes with consequences and discomfort as a result of wanting more for the self. This can’t be bought, gratified, or soothed instantly by a therapist or any individual committed to a helping or healing profession. The assumption that the self can be repaired without looking at self-inflicted wounds or past trauma points to the dilemma one needs to consider when looking at self-work. This dilemma can unravel itself when accountability can be used as a frame to identify how we use therapy when decide to sign up for it. We can choose how much awareness we want, how much work we want to put in, but more importantly we must be open to noticing when we cant soothe the urge to buy ourselves healing without sitting in the pain we once repressed, deflected or pushed ourselves away from.

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