Don't flatten me, my dudes
or, how an instagram q&a session turned into my internal philosophical quandary
If you follow me on instagram and were anywhere near my stories earlier this week, you’d likely have noticed that I did a fairly intensive, fun, and informative Q&A session with followers, which spanned over the course of a couple of days—answering questions ranging from “what is your favorite way to eat potatoes” to “how do I decide between a master’s or doctorate degree?”
I like these Q&A sessions because it gives me an opportunity to reflect, have fun, explore new ideas, and form connections with my audience. In a world where it is increasingly easy to look at an Instagram profile and make flash judgments based on handle, pictures, and bio snippets, it’s nice to find these tiny moments of digital connection with an otherwise amorphous group of strangers.
Part of what has become increasingly odd to me—and increasingly apparent—is how, for some people online, it becomes easy to see folks with larger followings as bigger than they actually are in real life. Again, at first glance, you can flatten a person and your opinion of them and their work by taking a passing glance at their presentation and forming judgments of them based on it.
Let me be clear: I am, without a doubt, 100% guilty of this. We all are. The very nature of a platform like Instagram is to inspire quick, reactive jolts from a deep space of identification with or against the content at hand—reactions of “YASSS” or “FUCK YOU” or “You’re wrong!” or “I am OBSESSED with your content.”
Even in longer-format carousel posts with squares of text rather than (or in addition to) images, or shares in stories where you can quite literally post lengthy narratives one after another, there is such a distancing effect that happens when we enter an environment where our only option is to perceive our fellow humans as a collection of zeros and ones compiled into an image or wall of text.
When that happens—when we flatten each other into digital compilations of opinions, hot takes, inspiring quotes (which we quickly forget), or anger-inducing heathens—we flatten our own understanding of ourselves in relation to other human beings, and the nuance required in such intimate and precious spaces.
This week, although most of the folks who interacted with my content appeared to approach it with genuine curiosity and openness, there were a couple of folks who, in approaching me in their flattened image of who I am, came up against the reality of who I actually am.
One individual posed the question of, “don’t you feel weird making SO MUCH MONEY off of the literal existence of pain?” Which I answered in my stories—it was a bit lengthy of a response, but I wanted to give some space to my perspective on it—after which point they messaged me to let me know they read none of my response, and that they knew the real reason was, essentially, “not because you need to [make that much money]. you want to.”
Another, in a more private format, decided to direct message me and let me know that my version of "antiwork” was not in line with their version of “antiwork,” and that I was a disappointment to them because I (presumably) make too much money, or work too much, to deserve such a designation. They also let me know that it was my responsibility to publicly disclose my income—more frequently and more openly—so as to be more antiwork. Even though, in their opinion, my salary itself is at odd with being antiwork (so I’m not sure what, in their mind, publicly disclosing it would actually do).
Unsurprisingly, these minor jabs—and don’t get me wrong, they are indeed quite minor, in the grand scheme of things—both had to do with money. Specifically, both seemed to take issue with the idea of a therapist who criticizes the broken parts of the mental health industry and our culture of hustle actually making a decent living, and advocating for the same for fellow therapists.
How appalling.
How appalling, the idea that someone who works in mental health and is critical of the field isn’t immediately at odds with the idea making a thriving wage.
Or, even more— how appalling that someone else’s conceptualization or value set around these ideas does not and will not have a bearing on my life, my business decisions, the way I talk about work culture, or how I show up online.
That, in their flattened understanding of me—a 3D human being with as much complexity in my life as they have in theirs—I am disappointing or dishonest because I don’t subscribe to some hierarchy of concept, definition, or “rightness” in how I approach my life.
There are a few trains of thought that I have here, and I don’t know that there is space to expand on all of them in the ways I’d like to, but I want to get them into words for my own peace of mind:
First: How does our culture flatten its understanding of helping professionals? How does our culture (and even our own industry) take whole human beings—those with full, rich lives, needs for security (financial or otherwise), and desires of personal and communal success—and cast them into a flattened role, one in which they need to adhere to a certain set of ideologies, rules, behaviors or perspectives in order to stay in the good graces of the masses?
And what happens when these complex humans step beyond the 2D rendering and decide, “you know what, fuck it—I want to do this my way”?
Second: How do I participate in my own flattening? This one, I am more interested in. As a helping professional, what types of opinions, behaviors, and rules have I adopted (knowingly or unknowingly) that have flattened my complex life into a set of labels, expected opinions, expected behaviors, and non-nuanced narratives?
Even more specifically, how have I flattened who I am in the social media sphere—how does my own self-label as “the antiwork therapist” remove my ability to move through the world as 3D, rather than the therapist who espouses a certain narrow set of concepts?
This ventures into the realm of branding—specifically, one’s “personal brand” and the implications of what it actually means to be a brand, yourself. At the very core of the concept of personal branding is the idea that we, as humans, are commodities, and we need to commodify and monetize our essence.
To do so, we distill our very essence into publicly-consumable bites of information, labels, opinions, and behaviors. We box ourselves in and, essentially, hurry along the process of flattening ourselves for the comfort and consumption of other people. If we’re “lucky,” we might make some money off it, too. Over time, this naturally makes it harder for us to wiggle out of the boxes we’ve put ourselves in, because to do so is to put into question not only our brand and status, but to highlight the fact that we' can’t be so easily contained by a label—and what does that mean for those of us who have built an identity of labels?
And third: is there some way in which flattening myself contributes to random internet stranger’s feelings of entitlement to tell me how to live my life—defining or making known their opinions on who I am, what I’m doing, and how I am wrong regardless?
Because when it comes down to it, the way I approach this life is not easily defined in one snappy word or phrase. The antiwork sentiment is a quick way to capture what is, at best, an amorphous and evolving opinion about the state of our professional lives and the role it should or should not play in the rest of our lives.
This amorphous and evolving opinion that I hold is relevant both in the way I personally conceptualize the mental health industry, but also in how I see the professional world at large. Although the word “antiwork” itself is the label for a specific movement, for me it has taken on a life of it’s own—a rich and complex web of intersecting questions, philosophies, and meanings, especially as modern life throws increasingly difficult questions and challenges our way.
A better way of even trying to capture what it is is a mixture of pro-human, pro-joy, pro-reform, anti-exploitation, anti-hustle, and the recognition of how important it is to have an approach to this that is based in real-world circumstances, not some ideological fantasy.
But that’s not as catchy as saying I’m antiwork, now is it?
For me it has evolved. And there’s not an easy way to present that in a space like Instagram, where I am flattened to a specific identity or image. It’s not easy because spaces like that reward big, punchy, raw, emotion-inspiring hot takes that spike our adrenaline. Instagram and other spaces like it give us an immediate sense of either belonging or being in opposition to the creator on the other end of the screen, that person who is somewhere far away, removed from our immediate reality but who is somehow made larger in our minds while simultaneously being rendered two-dimensional.
What I’d like to say about this specifically in the realm of mental health professionals is this:
Like many other professions—doctors, lawyers, accountants, teachers, engineers—there will be a wide variety of ways in which the world wants to flatten you into a 2D rendering of yourself. This isn’t necessarily malicious or done with ill intent; it is a natural human process to seek simpler ways of understanding ourselves and others, to make order out of chaos, and to have ways of more easily predicting behaviors and value sets. We often do this by taking this simplified 2D approach to other humans, especially when there are so many humans with so many different approaches to life... it’s just easier to take the path of least resistance.
We do it through stereotyping, echo-chambering, absolutism, and subconsciously inviting confirmation bias into our world.
We do it to ourselves, and we do it to others.
However… just because it is a natural inclination, doesn’t mean it’s a reflection of reality.
Just because someone’s stereotype of a therapist is one of never-ending gentle compassion and validation, doesn’t make an REBT therapist with a more direct and challenging approach any less of a therapist.
Just because someone’s opinion that the upper-level income limit for s therapist should be, say, $75k a year (lest they turn into a greedy, money-hungry, unethical no-do-gooder), doesn’t mean a therapist who earns $120k+ a year is ill-intentioned or unethical. It also doesn’t mean that a therapist who earns $74k inherently has better intentions or a more finely-tuned moral compass.
That’s just… not how any of this works. And quite frankly, it’s a relatively uncreative and uninspired way of approaching the world. We can do better than that.
To that end, I really want to encourage each and every one of you to take stock of the ways you’ve flattened yourself for others’ comfort or consumption—and the ways in which you’ve flattened each other.
Ask yourself, as you move through this work and this world,
What labels, beliefs, values, or behaviors do you feel attached to for yourself, that serve to flatten your personality and make yourself easier to sell, easier to fit into bite-sized pieces, or more palatable for others to consume? How does your personal brand limit your complexity?
What labels, beliefs, values, or behaviors do you attach to different types of people, based on the flattened perspective you have of them?
What parts of your 3D-self can you reclaim for yourself—and only yourself—that will help you step back from this flattened world and give you a a more complete sense of who and what you are when there’s no need to demonstrate or justify it?
How can you give some grace to others in your life, to see them as the 3D humans that they are?
Alrighty. That’s all my fingers have the energy for. Plus, I’ve effectively procrastinated on my notes once again, so I should uh… probably go do that.
Til next time
-Meg
All of this x 5000. Thank you. I am in a reflecting season about IG too.
Not to set a bad example by flattening the authors of those comments you received but they were just… pretty assholey. Thank you for sharing your thoughtful and nuanced responses!!