Hey Data collectors
I want to try something new, well not new for me but maybe new for you and I want to know what you think about it. I love my writings and the research— trust me I do. That is not going anywhere, but sometimes ya girl just wants to get on her type and not care what it looks like. I want to flow through the words that come to me in what i’m holding and wiling to share with you all but I also don’t want to be too much of a stranger.
This month marks 1 year of being online publicly and it feels like blur. Especially for me because I was someone that despised social media and was in the works of going nomad from it. Then my husband left for deployment this time last year and I knew.
I need to have something for myself to keep my mind busy otherwise it will in fact.
Run
A
Muck
I got online because I told myself I was repeating a lot of the same things to my clients anyway, so I might as well make a channel for it. This was despite hearing colleagues shame “therapist influencers” and talk about how “cringe” it all is.
The main reason I really wanted to get on here was the misinformation, the overgeneralizations, and the echo chambering of it all. I was examining and assessing, noticing patterns in clients across state lines and cultures—in myself, my family, friends, peers, and colleagues. I can’t teach and not practice what I preach, but I also don’t live in the realm of being who you aren’t. No thank you, that sounds “cringe” if you ask me. I realized the level of conditioning taking place in the streets of the online world. I noticed how differently you are treated as soon as you hit over 25k followers and how much ego lives in the world of social media content creating.
It makes me queasy.
Those with more followers than you follow you almost to “endorse” you as good enough. Is it exciting? Sure. But something I noticed was the old script in me wanting to come back online. “I can’t upset them, I look up to them” the people pleaser wanting to come out of retirement. I was afraid of losing a follow from the actors, celebrities, and musical artists with a large number on a digital page, inside a rectangle box that us humans can never put down.
Let’s sit with that for a moment.
Humans prioritizes this… yet wonder why we are full of symptoms?
I will experience people I know telling me how I need to show up online to appease the audience.
My inner teen is just like: “says who?”
This is an experiment for me and I can’t lose sight of that. It’s the same test I challenge my clients to take to put themselves out there in a way that doesn’t even require leaving the house. I mean, you don’t even have to get dressed if you don’t want to; that is clearly evident on the algorithm. No shade. Just, can you see it?
All of a sudden you are over 50k followers and family, friends, and peers are talking to you like, “Oh, you’re famous now.” Ewww... I actually get what the teens call “the ick” when I hear that. The idea of being seen by all these eyeballs watching you, especially people you know, people who have known you, or people who just don’t even like you. It places you in what for me feels like an icky feeling. Maybe The “evil eye” energy being cast was something I always worried about when being online. When you open up and share, there will always be people who say something nasty.
Always. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles😉
Ying Yang.
Us humans became so emotionally entitled to assume we only get the pleasantries in life without the grief. Alan Watts teaching as well as Taoism talks about not knowing it was suffering if that’s all their ever was.
I am learning something about family, as imperfect as it may be, that it’s supposed to be imperfect. When we keep forcing it to be something that we as humans were never designed to be anyway, the body starts having symptoms. GERD, inflammation, chronic pain, tension, headaches... the list goes on.
The body is speaking to us daily. We have normalized dysfunction so much that we don’t even recognize the innate power within us.
Something I’m learning about being online is that I struggle with the concept of sharing things. Many of you—especially my sanctuary community—are here for the work, the discomfort, and the challenges. But I also haven’t shared that much about me. I forget that maybe some people actually do want to get to know the person behind the words and videos.
Deep breath.
Public sharing is hard for me even in my personal life. Depending on who.. I’ve mentioned before that it’s hard for me to be “seen”whatever that means, right? I used to have this distorted belief that unless I am in service, I am not safe. It’s a belief that has taken years of rewiring work. But…That doesn’t mean I’m free from old patterns and blueprints showing up.
It means I am required to do my part in managing them. This is the part those who scream “victim blamer” fail to realize about self-responsibility. If you are familiar with my work, you understand we challenge perspectives and question what is lurking in the shadow. Sometimes… We ourselves are whats hiding back there.
I am no stranger to anxiety, depression, or ADHD. Most clinicians aren’t. The difference with me, personally, is that I don’t like to identify myself by the label.
Let me explain…
“My anxiety,” “my ADHD,” “my depression” it’s not mine.
I don’t want it. Right? We don’t want it? So if we don’t want it, why do we call it “mine?”
This is a concept I find myself reflecting on all the time. I have to check myself, because if the logic is true there, then it must be true with the concepts of “I don’t feel like it” or “the worst things always happen to me” stories that our mind plays. Many of my clients—myself included—tend to internalize blame, think of the worst-case scenario, and jump (more like backflip) into the catastrophe of it all. We do this because, if we are really honest with ourselves, there is a limiting belief somewhere that states: “Do I really deserve this?”
Now, let’s zoom out a bit and think of what we experience during the good moments. The wins, when everything is aligning. How are the people around us? Are they supportive? Do they whisper? Do they shame you or “must be nice” you?
If so, what does that feel like?
The part of my brain that can analyze the data all day is asking: is it the city I am living in? Is it the generational trauma that exists throughout it—the kind you aren’t allowed to name unless it’s in a political debate, and you better be on the “right side?”
As if there is one…
Anywho…
Many times people are “fake” happy for you and you can feel it, because energy doesn’t lie. Those are undercurrents.
What I am seeing online is an influx of people being themselves—more authentic, less performed. We share a lot online now and I have learned people almost expect it. They want personal info, details, etc. It’s the same reason we enjoy reality TV; it’s a good distraction. Now, The idea of people playing with your life in their minds? That feels scary to me, because many people, and we see it in the comments when we scroll—are just “discharging.” That discharge is the very pollutant I encourage my clients to face through exposure therapy work. Send that risky text that’s vulnerable. Ask that person out. Talk to your sibling and tell them how you feel. It doesn’t need to be perfect.
Otherwise, the buildup creates discharge and that discharge is what we dump on others when we need to release the emotional buildup from everything we avoid and suppress internally. Sharing me…Sav, and not just the parts that can be of service to others, is very uncomfortable for me. “Who cares?” is what the echo says.
But remember: exposure therapy is not about the reactions and responses you get from others. It’s about the training you do for yourself internally. This is where a healthy level of “narcissism” or I should say self knowing is needed in order to do the shadow work everyone talks about. We’ve essentially “Voldemorted” the term narcissism. Many of us are so terrified of the label that we struggle with cognitive dissonance when we actually have to embody a little “selfishness” for our own survival. We’re so afraid of being the “bad person” that we abandon ourselves just to stay “good” in everyone else’s eyes.
Data collectors…
Here’s the thing: that very concern—that deep-rooted fear of being a “narcissist” is exactly what makes you nothing like one. True narcissism doesn’t have a conscience that worries about being “the bad guy.” So if you’re worried about it, you’re already safe from it.
We need that healthy level of self-interest to actually do the shadow work. You can’t look at your own shadow if you’re too busy staring at everyone else to make sure they’re still smiling at you. You have to be “selfish” enough to look inward.
So… I finally landed the plane. Let’s get to introducing myself officially after a whole year!
Hi I’m Sav!
Savannah actually pronounced Suh-VON-NUh
I get the Savannah Georgia pronunciation all. the. time.
I prefer Savannah unless its my husband calling me that… Then its uh oh🤣🫣
I love… no… hear me for real on this, okay?
It’s Kristen Bell sloth-level for me with elephants. I love them. I’ve also been a Vans girl since the early 2000s, riding my skateboard in the streets of California from the ages of 12 to 18. I miss home. 🥹 Not living near an ocean hurts at a soul level for me.
I love to laugh and I’m quite childish, which makes my work so much more entertaining. I feel like my “sillygoose” energy helps bridge the gap to connection especially with work like therapy. Professionalism exists, of course, but I align so much with the work of Irvin Yalom, Viktor Frankl, Carl Rogers, and Carl Jung (The Red Book? Are you kidding? 🤓). This field needs more humanity, not more division. I think we can all agree the world needs it.
To be honest, we lost our sense of play. It’s something I personally and professionally feel is crucial for learning and evolving. Our brains want novelty, and this work is heavy…Play makes it manageable to carry. Play and, well... curiosity. We should all experience what it feels like to be safe to speak without fear of judgment. Building rapport in the therapeutic space is what truly makes me good at my job. It’s humans vibrating at the frequency of being seen, a level of validation that has no words.
But let’s talk about how I ended up here... because it wasn’t my first choice.
