How Do You Feel About Posting on Social Media?

Social media is such a conundrum. Or is it, “social media are such a conundrum’? See?!?! Questions everywhere.

Is spending lots of time online healthy or unhealthy? Do we need it for our work? Does it make us unconscious and waste our time? Or could we be one of those people that avoids social media... not really sure how to play along?

Sometimes I get hooked in, and numb out on Instagram, watching highly addictive videos about sharks, or people falling on ice, or cats doing fun things.

Sometimes I just want to turn it off forever. Sometimes it's a highly creative avenue of expression and connection.

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So here's the thing: it's fascinating how each of us expresses ourselves (or doesn't) online.

Can you relate to any of these 💛😪🌻🤗?

You have an Instagram profile that is private and has very few posts;
Or you have an active Instagram profile where you'll look at stories most days, but won't create your own posts very often;
Or your profile has lots of photographs of views, plants, or animals, but very few more personal posts (maybe just quotes by other people);
Or you have very few selfies, or photos of you and your friends and loved ones. And almost no video of yourself.
If you can relate, these are real symptoms of a 'blocked online voice'. And here's the fascinating thing: online behaviour tends to mirror our behaviour with groups of people in real life.

If you don't like social media and you don't want to be there, that's okay.

But for many people, not being able to show up on social media compromises their work, or their art and putting their special sauce out into the world.

Social media can also be a place for us to create, play, and share our unique magic.

And most importantly...

...it's a place where we can unlearn the habit of hiding in the world.

As we explore posting online – feeling all the feelings that come up – we can do the work of healing the blocks that say it's not safe for us to express ourselves.

Sometimes it's a thing about not feeling safe around lots of people.

Often it's a thing about self judgment and self criticism.

Unblocking a voice online parallels the process of unblocking a voice in the real world. Doing work on your online voice helps your voice in the real world too.

And it all starts somewhere in our childhood, where we started feeling not so safe around other human beings or in groups of people. Perhaps a parent silenced us. Perhaps we learned to feel ashamed, and that hiding was safer. Perhaps we were bullied.

And so we made lots of little choices, to shut up or shut down.

When it comes to our singing and speaking voice, we don't need to be stuck with the same patterns for life.

The online environment is an incredible place to start unblocking our voices.

One of the first steps you can start today is to become more conscious when posting and notice what comes up.

Notice the feelings in the body and the thoughts in your head.

And equally important, notice what comes up afterwards.

Any shame or regret, or if you want to delete the post, or want to hide under your bed... Whatever it is, notice what comes up and then begin to work with that.

Expressing yourself confidently online, with freedom, heart and your own quirky humor is entirely possible.

I hope you start exploring what arises in you when you post online.

For those of you that wish to go deeper with support and powerful tools in doing this work, I offer one-on-ones and my online course Awaken Your Radiant Voice.

I invite you to join me for a free discovery call if you'd like to work with me on your expression. I really enjoy these meetings, so please book here.