Healing Over Hustling: Why I’m Not a Prolific Social Media Poster

Every so often, someone asks why I’m no longer on Facebook or Instagram, or just not more visible on social media overall—why I don’t share daily insights, post client reflections, or offer quick sound bites about the work I do. It’s a fair question in an age where visibility is often equated with value. But the truth is simple: my energy is spent where it matters most—showing up in real time for the people I care about, both personally and professionally.

As a psychologist, my work demands deep presence. As an adoptee and adoptive parent, my life demands it too. I hold space for others navigating complex layers of loss, identity, belonging, and confusion—often while continuing to explore those same themes in my own lived experience. The energy it takes to do that work well doesn’t leave much room for constant online posting. My presence isn’t something I can divide between therapy sessions and timelines without something being lost.

I pour my heart into face-to-face moments—the courageous conversations, the quiet breakthroughs, the laughter that returns after pain. Those are the spaces where transformation happens. They’re also the moments that can’t be captured in a quote graphic or a viral reel without stripping away their sacredness. Therapy, especially adoption-focused therapy, is built on trust and privacy. It’s about helping people feel safe enough to share the parts of their story they’ve kept hidden. Turning those moments into “content,” even in vague or “anonymized” form, feels like a betrayal of that trust.

I’ve seen more and more therapists post snippets of client adoption experiences online, often with disclaimers that details have been changed or consent obtained. I appreciate the intentions behind it—but I am concerned about what it models. For adoptees, privacy is already so fragile and ownership has often been violated. Too many have grown up with their stories shared by others—social workers, journalists, parents—without their full consent. As both a clinician and a member of the adoption community, I can’t ignore how this dynamic echoes the way our profession has come to treat lived experience as sharable content. Protecting that boundary is, to me, an act of respect, advocacy, and a rightful returning of ownership.

Additionally, my work already asks me to hold so much—to absorb emotions, navigate trauma, sit in ambiguity, and remain grounded when others feel untethered. By the end of the day, there’s little left for crafting captions or curating a highlight reel. When I used to try to keep up with the adoptee influencers’ rate of new content, I found that my reflections felt born from exhausted obligation; I want to share from a place of clarity, purpose, and authenticity. That means I post less often, but with more intention.

And yes, there’s also an “ick factor” I can’t ignore—the subtle lure of external validation that lives within every social media platform. As a psychologist, I help people untangle their sense of worth from an extrinsic place, and I don’t ever want to be sitting in a session with a client distracted even momentarily by the thought that our conversation would make for an interesting post that benefits my algorithms. As an adoptee, I’ve spent much of my adult life unpacking and diminishing the pull to prove my value to others, and as a parent, I want my child to know that worth is inherent, not earned through performance. Participating in systems that encourage constant comparison and validation-seeking feels contradictory to those values.

That doesn’t mean I don’t believe in connection or community—I do, deeply. In fact, that’s why I pour my energy into spaces that allow for genuine human connection: the therapy room, the training I offer to professionals, the courses and blogs that allow people to slow down, reflect, and integrate. I thrive in spaces that invite conversation rather than consumption, depth rather than display, and healing rather than hustle. I have respect for the professionals who dedicate time and energy to creating and sharing content in an ethical way, but I have come to learn that it is not a space where I thrive.

While my social media may be quiet, my work is anything but. It’s alive in every conversation that helps an adoptee find language for their grief. It’s in every parent who learns to sit beside their child’s pain instead of trying to fix it. It’s in every person who leaves a keynote speech I’ve given thinking differently about how they approach adoptee trauma.

My presence online may not be prolific, but it is intentional. It reflects what I value most—authenticity over appearance, privacy over performance, and connection over clicks. In a culture that tells us louder is better, I’m fulfilled in choosing a quieter, deeper way of being present for our community.