Trained & Traumatized: Our Life On The Internet

(Don't feel like reading? I'll read it to you!)

Let’s start with a question…

How many of you have ever felt personally victimized by the internet?

I’m going to venture a guess that most of us are sitting with raised hands staring at the Regina George Internet because she knows what she’s done.

Remember when…

If you’re even near as old as I am (44 in May) you’ve grown up with the internet. You both came up at a time where you were learning who you were and what the possibilities were for you.

You were learning how to navigate life while also learning that the thing we do now is share shit on the internet.

I remember my first Facebook post and my first Insta post - it was a picture of my dog with that chokehold Valencia filter over it.

Ben The Dog, Oct. 2011, Instagram, Valencia filter

I remember photo dumping pics from my digital camera into FB albums with no regard for quality or photo content.

I remember the first time my stuff was found by some random who felt the need to comment something shitty and mean.

I remember sharing the most inane shit and feeling so quirky and cute.

“Katie is…having a nice Sunday and drinking a Diet Coke”

I remember how the internet raised us.

And just like any family, it came with it’s own brand of dysfunction.

Thanks for reading Inside The Haven! Subscribe for free & get everything marketing, motherhood & healing sent right to you!

hanks for reading Inside The Haven! Subscribe for free & get everything marketing, motherhood & healing sent right to you!

Trained & Traumatized

In the beginning, being on social media was quirky and cute. It was harmless and fun. It was an easy way to share your life and keep up with friends and family.

It truly was a social thing.

And then, like most everything worth anything, evolution and capitalism took over.

We’ve had influencers of some kind since the early 2000s when MySpace users and early bloggers amassed huge followings.

But I don’t think our training or traumatizing started until Instagram became the public billboard of perfection in the 2010s and the world of online business really took off.

And it seems like (and again this is simply observational opinion) that’s when the curation of life for public consumption and monetization started to truly dictate what we posted and when we posted and how we posted and pretty much how we showed up online.

Now I’m not going to dig as deep into this as I could, and probably will as some point, but I can’t help but wonder (pour one out for Carrie Bradshaw)…

Has this curation of life, posting for views, content for money literally dictated our behavior over the last few decades?

Has it taken was what once the simple act of sharing and turned it into an anxiety inducing, self-doubting, second guessing activity?

Have we been trained to show up in the most click-worthy way, and then traumatized by the reality of online public consumption?

Of course no one HAS to be on socials but if you who would like to start a business or are currently running a business, you know that some kind of online presence is necessary. Marketing and promotion has to happen in some form.

So you create the content and you put yourself out there but it’s under the weight of a fear, an anxiety, a self-doubt that is amplified by the internet.

So what do we do?

The age old question - how do I show up online, for whatever reason, without all the fear and self consciousness?

I think the answer is both simple and intensely overwhelming: you unlearn.

You unlearn the training. You unlearn the what-will-they-say anxiety. You unlearn the lessons that taught you to show up this way even if it’s not your way.

And unlearning can only happen when you’re ready to do some uncomfortable healing.

Again, a simple answer, but not an easy one.