Last week I had a shocking notification from my lovely new iPhone. It told me that my average screen time was over 8 hours a day. If phones could be shocked, I think this one was, as it warned me that the screen time was just on this particular device. It didn’t even include my Mac. In my defence, I do use my phone to play music, podcasts, and Audible even when I’m asleep, but it was a wake up call to be mindful of the time I spend on social media.
Welcome to the Good Enough Counsellors social media toolkit for September. As this episode is going out at the start of August, I’m dedicating this first half to the subject of taking breaks, and in the second half, I’ll help you with ideas for your professional profiles for next month. I’ve had a new experience today. When I started chatting to my AI assistant about the outline for this podcast, I came away feeling like an imposter. Have you ever been shamed by a computer?
That was me this morning. It was because it wanted me to tell you all about digital detoxes and taking breaks, and I felt like a complete fraud. How could I lecture people on something that I find really tricky to do? So instead, I thought I’d share my own struggles and how I’ve been able to reach a place of peace to turn off my professional social media presence over the holidays and not to worry about doing so. Even if this doesn’t apply to your social media presence, it may help you to think about taking holidays from your client work, and you never know, it may help if you’re working through social media issues with a client.
Struggles with Taking Breaks from Social Media
So why is it a struggle to turn off social media from the perspective of being a business owner? For me, a lot of my work is generated by my social media presence. I’ve spent a lot of time, as my phone usage shows, building up a community, both in the Good Enough Counsellors Facebook group and on my business page. The scared part of myself normally has two objections to me taking a break. What if people forget about me, go elsewhere, and don’t come back?
And what if people need help while I’m away? This thinking and my unwillingness to take a break has led to several tricky situations where I’ve ended up trying to resolve community problems in various fields far from the Internet or in airports at unreasonable times for the day or night. Those aren’t particularly conducive to sensible decision making, and understandably, have led to my very loving partner feeling frustrated with how this is affecting me. The thing is, at the time, you recognize that it’s unreasonable to be expecting this much of yourself. But when it comes to planning in advance, when you’re at home and fully immersed in work, it feels harder to say no and set your boundaries.
So I’ve had to reach out for support from my coach and therapist. It’s taken me time to be able to make the decision to turn my community off. Although I’ve always found my group members supportive of this.
Overcoming Scarcity Thinking and Setting Boundaries
This is what I’ve learned. I had to acknowledge my scarcity thinking.
This was my belief that there’s a limit on the number of people who are available to be clients. If you’ve had the experience of growing up in a situation where there was a scarcity of resources, be it physical, such as food or warm clothes, or emotional, such as limited attention. It’s really easy to fall into the scarcity trap. And this leads to anxiety about there not being enough to go around and the fear that you’ll miss out. You become frightened that if you take your eyes off the ball, you’ll miss out on clients.
This is black and white thinking, an either or scenario. Either I will have to be on all the time, or I’ll have no clients. Either I have to be the only one or people will go elsewhere. It’s rather grandiose for me to expect people to only look to me for help, and it also adds to that sense of pressure to be always on. It’s actually helpful for me to acknowledge that there is lots of support for people out there.
I’m not the only person who can help. What a relief to be released from the god complex. Yes. Some potential clients may find other people to help them. Yes. Those other therapists may well be able to meet their needs better than me. And you know what? That’s okay. Ultimately, I want people to be helped, and if they find someone who suits them better, that’s great. It’s an important value for me to respect other people’s autonomy.
What purpose does it serve for me to try and hold on to people? Clients work best when they enter into relationships wholeheartedly, not when they’re under duress, because equally there will be people I can help. There will be people who I speak to, and those people, if they like what I do, are more than happy for me to take a break. And some, to be honest, are rather relieved that I do so. It gives them permission to take a break too.
And I think this is something that might help you if you’re thinking about having a holiday or taking time off from your social media presence. You’re modelling self care.
Managing Social Media Presence During Holidays
However, the world of algorithms on social media can mean that if you’ve been building up a following, you can be scared that not posting will affect your impact. Will you lose your momentum? There’s no doubt that consistent posting helps to build a reputation for reliability and increases trust.
It keeps you visible and keeps your followers engaged with you. I think your social media platform also acts as a source of pressure, with red downward arrows showing how you’re losing engagement or reducing the number of new followers. However, while social media platforms are valuable tools, don’t let their metrics dictate your content strategy. Remember, platforms have a vested interest in keeping you producing content and users engaged during the holidays when your engagement might naturally dip. Don’t let those numbers control your decisions.
Here’s some thoughts to help you. In the busy world of social media, if you don’t appear on a follower’s feed for a couple of weeks, they probably won’t even notice. I find it helpful on my return to do a post that stimulates a lot of engagement. This could be finding a hot topic they’d like to talk about, my personal favourite of a post about pets, or even sharing a photo or two of you on holiday. People do love to see the person behind the page, and human brains are wired to respond to faces, so don’t be shy.
I’m not suggesting you don’t have to disclose your location. But a photo of you looking relaxed and happy can be used to announce your return and that you’re refreshed and ready to resume seeing clients. If you’d like to maintain a social media presence, there are ways you can do this. Plan and schedule posts in advance, consider repurposing previous posts, and include a mixture of inspiring, informational, and interactive posts. I’d also suggest moving to fewer posts per week rather than expecting yourself to offer the same level of posting as when you’re working.
Maintaining a social media presence helps your consistency, but it does raise the question of what to do if your followers engage with your content. The fastest way to discourage your followers from commenting is to ignore them. After all, what’s the point if you don’t reply? This is important because the algorithms that decide whether to show your post to people measure the interest of a post on whether people are engaged with it. Therefore, it’s important to decide whether you’ll be available to check your social media feed, and if not, whether you’d prefer to take a complete break.
You could wait until you return to write replies, but that would lose immediacy. If you decide to reply while you’re away, why not introduce some boundaries, such as designating set times where you answer and use your platform’s reply function, such as in Meta Business Suite for Facebook and Instagram. This will help you to avoid the distractions of scrolling through posts. It also helps to tell your followers that you’re going to be taking a break as this will manage their expectations. You may want to direct them to alternative sources of support or ask them to make contact via email.
You can also set up automated replies in your messaging app. I think it’s helpful to give yourself some time to land when you return from holiday. I always find my return a busy time, catching up with the grocery shopping and washing, to say nothing of the emails that come in while I’m away. So give yourself some wriggle room too, perhaps an extra couple of days so that you can readjust and feel ready to face the world again. And in the spirit of modelling self care, I’ll take this opportunity to let you know that I plan to pause my Good Enough Counsellors community in the last two weeks of August. As there’ll be some pre-recorded podcasts, you’ll see some posts about those, and if I feel like it, I may post some thoughts on my business page, but I suspect not.
Ideas for Social Media Posts in September
Let’s now turn to thinking about your social media posts for September. For any of us who are used to the academic year, and that’s probably most of us, September often feels like a fresh start. That’s something that you could focus on. People have often had a rest over the summer, and as September begins to move into autumn, there’s often a sense of fresh energy.
You could use that to inform your thinking for your posts. Perhaps people will have had time to think over the summer, and now they’re ready to make changes and will be looking for therapy. Or perhaps, couples have spent time together on holiday and realised their relationship is not working and they need help. Think about some of the posts you see at the start of a new year and ask, how could you use those ideas for September? The other big change is, of course, the return to school.
You could use this as a theme to reach out to parents, children, and teachers. There’s the theme of transitions, of working with anxiety and academic or work related pressures. Additionally, young people will be preparing for university, and if you work with young people or their parents, you could talk about issues such as independence, safety, self care, and the empty nest. Turning to awareness days, there’s some important dates to note. It’s World Suicide Prevention Day on 10th September, and I think this is an important day for therapists to acknowledge.
For a discussion for posts about suicide, please do listen to episode 16, the social media toolkit for July. On 19th September, it’s youth mental health day, and I kid you not, wait for it, the theme for this year is stop the scroll! Mental health and smartphones with the hashtag control the scroll. This is a complete coincidence with the subject of this episode, or maybe you could call it synchronicity. There’s so much you could talk about around this subject even if you’re not working with young people.
You can appeal to their parents and grandparents, and you can ask for opinions about smartphone usage, whether it’s a good idea to ban phones below a certain age or in school. People will have plenty to say, and you can take a self care angle. There’s also a couple of awareness weeks you might like to use. September 11th marks the start of sexual health awareness week, and this year’s theme is exploring the links between sexual health and mental health. You’ll find more information about it at brooke.org.uk.
You may feel shy about talking about this on your social media feed. However, talking about it does help to break the stigma around sexual problems, and you can also use it as an opportunity to signpost people so that they know about the existence of psychosexual counsellors. If you know someone who is a psychosexual counsellor, you could perhaps interview them and feature them on your page explaining what the therapy is about, and perhaps doing some myth busting. The 23rd September marks bisexuality awareness week, and it’s actually bi visibility day on the 23rd. Use this to demonstrate your inclusivity.
For example, you could explain what bisexuality is and address common misconceptions, share about biphobia and the microaggressions that bisexual people face, signpost to relevant organisations, or talk about how therapy supports bisexual people. It’s always useful to have some posts where people can discuss fun subjects. This helps to widen your appeal, and keep people who may make referrals continue to engage. Some of the days you might like to consider using are ginger cat appreciation on 1st, read a book day on 6th, blame someone else on 13th, Batman day on 21st, and ask a stupid question on 28th. There’s so much scope with many awareness days, and in my group coaching offer, therapy growth group, I publish an idea for every day of the month.
If you’d like more help with your marketing and social media, please do reach out to me or visit my website, josephinehughes.com, and click on the work with me page. I hope these ideas will help stimulate your thinking and your confidence that you can use social media to reach out to people who need to know that counselling can help them. If you missed it, last week’s episode was from Samantha Lee of Samantha Lee Counseling, who inspired listeners with her story of how she’s made social media work for her, including publishing a book of poetry and creating her inner child CPD. If you’re about to take a holiday, I hope you’re able to relax away from work. And for my Scottish listeners with children, I’m aware that everything I said about the return to school in September actually applies to you right now.
I hope the transition goes well. Whatever stage you’re at, remember to prioritise your well-being over platform metrics. If you’re taking time off, know that you’ll return refreshed and ready to connect with your clients. Ditch that fear of missing out and know that you are enough. Thanks for listening.
Do come and join my Facebook community, Good Enough Counsellors. And for more information about how I can help you develop your private practice, please visit my website, Josephinehughes.com. If you found this episode helpful, I’d love it if you could share it with a fellow therapist or leave a review on your podcast app. And in closing, I’d love to remind you that every single step you make gets you closer to your dream. I really believe you can do it.