Josephine Hughes (She/Her)
This week in therapy growth group, I was talking to a member of the group and they were saying about social media and how they’re really quite a private person.
And I think this, again, is very true of people who are introverts is they tend to be quite private people and the thought of exposing themselves on social media to maybe their family and friends just makes them want to curl up and die. And this can really, really put you off going on social media because you feel like you’re going to be exposed.
You feel like you won’t have any privacy.
I think one of the most bizarre moments that I’ve had as a result of publishing my podcast for transgender parents gloriously unready was this week I had a phone call from. From a TV production company and they were asking if I would be willing to participate in an exploratory pilot that they were running.
Would I agree to being filmed with someone with opposing opinions to me to investigate whether or not it was possible to change people’s minds when they’re on opposite sides of the divide. Sounds not unreasonable.
Until they told me that it was a social experiment and I would be handcuffed to said person for up to 36 hours, I can tell you it wasn’t a difficult decision. I didn’t have to pause and think and I told them straight away, it’s a hard no.
Not only would I hate to be handcuffed to someone who was gender critical, I would hate to be handcuffed to anyone for any length of time. I’m definitely somebody who needs my space and being in close proximity to anyone for that length of time would feel like torture.
Why am I telling you this? Because I think for many of you who are introverts, the thought of being on social media feels like torture.
The thought of having to do videos, perform, take photographs of yourself and share them online, let people into your inner world, it’s just anathema. The thought of being an influencer on social media is something that simply makes you want to vomit.
Welcome to the Good Enough Counsellors Podcast and the Social Media Toolkit for Introverts.
I’m Josephine Hughes and today I’m going to share how introverts can use social media as a client, attraction, tool and all the time stay true to their values. So if you think I’m not extrovert enough for social media, this episode is for you.
And I’m also going to include some ideas for the month of December so that you’ve really got no excuse not to post.
But first, I’D like to tell you a little bit of a story about the conversation I had with my daughter just after I’d published the first series of Gloriously Unready. It was a big thing for me to do. All the family knew about it, and she actually listened to it all.
And we sat down together and what she said to me is, mum, I think you’ve been wanting to write this for a very long time.
And she absolutely hit the nail on the head, because when I did that podcast, I did really pour all my thoughts into it and thinking about so much of what I wanted to say about being the mum of transgender children, but also just generally being a mum. And my daughter was able to recognize that when she listened to it.
Now, I don’t think that I would ever have got to the point of publishing a podcast if I hadn’t already been creating and creating social media posts. And one thing led to another and it eventually led to the podcast. And I think if you’re someone who’s an introvert, you’ve often got a lot of ideas.
You’re very thoughtful and reflective, and it may be that you’ve thought to yourself, perhaps one day, I’d love to publish a book or I’d love to share these ideas that I’ve got, but you don’t really know where to start or how to do them. And social media can actually be a great opportunity for you to begin to share your ideas.
And it might be that once you’ve got a little bit of confidence in writing posts, that might then enable you to think about writing longer form articles. So this would be blogs for your website and maybe sharing those blogs and sharing those articles elsewhere.
Or you could write blogs for, say, a platform like LinkedIn or Substack, for example. So when you’re an introvert, I believe actually you’ve got an awful lot to share with the world.
And being on social media or using one of these platforms can actually give you an opportunity to share them. And one of the things I’d like to talk about is how as an introvert, you’re somebody who really can offer something for other people to think about.
And I’m going to share some reasons why that is. One of the people that I like following on Facebook is someone called G Sabeni Roberts.
And what G posts about is the experience of being non binary and talks a lot about equal opportunities and talks about inclusivity.
And I think that G’s posts are so helpful and I really love to read them because they are so thoughtful Now, I went to a conference in June of this year and G was actually at the conference and I saw them as we were crossing over the one of the bridges over the Tyne in Newcastle and I dashed up to them and I said, oh, hello, I follow you on Facebook, so nice to see you here. Can I have a photograph with you?
And honestly, their face was an absolute picture because you could just sort of almost see the sort of horror in their eyes to be confronted with this person. They’ve very graciously agreed to take a photograph with me.
And obviously G is quite an introvert and being face with someone like me with all my enthusiasm was perhaps a little bit too much for them.
But really what I wanted to share with you is just how helpful and thoughtful G’s posts are and they really do make me think about issues around inclusivity.
And I think when you are someone who’s very thoughtful and reflective, you can share things that really make people think and they enjoy reading what you’ve got to say.
Now, I’m somebody who is quite talkative and I always remember when I was in my counseling diploma course that we’d be asked a question and there’d be a couple of us who would rattle off the answers really quickly, but in quite a shallow way. And then gradually, after a little bit of time, you might get.
One of the quieter members of the group would decide to contribute and they’d say something and you just think, I don’t know really why I bothered saying anything earlier because I’m absolutely, absolutely nailed it.
And I think that’s the thing about being an introvert, is that you may not say a lot, but what you’ve got to say is usually really thoughtful and you’ve spent a great deal of time reflecting on it before you share it. And this can be absolutely brilliant for social media. You don’t have to have a lot of quantity, but quality really does count.
And you can reach people with your thoughtful, reflective posts.
Actually, your personality will connect with people, clients will like who you are and you’ll attract the sorts of people that you love to work with just by being you. You don’t have to be any different. You are enough as you are.
Don’t need to be more extrovert, because if you were being more extrovert, you wouldn’t be as authentic as you are now. And authenticity really does shine out on social media.
So I’d love to encourage you that for you, if you’re an introvert and you’ve been thinking about social media, you can do it, but do it in the way that feels really true to you. You don’t have to do what everybody else is doing. You can be you and that will help you to connect with the right people for you.
So showing up in a way that’s true to you can build trust with clients who prefer someone who’s thoughtful, calm and reflective. They might want that in their counsellor. So you don’t have to be any different to the way you already are.
And you can actually do that with the sorts of posts that you publish. You don’t have to do high energy videos and reels where you’re dancing across the room or doing something like acting as many people do on reels.
You can do simple things. You could do something like a reel of your office. You don’t actually have to appear on camera if you don’t want.
You can do posts that are just long form posts. So something where you write quite a bit. You can do something like carousel posts on Instagram.
I was reading recently Vicky Jakes, who came along to the Therapy growth group to share with us about Facebook ads and Google Ads. She’s somebody who follows social media really carefully to look at trends.
And she said one of the biggest accounts at the moment is the Kamala Harris campaign account. And what she’s seeing on there is that they are posting a carousel post for virtually every other post.
So if you don’t know what a carousel post is, that’s a post which is quite a few different slides.
Now, those sorts of posts can really suit introverts because what you can do is you can put a little bit of text on each of the slides and effectively what you’re doing is you’re sharing something that’s a little bit longer and people can just sit and read through that slide.
The advantage of carousel posts is they’re usually made up of several different slides and you have to swipe through them to see all parts of the post. And until you’ve done that, the carousel post will keep appearing on people’s feeds. So it gives people more opportunity to engage with you.
And by the sounds of it, carousel posts are working really well on Instagram at the moment because otherwise someone like the Kamala Harris campaign wouldn’t be using them. So although there’s been this big, big emphasis on videos and reels recently, in fact, it looks like there’s other things that are trending as well.
And those sorts of carousel posts may well suit you if you’re an introvert. So you can use posts that really match your style and suit who you are as a person.
Now, with social media, it’s actually something that you can use in a couple of ways. So you could connect a social media account to your website or your directory entry so that people can find out a little bit more about you.
And if you’re using it for that purpose, you actually don’t need to be posting on there a huge amount of times. You don’t have to post every day. You could just be putting a few thoughtful posts up over the course of a week or a month.
And then that just gives people a little bit of a flavor of you and it will back up what you’ve already said in your directory entry. And the other way you can use social media is for people who perhaps are thinking about therapy but aren’t quite sure about it.
And I talk about this a little bit more in episode 16, which is talking about when clients are in that pre contemplation stage where they’re thinking, I need to resolve this problem, but they’re not really sure how. And it might be that you publish a thoughtful post about, about something that you’re working with.
For example, you could be talking about grief and they’re thinking, well, should I have therapy about grief or not? And they’ll start reading your posts.
And because you’re quite a thoughtful, reflective person, what you’re saying will probably really speak to them and that will help them to make a decision to maybe have therapy. And if they’re familiar with you, they’ll probably make a decision to have therapy with you.
So social media can be quite powerful in helping people to make that decision to work with a therapist.
Another way that you can feel about social media, if you’re an introvert, is it feels like you’re almost performing as though you’ve got to get up in front of an audience. So I’d really like to offer you a reframe around this.
And this is to think that actually what you’re doing is you’re not engaging with followers, you’re not engaging with an audience.
What you’re doing is you’re creating a community around you, your little corner of the Internet, where you’ve got this lovely community of people who like your staff, who like to read what you’ve got to say and perhaps reply with thoughtful answers as well.
And that in a way, you know, you’re building up a lovely community of people who are interested in your values, who share some of the ways that you look at the world, and that actually by being on Social media, what you’re actually doing is helping them.
And one of the things that I find when I’m struggling and when I don’t really know what to say or I’m thinking, oh, I don’t think I can do it, I’m not good enough to do this, is I try and remind myself about why I’m doing it.
And I think about the fact that I want to help therapists reach more clients and that if I do that, more clients are going to find out about therapy and more clients will receive therapy and that the world is going to be a better place because of the ripple effect of what I’m doing. Sounds grandiose, but that really helps me when I’m struggling and thinking I’m not good enough.
And I think the same could be true for you if you think you’re too introvert and you need to be more extrovert.
But actually think about, I could be helping someone here and even if they never become a client or there’s somebody who you wouldn’t be able to work with, perhaps because you know them in another way, but you’re still going to be helping them. And you never know, people might recommend you as a result of what you’re doing on social media.
So rather than thinking, you know, I’m out there broadcasting, you could see it as I’m out there connecting with people. I’m helping people. I’m creating a community around these really important values.
This week in Therapy Growth group, I was talking to a member of the group and they were saying about social media and how they’re really quite a private person. And I think this, again is very true of people who are introverts is they tend to be quite private people.
And the thought of exposing themselves on social media to maybe their family and friends just makes them want to curl up and die. And this can really put you off going on social media because you feel like you’re going to be exposed, you feel like you won’t have any privacy.
So I like to just address that as well. As part of this episode, what I’d like to say is that you can put boundaries in place to protect your privacy.
So I’m really careful about whether I use my personal page to publish anything that’s public. So I do keep my friends, as in my Facebook friends, to a very small list.
And it’s to people who I know in real life rather than people I’ve met here, there and everywhere.
Because for me, I want to be quite private on my social media about my personal life partly because I’m protecting my two daughters who are transgender. So I’m very, very careful about that.
But I think you’ll agree that you probably do see quite a lot of me on social media, and that’s because I have a separate social media entity, and it’s very separate to my personal entity. And so I’m quite careful about making sure that I keep a boundary between the personal and the professional.
And I think you can see your social media as a professional platform, and I think you can see it as psycho education. It’s not that you have to share anything personal.
I know some therapists do, and some therapists are really happy to do that and are comfortable with that. But that doesn’t mean that you have to do it. You can make sure that your therapy platform is something that’s a professional platform.
And on it, you do things like psycho education, for example, things that you would do with clients when you’ve got them in front of you so you don’t have to make your professional social media page something that really exposes you personally.
And one of the things that I’ve got in Therapy Growth group is some journaling questions to help you reflect on this whole subject of what you’re willing to talk about online and how much you self disclose. And this can apply to your social media presence as well as your directory entries and your website.
And I do offer a lot more support within Therapy Growth group to help people develop their social media platforms in a way that feels authentic and true to who they are themselves. So now I’ve talked all about why I think introverts can be on social media. Let’s move on to talk about how you could use social media for December.
Obviously, as we get towards the end of the month, we’re going to hit Christmas.
So if you’re thinking about what do I do while I’m on holiday, remember I did talk about this on episode 24 of the podcast where I talk all about managing your social media over the holidays and what you can do to help yourself and to make it nice and easy for you. But here’s a few thoughts that may help you along the way.
You’re probably going to be busy as well, so during December, you may well be like me, and you’re organizing yourself to do all sorts of other things and looking after family and all those sorts of things that can go on for many of us in December. So what you can think about is could you reuse posts that you’ve already published?
So go back over your history, work out what’s gone down well, and do a little bit of judicious reposting. People really don’t remember. And if you’ve been posting for a while, you can go back to last December and look at what worked for you then.
And also as well, you can share other people’s posts too, so you don’t have to think about creating something new all the time during a time when you’re really busy. And there’s quite a lot of fun days in December that you can use just to create some noise within your community to get people to post funny things.
So for example, you’ve got Christmas Jumper day on the 12th, which is also used as a day where you raise money for Oxfam.
You could get people to post pictures of themselves in their Christmas jumper and you could share if you wanted a photo of yourself in a Christmas jumper.
You’ve also got a day on 16 December called the Stupid Toy Day, and you could ask people for their memory of stupid toys or share something silly that you’ve got. So there’s things that you can do that bring in a little bit of fun, a little bit of lightness in your feed and a little bit of community engagement.
So you can use December for those sorts of things. But what I’d also like to think about is how December can actually be quite a difficult time for our clients.
And I think as a therapist, this is something that we can really use December for. If you’re somebody who blogs, I’ve got some ideas for you and you could also use these in your social media.
So you could blog around the subject and then take particular parts of your blog and turn those into posts. Or you could use these ideas as posts on your social media.
So for example, one of the things that can be really difficult, and you probably don’t need me to tell you this, is that family dynamics can get really difficult at this time of year. So one of the things you could do is talk about boundaries and offer self care tips for people who find their families difficult.
And I’ve spoken to a therapist in the past who says that during this time of year she’ll actually republish the blogs that she’s done in the past on this subject because there will be clients who are thinking, oh, how am I going to face going home at Christmas?
And she actually gets people phoning her up before Christmas because they need some therapy around this whole awful thought of having to face difficult family members during the Christmas period. So this could be something that you could really think about for this time of year.
The stress that family gatherings can bring, you know, the challenging relationships, the pressure to meet family expectations.
And you might want to offer practical solutions such as boundary setting, helping people to be self compassionate towards themselves and how they can stay grounded during family events. And there’s a day coming up where you could publish this. It’s a little bit later on in the month.
It’s National Cat Herders Day on the 15th of December. And it always makes me smile when I read that day because, yeah, let’s face it, it’s really difficult to herd cats.
And that’s what it can feel like when you’re with your family. It’s also coming up at the beginning of December, it’s Grief Awareness Week.
And I think this is so, so pertinent for us as therapists who are working with clients who might be grieving because this festive period, as we know, can really amplify those feelings of grief and loss. The change in family circumstances, it just can be a really difficult time of year. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that.
So you might like to talk about acknowledging what it’s like for people and to help them think about ways they may want to honour their loved ones during this time.
And I think it can be helpful to acknowledge loss and let people express their feelings and encourage them that they are allowed to feel their feelings. And that might include include feeling joyful and not feeling guilty about it.
How to remember people and reminisce, which while painful, can also be quite healing. How to cope with other people’s expectations at Christmas if you’re grieving and just general coping strategies.
Another idea for a post or blog would be the difficulties of the finances or navigating social expectations during the festive period. And there’s another great day that I think you could use for that and that’s Christmas card day on the 9th of December.
And you could almost use the idea of do you still send Christmas cards?
Or that expectation that you should send Christmas cards as a way of moving into talking about the financial and social pressures of Christmas and how that impacts people’s mental health.
These whole expectations around gift giving, about hospitality, about traveling, and provide practical tips such as setting boundaries or thinking about low cost alternatives and different things that people could do. And if you’re thinking about low cost alternatives, you could invite people who follow you to give their ideas as to what they’ve done in the past.
Like for example, a friend of mine, a couple of years ago, gave me a beautiful box of homemade fudge because they decided that they were going to very much do a recyclable Christmas and do things that they could make. And it was a wonderful Christmas present. I really enjoyed it.
And to be able to share those sorts of ideas with people and ask your audience to share them, that can be something that people really enjoy talking about. And then finally, the fourth idea is about taking care of your mental health during the darker months. So during the winter.
And we’ve got something coming up called the Festival of Winter Walks, and that’s coming up. It’s for a whole month, and it starts from the 17th of December.
And in here you can acknowledge how the shorter days affect people, how the darkness affects people, how holiday stress affects people as well, and offer ideas as to how people could actually deal with that sort of stress. And the shorter, darker days. And obviously being outside and walking can be one of the things that can really help people’s mental health.
So again, you could just use that idea of the Festival of Winter Walks as an introduction to talking about people’s mental health. So there’s a whole host of ideas there for you to be able to reach out to people in December.
I’m publishing this episode in November in the hope that, if necessary, you’ll be able to get ahead. You don’t have to do all of these ideas, you could just pick one and expand on it.
And what I’d like to say is, if at the moment your social media page is languishing unloved and you haven’t really put anything into it for a while, just have a think about which of those ideas might suit your particular types of client, who you’re trying to reach out to.
And if you’re an introvert and the thought of doing a whole load of stuff on social media just sounds like too much, remember that because you’re a thoughtful, reflective person, the types of posts that you do will reach people who appreciate that approach. And it doesn’t have to be a whole lot of posts, it can just be that quality post, just something that makes people stop and think.
And in doing that, you’re really making a difference to people’s lives. So I’d love to encourage you to be brave, to be you, and to share from your heart, because that will really speak to people. Thanks for listening.
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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.