Is Your Phone Your Therapist? Hopecore Therapy - Your Sounding Board

Is your therapist your phone? With the rise of Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms, millions are turning to social media for relationship advice, trauma healing tips, and attachment style education. But while self-help content can feel empowering, it often creates the illusion of healing without delivering real transformation.

If this episode resonates with you, book in a call: https://calendly.com/relationshipsuccesslab-info/discovery-call

Dr. Sarah explores why scrolling through relationship reels, attachment style posts, and narcissism content is not the same as therapy. She explains how algorithms push extreme and simplified messages—leading to self-diagnosis, confirmation bias, and avoidance of real healing work. Social media might increase awareness, but without embodiment and professional guidance, most people remain stuck in toxic cycles, anxious attachment, or trauma bonds.

Key insights from this episode:

• Why social media advice on attachment styles, narcissism, trauma, and boundaries can be misleading
• How scrolling triggers dopamine hits that mimic progress but keep you stuck
• The difference between education vs. true healing
• Why oversimplified “therapy language” online fuels anxiety and self-diagnosis
• The importance of somatic therapy, breathwork, and nervous system healing for breaking trauma patterns
• How reprogramming your subconscious mind and building secure attachment leads to lasting relationship success

If you’ve been relying on social media as your “therapist” but still feel anxious, avoidant, or stuck in harmful relationship patterns, this episode will help you understand why—and show you the path to real, embodied healing.

Transcript

0:00

Hello. Welcome back my friends. If you dunno who I am, I am Dr. Sarah Award-winning relationship psychologist, helping high achievers and harmful relationships and build self-worth. So let's get to it. Today we are going to be talking about social media and actually. Is your therapist, your phone? I unfortunately see this a lot and I have a lot of compassion for people, by the way, who are using their phone as a therapy or as being their therapist. Um, but I also have a lot of frustrations that I'm going to share with you. And my frustrations are really based on my knowledge as a professional, but also my personal experience as well. And here's what the trend seems to be. Many individuals are going to platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, whatever it might be, and they are using these platforms to. Find people who are therapists or even just influencers who are not therapists, they're not qualified. They have absolutely no background, but they say some really good stuff and it sounds amazing, and so let's follow them and let's really absorb all of their information. And by the way, this is not, uh, bashing anybody at all. I have so much love for everybody out there who is either providing this information or who is. Consuming this information, but I am gonna be talking about a massive problem here. Now, the thing is, is that a lot of these people who are providing this information online, they're providing it from a place of really wanting to give access to information. That historically was never accessible. They're trying to develop society's knowledge on mental health issues, on relationship issues, on relationship dynamics, and on how it is that we feel about ourselves on attachment styles. And all of this stuff is incredibly helpful.'cause historically all of that information would have just been exclusively heard if you were either working in the field or if you were actively receiving therapy. And so outside of those remits, it's something that, you know, wouldn't necessarily be spread too much. So thankfully we have the internet, we've got lots of information available. Amazing. However, this is the problem that I'm going to be talking about, is that many people that I come across who have approached me. Or people who I start talking to who then end up being clients of mine or people who you know, just are curious about the work that I do. They start telling me about how they have consumed so much information and it's been super helpful for them. And so then when I ask them, well, how is your journey? How are you feeling right now? How is your relationship with your partner? How is the dating scene going? Or even how is the self-talk inside of your head going? And when I start really asking them, well, okay, great. Like if this information has been so helpful for you. How are you? Like, how are things going? And the answer is not actually as great because the answer is more down the path of. Well, you know what? I've been working on this thing for such a long time. I've been working on my attachment style for five years. I've been in this on and off relationship for seven years. I am really focusing in on my negative self-talk. Um, but I still notice it coming up, especially when I'm in work. Or actually, I was on a date the other week and I just really panicked when they didn't respond to me, and so. It is conflicting, right? It's not. Then I'm asking them more. If you're saying that all this information that you are consuming online is so helpful and so great. But at the same time, you're really struggling. You're telling me that, you know, you are, you are still spending a lot of time and energy working on this stuff. Like how, how is, how do the two things sit together? That, to me that sounds really contradictory. Right, and the, the issue is that we are bombarded with endless content out there. There is, there are endless reels on attachment styles, on narcissism, on trauma on. How to know he's the one on red flags on communication, on boundaries, on ah, it just goes on and on. There are endless reels out there, and as much as they can be really helpful, it's also really important to recognize actually a lot of them are. Are ill-informed and the thing that shows up on your phone tends to be the thing that gets most views tends to be the thing that is most extreme in the messaging because that is the thing that gets most views. And so if it gets most views, it is going to grow in terms of the views that it gets. And it is gonna be the thing that shows up. Again and again on your phone, but it's not necessarily to say that that is the correct thing for you, and so you enter this realm where you are just constantly scrolling. And actually what happens is that people start to confuse scrolling with healing. They believe that the more data they have, the more information that they get bombarded with, that is the thing that is going to create their healing. They are not synonymous, they are not the same thing. Scrolling and consuming information, that's education, but. If you are going to be educated, you also need to be able to critique the education that you are getting because believe me, anybody can put anything out there online, and I don't even need to be the person to tell you that. Like, you know that anybody can put anything online. It could sound really good, but it could also be a massive scam. Who knows? And the thing is, is that education, receiving that data and information is not the same as healing. But actually what ends up happening is that, and by the way, this is. Also how the algorithms is working at the moment. It, it really plays on the hit of dopamine that we get, and so our brain literally gets wired to seek out more and more dopamine. It's kind of that feel good. Hormone. Um, but it is very addictive. It is instantaneous. It gives us that hit. And so what happens is that the more that we consume information, that causes a bit of chaos, but a bit of hope, that's when we get a dopamine hit. And whenever we consume information that validates our chaos and our anxiety. That's also when we get dopamine hit. So we are constantly getting hit by dopamine, which gets us addicted to watching these reels. And we believe that we are healing by watching all of this information and consuming this content. But actually what's happening in that moment is that our brain is getting bombarded with emotion after emotion, after emotion after emotion, and it just keeps going on and on. But all of that keeps spiking our dopamine levels and so. We end up watching this information where we think, oh my goodness, it describes me perfectly. It's like you are talking to me. Exactly. And when it's free, when it's accessible, when it's reliable, when it's consistent, when it's always there. Because by the way, your phone is literally always there, right? It's like a limb. It's an attachment to your hand, like you don't go anywhere without it. And so. When you are embroiled in this, you are constantly getting dopamine after dopamine, after dopamine here, and, and so you get the illusion of progress. And you get the illusion of self-awareness, but actually it's passive consumption and you are getting educated. Perhaps your knowledge database is increasing. And by the way, there's a lot to be said about who it is that you are listening to, but you know, your, your knowledge database may be increasing and so that might suggest that you are increasing self-awareness. But actually the two things are very different. It's kind of like me saying to you, okay, so if you don't know how to ride a bicycle, go read a book about riding a bicycle. It's not really gonna help you learn how to actually ride a bicycle. The way that you learn how to ride a bike is by getting on the damn bicycle. That is really how you learn how to ride a bicycle, and you can read and consume as much information as you like. Just like reading a book about riding a bicycle, but if you never actually do the real work, like the real embodiment, then we are not even in the same room. We are talking about very, very different things. And so unfortunately the danger that happens, and many of these people, and by the way this might resonate with you, is that there is a shallow understanding of very complex issues because. All of these issues that we're talking about in terms of attachment styles, in terms of narcissism, in terms of trauma, in terms of, uh, boundaries, all of these things are incredibly complex. I mean, there are centuries worth of research that goes into this and also so much therapy that goes into this to really support people's healing. These complex issues are reduced to 30 seconds of oversimplification. This is not okay, and people then start to overly identify with some of these issues. And therapy language has been weaponized because everybody is. Gas citing. Everybody is traumatized. Everybody is an narcissist. Everybody is self diagnosing in terms of their attachment style, in terms of what is going on for them. And guess what? The way that the algorithm works, it will con. Form it will confirm every single bias that you have. So if you believe that you are wounded, if you have self-diagnosed, uh, your attachment style of having an anxious attachment style, guess what? The algorithm is going to bombard you with more attachment styles. And then you are going to have confirmation bias where you believe, oh my goodness, this is definitely true for, for me. And you just enter this rabbit hole where you are reinforcing the attachment style being anxious. As opposed to really figuring out how to get that get out of there, how to really develop a healthy attachment style. Or for example, you might be, uh, diagnosing your partner or somebody else with narcissism and guess what? The algorithm picks up the word narcissism and it's gonna show you more and more narcissism and you are going to be further down that hole of believing it is definitely narcissism. And so what all of this does, it gives you. Incorrect information. You get confirmation bias. You then end up entering this illusion of doing a lot of work because you are consuming a lot. But actually what it does is it enforces your avoidance because you are consuming more and more as opposed to doing the actual hard work. So let's talk about the actual hard work. The actual hard work is really about embodiment. Like riding the bicycle. You don't read a book about riding bicycle. You have to ride the bicycle to learn how to ride a bike. And so if you are doing the healing work, I mean you can read as much as you want, you can listen to as many podcasts as you want. You can scroll on Instagram and listen to as many reels as you want. The real work is actually in embodiment and part of it, the thing that I am really massive on, and I, I believe this is something that everybody should do, and I ruthlessly believe this is really about healing the trauma that is stuck in your body because. Believe me, the body always keeps score. Every single trauma in any relationship that we would've had, which would've influenced our attachment styles, would, would, which would influence how we respond to somebody, how we see somebody, how we manifest and attract certain relationships. Everything stems from how we are internally, and part of it is our nervous system that really needs shifting and healing. Part of it is really about our vibrational frequency, and unfortunately, many people out there are vibrating at a very low level, and so you're vibrating at a low level because you. Had a lot of trauma and if you've had a lot of trauma, then guess what? You are going to end up vibrating at an even lower level, and that is what you are going to manifest. You're going to manifest more trauma relationships, trauma bonds, and further unhealthy attachment styles. And so we're really needing to break that. We are needing to start healing the nervous system. And so there's a lot of somatic exercises that we can do, and this is something that I do day in and day out with clients. But with that, there is also a lot of. Active breath work. So breath work. I mean, there are, I think over 500 different types of breath work exercises out there. But when we are really engaging in active breath work, that is really where the magic is because that is when we start activating and through the activation of certain traumas. That's really when we start to process and start to heal. But again, please make sure that if you are entering this work, you do it with a professional. With you directly with you. I'm not talking about watching somebody else on Instagram doing a reel on breath work, because that's, that's only half the story, right? Like that's a 32nd reel. It's easy to consume great knowledge, but it reinforces your avoidance. So really we are needing to start with the body, so it somatic awareness. Somatic processing of physical trauma, doing the breath work, doing the activation work around the trauma and processing it. But then also we need to start reprogramming our subconscious mind because the subconscious mind. Governs 95% of your behaviors, of your actions, the choice and partner. And really, these are the things that need to be shifted so that we can change your core beliefs about yourself. These are things that are hidden under the surface, but they are scripts that keep running, right? So you can watch as many reels as you like, but actually that's going to avoid you looking at your real core belief, the stuff that is really inside of you. So you are meeting somebody. To literally be with you, someone who is a professional, not. Oh my God, not an influencer. And this is really where the shift happens, and that's when you stop identifying yourself as being broken or anxiously attached and really start embodying the secure trait, and you are really having to curate and really live intentionally in this moment. If any of this resonates with you, please get in touch. My details are in the show notes below, and if you've enjoyed it. Please share it with a friend or a family member.'cause if you found it helpful, I bet you that one of them will do too. Until next time, take care of yourselves.