For all of its light, healing is a terribly dark thing.
Social media influencers dress it up in sunny filters, blinding smiles, perfectly executed yoga poses, ecstatic dance parties, full moon drum circles. They tell you, follow me — I have all the answers. They tell you, do this and you will be set free. They tell you spend hundreds of dollars on these products and my courses to be forever healed.
It all looks so good when you’re mindlessly scrolling Instagram or TikTok, doesn’t it? When you’re in the midst of confusion or pain or suffering, and the Goldilocks algorithm hits you just right. These posts seem to bear the answers you have been desperately searching for — and perhaps, to some degree, they are answers with merit. But there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to healing, and we should take such information with a grain of salt (this is, of course, true of all things). At the end of the day, a lot of this is simply the algorithm doing what it does best: funneling content it thinks you might like to the front page of your favorite apps. This inevitably becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts — or, rather, a media-fulfilled prophecy. Particularly in the mindless moments of constant scrolling, we are incredibly susceptible to any and all information that comes our way. The more we see it, the more it feels right. And the more it feels right, the more we believe.
But none of this means that the content we view is, in fact, right. With the exception of personal accounts from our friends and family, social media posts are usually a form of marketing designed to sell you on something — usually a product or a brand or a lifestyle. The rise of new age spiritual posters are not excluded from this phenomenon. There are certainly some that merely exist to share wisdom and the light of truth (I liken myself to be such a person but I am honest enough to admit that this platform is also a way to share my personal brand and portfolio as a writer) but these don’t necessarily fare well in terms of the algorithm. Social media marketing is something of a science, where the most skilled understand what variables make someone pause on a post long enough that similar content will continue to be generated in a user’s feed. And when it comes to modern spirituality, this tends to be the bright sunshine sort of folks who seem happy and free and bold (maybe even a little risque) and like they have everything figured out, like they are unburdened by the grueling capitalistic society to which many of us find ourselves beholden.
The truth is, many of these posters are not unburdened by capitalism. They, too, must make enough money to shelter and feed themselves — the difference is they do it by engaging our attention through social media. With enough eyes on their content, with enough people to sell their brand to, they will (theoretically) make enough money to survive. To do this, they must show what people (or the algorithm) want to see: pretty women dancing or traveling or doing yoga without a care in the world, that sort of thing. But I find, in the case of spiritual healing, this neglects to show what people might actually need to see which, as I initially stated, is the truth that healing can be a terribly dark thing.
It is not all sunshine and rainbows, bath bombs and face masks. Trauma is not immediately healed by singing bowls and drum circles and yoga retreats and ecstatic dance. There is no linear path that lifts us to the light where we shall forever stay. Social media spirituality tends to veer towards the realm of what I consider toxic positivity, where there is no mention of the harsh, perceptively uglier side of healing. The algorithm does not generally favor talk of the shadow self, of the darkness we must traverse to even know our light at all. Those self-proclaimed “leaders” might even balk at the mention of mental illness, or shame those who need things like therapy and psychiatric medication for not being spiritual enough. To them, we have everything we need to heal ourselves — or, rather, they have everything we need to heal ourselves. But we live in a complicated time where trauma and pain take many forms that no single modality can truly solve. If we live our lives comparing ourselves to social media “gurus,” we might always feel that we are nothing but broken people incapable of ever being fixed. And this is also what their marketing hinges upon — your supposed “brokenness.”
In my own experiences, I have died a thousand little deaths. I have grieved a multitude of different versions of myself. I have felt the bittersweet sting of being better only to have lost years of my life to wasted potential. I have cried, I have raged, I have sunken down into the deep, black depths of my pain and feared I might never resurface again. And all of this is something I have hardly ever seen touched upon by the pretty social media posts of people all but begging me to pay to play in their carefully edited spiritual paradise. True spiritual healing takes a balanced approach, one where we do not forsake our darkness in favor the light. We must embody both aspects to truly know and love ourselves. This is, perhaps, easier said than done. But it is something we all inevitably do —- even if we don’t post about it.
With Much Love,
Nykhia Azostos
