Healing Space | How not to let your online self take over your offline world

The problem with online personas is the same as the problem with offline personas: you start buying into the myth of yourself and so you get stuck there. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

Note to readers: Healing Space is a weekly series that helps you dive into your mental health and take charge of your wellbeing through practical DIY self-care methods.

There is a tone you use online that your followers are accustomed to by now. It could be serious, full of gravitas, philosophical, or offering sane advice on boostrapping, getting funding, making a pitch or working with start-ups. It could be cheerful banter and memes, making you sound like an easy-going fun guy. Perhaps you’re very intellectually analysing the books you read and the shows you watch. Perhaps you’re nationalist. Or a liberal. Or an activist. Or are just deeply concerned about wildlife, the planet or veganism. One person I follow on Instagram just changes into a new outfit every day which shouldn’t be a thing because that’s what everyone everywhere does, just privately, but that’s what they’re known for now. Whatever you have decided your persona is, that’s what people think you are. And sure, they can buy into that image because they don’t really know you. But the question is are you buying into that image of yourself?

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There’s a danger in believing you are who you say you are. Because, let’s face it, most of us are not. Even Nigella Lawson isn’t the smiling domestic goddess baking and hosting packed dinner tables, all achieved in a silk dressing gown at the snap of a finger. There is struggle, and bad hair days and burnt roux, and mismatched and chipped crockery and unpainted nails and no mood for anything but instanoodles. For everyone. However, the pressure of the online space isn’t only restricted to the images you put out of exotic holidays and parties and great food. It’s also in tone and image. You’re saying a whole lot about who you are and when you believe the image, you also start investing in that image, putting money, time and effort into justifying or sustaining the idea of who you are.

So, you buy more books if you’re a reader, because you can’t say you haven’t read the latest release; great clothes, if you’re a fashionista; watch more shows, even the bad ones in a genre, if that’s your thing. If you’re a great cook, you can’t let on too much that you haven’t cooked for a week now. You might be a yoga teacher who has put on too much weight in the pandemic because you lost the motivation to practice even as you taught. Or you’re a very irritable parent who posts endlessly about how adorable their child’s mischief is. Some of this is subconscious. You’re likely employing a defence mechanism that allows you to project, deflect, intellectualize or sublimate what you’re feeling or avoiding. You have no energy to do the cleaning so you post about self-acceptance when tired, or do a thread about 10 cleaning hacks. It gives you the reassurance that you do in fact know what you’re talking about, you are even in control of it all, see you know what to do, right? You’re just choosing another way of being today, and thus it doesn’t reflect on you. This alleviates guilt. As in part, so in whole. And so online, you become confident, efficient, capable, hard-working and a mentor-adviser, all that in life you aspire to be.

The problem with online personas is the same as the problem with offline personas: you start buying into the myth of yourself and so you get stuck there. Someone who is the clown of the group, always laughing, finds nobody takes them seriously if they finally summon the courage to say they’re going through a tough time. Worse, people avoid you until you feel better, because you’re the one who always makes others feel better and they don’t know how to reverse the role now. An expectation of how to treat you has been set. The therapist can’t show people they’re in a depression. The doctor doesn’t say that he is making himself sick with the advice he gives but doesn’t take, such as work-life balance. The teacher doesn’t reveal she can’t stand kids, and the finances guy can’t explain why he can’t get through the month on his salary or is behind on his taxes. The author who writes on relationships can’t express that her marriage is falling apart. All these little personality lies add up and build up anxiety. Soon you’re working really hard to maintain what people think you are because you have started to believe that is whom you ought to be.

People lie about who they are because they don’t have the courage to be who they are. Even authors make spelling mistakes and get the grammar wrong. Even therapists cry. Even financial wizards hand their money over to other financial planners or make bad investments. Even cooks make bad food and eat toast. Even people who love dogs and feed them are afraid of a gang of feral strays. The quest for the perfect persona makes you start living a lie and taking false or combative positions that are inauthentic. When you’re defending something you would do, like dip your gulab jamun in your coffee, because it’s cooler to say you wouldn’t, you’re down the slippery slope of living someone else’s image of your life. Now you’re just an actor pretending to be you.

Go on. Be your grasping, petty, insecure, irritable and erratic self when you need to be. Your online persona will survive your reality.