Self-Disclosure on Your Website and Social Media: To Share or Not to Share?
Ah, self-disclosure. The age-old therapist dilemma. All of us therapists have to navigate our level of comfort with personal sharing in the therapy room, but what about online? With therapists increasingly engaging with folks on social media and through their websites, the self-disclosure decision has expanded beyond the couch and has become more complicated.
In the age of influencers and 24/7 content creation, it may feel like you have to share everything about your personal life in order to compete on social media. You may watch other therapists or entrepreneurs online and think you have to match their level of self-disclosure.
Neither of these things is true.
You don’t have to become a social media influencer to fill your caseload, and you don’t have to share at a level you’re not comfortable with to market your private practice effectively.
The role of self-disclosure online
What you do have to do, though, is build trust. Deciding to start therapy and searching for the right therapist is an intensely vulnerable process for most people, so the more we can show our humanness, the easier it will be for clients to make informed decisions about their mental healthcare.
Now, “showing your humanness” doesn’t mean sharing every personal detail about your life. It means showing your face via professional photos, choosing colors and fonts for your website that represent your personality, and offering enough information for potential clients to get a sense of what it’s like to sit across from you.
Think about it from a client’s perspective: you’re looking for a therapist you feel safe with. You have no idea what “CBT”, “DBT”, or “EMDR” mean, and all you want to know is, “Will this person understand me and my unique situation?”
Without calling several therapists, retelling your (potentially traumatic and triggering) story over and over again, how are you supposed to choose the right clinician?
Self-disclosure decreases barriers to care and helps make therapy more accessible. If folks can feel your personality through your website, they’ll spend less time searching for a therapist and start therapy sooner. If people resonate with your story or your background, they’ll trust you more easily, knowing they won’t have to spend time and energy explaining parts of their life that another therapist might not personally understand.
When you show parts of yourself and your therapeutic style online, you’re helping your future clients feel seen. You’re bridging the gap between isolation and connection. You’re revolutionizing mental health care by pulling back the “blank slate” veil that many therapists have been told to wear online.
Get clear on your goals
Before deciding the level of self-disclosure that works for you, it’s important to clarify your marketing goals. Using social media and your website without a clear reason why is like driving without a destination. Perhaps enjoyable on a day off, but when you’ve got bills to pay and goals to achieve, you’re not going to get very far by wandering aimlessly.
Take a look at your business right now. What are your 6-month goals? One-year goals? Three-year goals?
Are you trying to fill your caseload? Expand your services? Create and sell courses and coaching packages?
Take a few minutes right now and jot down your most urgent 6-month goal, 1-year goal, and 3-year goal.
Knowing these goals will help you decide how much and what kind of self-disclosure makes sense for you and your practice. For instance, if you have a 6-month goal of filling your caseload, you may focus on aligning your in-session sharing with your online sharing. On the other hand, if you have a 3-year goal to be a world-renowned author, speaker, and eventually let go of your private practice, you may focus on increasing your visibility and expanding your comfort level with self-disclosure.
There’s no right answer here, and everyone’s private practice goals are different. The most important thing is that you’re self-disclosing in a way that aligns with your values and goals.
How to decide how much personal information to share on your website
No matter how boundaried with self-disclosure you are as a therapist, there’s something about you that keeps your clients coming back. There’s something about the way you hold space that makes your aligned clients feel seen, heard, and understood. These are the things to convey and communicate on your website so that potential clients can feel what it’s like to work with you before even picking up the phone or scheduling that first appointment.
To decide how much to self-disclose on your website, ask yourself the following questions:
What do my clients know about me within the first few sessions?
What do my clients know about me after a few months working together?
What are the things that all of my clients know about me, whether I’ve explicitly shared these details or not?
After answering these questions, consider adding most (if not all) of these personal details to your website. These personal details are likely part of the reason your existing aligned clients keep coming back, and they communicate your “humanness,” which is so important for therapy seekers to see.
If you’re still struggling to decide how much personal information to include on your website, try answering these questions as well:
What parts of my life do none of my clients know about?
What aspects of my life are important for me to keep private?
Knowing your answers to these questions can help you determine what your self-disclosure boundaries are. If you’re clear on what you don’t share, you’ll have an easier time staying within your integrity when you feel the pressure to disclose more personal information, especially on social media.
How to decide how much personal information to share on social media
Similar to your website, self-disclosing on social media should align with your disclosure style in session. The questions that you answered above, regarding your website, will help you determine what to share and what not to share on social media as well.
The beauty of using social media to market your practice is that it gives potential clients a chance to get a more real-time, behind-the-scenes sense of who you are and what your therapeutic style feels like. In a lot of ways, social media has made therapy much more accessible, especially because it provides therapy-seekers a chance to experience the way you hold space before contacting you. Basically, social media has pulled back the “blank slate” veil that I mentioned before.
Because social media is, well, social, there are more frequent opportunities for self-disclosure than on your website. Each time you create a new post, you have the option to disclose personal information, but again, it comes down to knowing your boundaries beforehand. You don’t have to share anything you’re not comfortable sharing, and you can still clearly show your personality without sharing every personal detail about your life.
How to keep your professional and personal life separate online, but still show your personality
If you’ve clarified your goals and boundaries, and you’ve decided that you want to keep most of your personal life out of your private practice marketing efforts, you might be wondering, “How do I show my personality to potential clients?”
Just because you won’t be sharing personal details, doesn’t mean you should never show yourself. Remember, therapy seekers need to see you, so don’t hide yourself online simply because you don’t want to share personal information.
One of the easiest ways to connect with your potential clients online without sharing a whole bunch of personal info is through video. Showing yourself on video lets people see what you look like, hear what your voice sounds like, and feel what your presence feels like - all of which help people feel more at ease when the time comes to start therapy.
Social media makes it extremely easy to create and share video content, but also consider adding video to your website. A quick 3-minute video on your homepage of you explaining who you work with and why can go a long way. Remember, your website is the end-goal for all online connections, so make sure your visitors can feel your personality as much as they do on your social profiles.
“I only share when I have no unmet needs that I’m trying to fill. I firmly believe that being vulnerable with a larger audience is only a good idea if the healing is tied to the sharing, not to the expectations I might have for the response I get.”
All of the above being said, I want to end this post by saying that authenticity and integrity are key in deciding how much to self-disclose online. While personal sharing and showing yourself does help the therapy search process become easier, sharing for the sake of sharing can lead to burnout.
Get clear on your goals and your boundaries, and find a balance that works for you, knowing that boundaries can be adjusted as needed and goals can change.
Did you find this post helpful? Leave a comment and let me know!
This blog post’s thumbnail image was sourced from The Gender Spectrum Collection.
