I've been following mental health content on Instagram for years. I love reading well written carousels, that moment when something lands, when words articulate something I've felt for a long time but didn't know how to say. In those moments I feel seen.
But I've started noticing something that disturbs me. We've started using Instagram for something it was never designed to do.
What Instagram therapy looks like
The carousels breaking down your attachment style. Reels explaining what your anxiety is really about. Posts about reparenting your inner child, healing the wounds you didn't know you had. Concepts that mental health professionals spend years studying, distilled into ten slides.
Instagram therapy content tends to fall into two types: both well intentioned, both with a gap nobody's talking about.
First, there's educational content explaining how the nervous system works, what trauma does to the brain, how to regulate yourself. It looks helpful, professional, research backed. But it's also reductionist.
"Three years of therapy in sixty seconds." "Regulate your nervous system in 5 steps." "Heal your attachment wound with this daily practice."
It makes us think we can manage our nervous systems through information, through understanding, through following the steps.
Then there's the other kind—people sharing their stories, their trauma, their pain. Raw, vulnerable posts that make us stop scrolling because suddenly we're feeling something.
"This is what it felt like when my mother…" "I realised I'd been carrying this for years…"
These posts are doing something valuable. They're making concepts that were once locked in expensive psychology rooms accessible to everyone. They're breaking silence, normalising experiences, helping people feel less alone in what they've carried. A decade ago, most people had never heard of attachment styles or nervous system regulation. Now these ideas are reaching millions. That matters.
But something else is also happening, something nobody's talking about.
What happens when we read something that lands
When a post articulates something we've felt but couldn't name, when it touches that raw place inside, our bodies do something. They open. This is what happens when we feel understood—our nervous systems move towards connection, relax slightly, reach out.
In a therapy room, that movement towards connection is met. There's someone there whose nervous system is regulated, who can stay present with what just came up. Our bodies register: I opened and someone's here. I'm not alone with this.
On Instagram, we open—and there's no one there. Just words on a screen, just us alone with what got activated. Our nervous systems reached and got nothing back.
But it feels like connection. The post spoke to us. Someone put words to what we're feeling. It feels like being seen.
Understanding isn't relationship, though. Words aren't presence.
A post that describes our pain isn't the same as a person who can be with us in it.
And our nervous systems know the difference.
The pattern this repeats
Trauma isn't the event itself. It's what happens in the nervous system when we experience something overwhelming without support to process it.
Some of this happens very early—before we have language, before we have conscious memory. A child experiences something overwhelming. If there's a regulated adult there, someone who can stay calm and help the child settle, the experience doesn't become trauma. It's difficult, but it's held. If there's no one there, that's when it lodges in the nervous system. Not because of what happened, but because the nervous system had to deal with it in isolation.
Instagram recreates that isolation.
We access something painful. We feel it. Our bodies open.
And we're alone. Every single time.
We're scrolling, we read a post about childhood wounds, something cracks open. We feel it in our chests, that familiar ache. Our attention goes out—to the comments, to the next post, to another account that might have more answers. We're searching for something that will help us settle.
But we don't settle. We keep scrolling. The ache is still there, maybe bigger now. Because Instagram can give us words, recognition, the feeling of being seen. But it can't bring our attention back in. It can't help us return to ourselves.
We're not getting less alone. We're reinforcing the pattern that keeps us isolated.
What our nervous systems actually need
Our nervous systems don't heal through understanding. They heal through experience.
The experience of: I can feel this and someone stays.
That's co-regulation—not a concept, but the actual experience of being dysregulated and having another person whose nervous system is regulated, present, not trying to fix us or make us feel better faster. Just there. Our nervous systems read that presence, take information from it, begin to settle.
This is biological. Babies do it with caregivers, adults do it with each other. We regulate in relationship.
It requires actual relationship, though. Not words on a screen, not even good words, true words, words that feel like they see us. A person. A nervous system that can stay regulated while ours is not.
This could be a therapist, a friend, anyone who can stay present without needing to fix. When something tender comes up, they're there—not panicking, not pulling away. Just with us. And our nervous systems learn from that. We begin to understand: I can feel difficult things and not be alone.
That's what shifts things.
Not a post. A person.
What to do instead
When something cracks open while we're scrolling (chest tight, breath shallow), that's our cue. Our nervous systems are activated, reaching for co-regulation that Instagram can't give.
Put the phone down. Call someone, not necessarily to talk about what we just read, just to hear a voice. Sit with a partner, a friend, your child, a dog. Let the nervous system feel actual presence. If we can't reach anyone, do something that brings us back into our bodies. Walk outside, stretch, just breathe.
Real healing, the kind that actually changes how our nervous systems respond to the world, doesn't happen through posts. It happens through presence. Not someone's words reaching us. Someone actually being with us.
That's harder to package. Slower to work. Impossible to screenshot.
But it's what works.
And if we've been trying to heal through understanding for years and we're still struggling, maybe what we need isn't another post. Maybe what we need is someone who can actually be there while we feel it.