Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Instagram Therapists

Episode Date: February 8, 2022

If you have an Instagram account, you’ve probably seen those beautifully curated infographics explaining "trauma,” “attachment theory,” and "boundaries" in 100 words or less... but when does mass-disseminating parasocial mental health advice on social media become cultish? This juicy episode dives into the world of Instagram therapists: mental health experts (and self-proclaimed “experts”) who have taken our era’s desperate need for accessible therapy and spun it into an influencer career.

The easiest lies to believe are the ones that are most adjacent to the truth or sound like something that we'd want to believe so that we don't have to stretch too far. To be honest with you, there is power in mindset. Your beliefs about yourself in the world absolutely influence outcomes. That's part of what therapy is about. A big part of what I'm trying to do as a professional right now is share the insights that are in the science with people who otherwise might not come in contact with them in these medical journals and psychology journals that no one will ever read. So you need translators. It's just a question of are they credible and are they using a doctor in front of or after your name responsibly?

This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Amanda Montell, author of the book Cultish the Language of Fanaticism. I'm Issa Medina and I'm a comedian. Every week here on our show, we discuss a different fanatical fringe group to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? To join our cult, follow us on Instagram at SoundsLikeACultPod. I'm on IG at Amanda underscore Montell and I'm on IG at Issa Medina. So Amanda, what cult or cult like group are we going to discuss this week? I'm actually really nervous to talk about the cult of the week because I'm genuinely afraid of some of the cult leaders in this category. Yeah, you really are. I've seen you be scared.

You've had situations with them in the past. I've had almost situations. I have friends who've had very real situations. Whenever people ask me, Hey Amanda, what is an emerging cultish group that you see in our culture right now? What is like a pending threat? Something coming out of the marsh that is manipulating our culture? I always say the same thing. And it's the topic of this week's episode, which is social media therapists. Oh, social media therapists. Mental health influencers. They've been there for us. They've fucked us over. They don't know us. Yeah, are there Instagram therapists in your algorithm? There must be. Not on Instagram, but definitely on TikTok. Okay, because they hear everything that I'm saying. And most of the things you're

saying are like, help me. Yeah, I'm always like, help. I'm falling. For someone who doesn't like me back. I've had people on my for you page that are giving me advice about something that I talked about. And then if I have an Instagram or TikTok therapist pop up on my for you page more than once, I immediately click like not interested because it pisses me off that they think they know me. Oh, like what's an example? There's this guy. He's really sassy. So the way that he talks about situations, it sounds like he's being really judgmental. And it bothers me because I'm like, therapists should not be judgmental. Do you know, does he state his credentials or anything? Yeah, he's like, I'm a certified therapist. Follow me for more advice. So he's giving advice already

problematic when you're dispersing what should be very bespoke mental health advice to a mass audience. But like, what are some of the things that he'll say? He'll see TikToks about relationships and his style is that he'll stitch them. So you see like 10 seconds of someone else's TikTok talking about a personal problem. And he'll stitch that and immediately goes to him being like, I think I know what you're thinking right now. You are thinking that like, you shouldn't date that person. But you know, I know you and what you should really do is XYZ. And first of all, it's just really judgmental. And then second of all, it's like, you don't know what I'm thinking. Right, right, right. So he's clearly trying to manufacture the sense of one on one intimacy

with the singular second person pronoun like you, like I know what's in your mind as if you're sitting in the room with him with you, which you're obviously not. Exactly. I'm not. And I'm just like, don't you have clients? Like, why are you making TikToks? Yeah, yeah, I haven't had TikTok for six months now. You haven't had TikTok? What? I've defected from that cult. I do remember though, I would have mental health advice pop up on my for you page from time to time in betwixt all the cat videos. There was this one video where a woman was like, I've struggled with clinical anxiety for my entire life. I received this piece of advice one time and it's changed my life. So like big claim, she was like, if you suffer from

terrible anxiety and you can't sleep at night because you're up panicking, do this. And she talked about the vagus nerve, which, you know, I read the body keeps the score. Like I know a little bit about I did it. I feel like, you know, somewhat equipped to be able to tell utter quackery from something that might be closer to true. And she was talking about like the role of the vagus nerve and anxiety. And I was like, okay, that sounds legit. She was like, if you can't sleep at night, you got to get a cold compress, keep it in the freezer, and just put it on your chest. Wait, I saw that TikTok and I did it. I did it too. It worked like once and then I never worked again. Yeah, so I didn't find that it worked for me. And, you know, you

and I are adults and we're lucky to have our own therapists in real life. So I think we were pretty quickly able to just dismiss that. Yeah, we are. I recommend adulthood. You recommend adulthood? I got sick this weekend and I had to postmates myself freaking soup. Like, I don't know, adulthood is sometimes really hard. Where's your mom? But my concern is that no, there are probably a lot of people on this app who don't have a therapist who maybe they're young and they're like, I don't need to go and tell my mom that I have crippling anxiety because I'm just going to do this vagus nerve cold compress thing. Exactly. Or people who literally have not had any type of conversations or intro to mental health and mental health discussions. So if that's their introduction

into it, they might just like immediately believe everything that this person has to say because they sound like a professional. Totally. Maybe someone watching is more willing to take advice from someone who's experienced themselves and is speaking anecdotally rather than an intimidating authority figure. Yeah. Or because less work, right? You're already on this platform. Therapy came to you. Whereas when you want to get a therapist for just you, it's a lot of work and it's really hard to get a therapist and it's really expensive. Let's back up and start at the beginning. You know, what are we talking about when we're talking about Instagram therapists? For me, I'm talking about folks who claim some kind of mental health authority, some kind of credential

or pseudo credential who mass disseminate mental health advice online. You might think how bad could an Instagram therapist really be if we're talking cult leader? That's a big accusation. These people are just trying to help. And even if they're not, you're only following these people with a lowercase f, you know, you're not like following them to the ends of the earth. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Double tap. Yeah. But I've seen Instagram therapists really blow up, especially since the start of COVID-19 lockdown when obviously the nation's collective mental health was in a nose dive. Yeah, in the trash. In the trash. There's been no worse time for our mental health with the pandemic. Economic crises left and right. Climate change. So, so many apocalypsies. Not to

forget the last president. Oh, exactly. So it's the perfect storm for collective trauma. Apocalypsies. Apocalypsies is like, is that the word? It is now. It is now. You're a linguist. So it is literally now just a series of apocaly. Apocaly. I like that. That rolls off the tongue. It really does. I mean, I don't like it, but I don't like the idea of it. Right. So yeah, you can't turn on your computer without feeling like shit. You also can't turn on your phone without seeing someone who's trying to exploit the fact that you feel like shit. So nation's mental health is in a nose dive. But at the very same time, therapists are less accessible than ever. Every therapist has like a year long waitlist. They're intensely expensive. So what are people to do? A lot of social media

users, some with real mental health cred, some without some with genuine intentions, some really just going for clout, saw an opportunity to meet the demand for accessible mental health care by becoming therapy influencers. If you are scrolling on Instagram or TikTok, but today we're really talking about Instagram and your explore page suggests an account that has these like pithy and aesthetically pleasing posts that talk about alternative takes on mental health. So aesthetically pleasing. Oh, they're all it's like, yeah, it's like, oh, do you have anxiety? Millennial pink sans-nero font will help you. Yeah. It cracks me up because it's like Twitter, like a caught wind of that Instagram trend. And people are now making fun of this aesthetic being

like an earthquake just happened. What to do next? And it's like a slideshow of like get under your table. Oh, like explainer carousels. Yeah. explainer carousels. Of course, Amanda always has a word for everything. Okay, yes, explainer carousels are so parodiable. And yet like, who the fuck doesn't love a good explainer carousel? I love it. I'm like, tell me what to do. Yeah. And put a little arrow. Oh, yeah, put a little arrow in 10 slides or less. Oh, in this world full of decisions. You're telling me what to do like canva will solve all of our crises literally. Actually, though, if we're talking about historically our love of quote grams, it goes back to the Protestant religion's love of proverbs. Ever since Christianity shifted away from being

an image based religion like Catholicism is to a more text based religion, we developed this obsession with pithy proverbs like our love of a quote. What does pithy mean? Pithy means like short and profound and kind of dramatic. Oh, is that me? Short, profound and dramatic. That's amazing. Yeah. But our love of a quote gram is connected to, you know, like the needlepoint Psalms that hang above our grandmother's toilets in the bathroom, you know, yeah. On Instagram, it's just like a digital version of that. Yeah. And it's targeted to the right audiences about different things. So if you yeah, if you want like a needlepoint Psalm in Instagram form about girlboss empowerment, the algorithm will find you. If you want it to be

about trauma, the algorithm will fucking find you. Yeah. So COVID and the collective mental health crisis perfectly positioned Instagram therapists to to fill in need. And so all these people started flooding to these like digestible nuggets of wisdom about everything from shadow work and the mother wound. Yeah. To like the mind gut connection. And everything you're saying right now, all those things, shadow wound, mind gut, I don't know much about those things, but they sound like really complicated subjects. And then you're saying that they're made to be digestible. Because our entire society is obsessed with making everything fast and easy. It already is inherently like wrong. Like no, those are complicated, tough subjects. Why are we making them digestible?

Totally. But like, if you see something that's easy for you to grasp, your impulse is not going to be to question it. Your impulse is going to be to embrace it. It's like when you are at Costco, you're not going to like say no to a free sample, you know, it's like, you're going to embrace it. You're not going to ask, why are you giving me a free sample? That's a perfect analogy. I mean, a Costco snack is literally digestible. Exactly. It's the Costco snack of therapy. Exactly. We love it. It's populist. Yeah. So you might think to yourself, how high can the stakes really be? It's just Instagram. If something isn't resonating with you, you can just unfollow. But I happen to have a story of how bad it can really get. Let's get into it. I'll tell you,

I started following her because I was like in a low place in my personal life. And I think most people that follow her are people that are like, whatever you want to call them, like empaths, people that were in toxic relationships, a lot of people in probably their recovery groups, because that's what her content is geared toward. These are all groups of people that are incredibly susceptible to like fringe movements because they're already part of the fringe in some shape or form. The person that I want to talk about, I'm not going to name because I'll be transparent. I'm afraid of her. I've looked into her closely enough to know that she has a track record of harassment and she and her team because there's a whole team behind her account are pretty litigious.

They love throwing around like a legal threat. I've seen Amanda physically scared of this person. Yeah, like in the past tense up. So I'm not going to name this person, but she's an example of how much power an Instagram therapist is capable of generating in this cultural climate. Everyone you know, follows this person. Yeah, this woman has millions and millions of followers, a good 100 people that I follow on Instagram, including public figures and folks I really respect, follow this person. Yeah, when Amanda told me who it was, I like went to see who follows and it's like people I really respect. Yeah, I don't want to get into that. So I was made aware of this person through some of the sources that I was talking to for cultish when I was talking to them about

like QAnon and Conspiratuality. We've mentioned Conspiratuality before on this podcast. I think it's a portmanteau. Yeah. Yes, it is. Your favorite word. My favorite of conspiracy theorists and spirituality and it describes this emerging group of mostly online followers who believe in the new age idea that we're on the brink of a paradigm shift, but also the conspiratorial idea that a cabal of evil elites is secretly controlling the sociopolitical order. People, people, people, they just need to drink more water. Everyone needs to drink more water. That sounds like something that an Instagram therapist like might say. Actually, that's true. I just, I'm telling, I just, I don't think it'll solve your problems, but like

these people need to drink water and then like go swimming. Yeah, apropos of nothing, drink more water. But there's this alternative therapy to new age anti-vax conspiracy theory pipeline on Instagram. And for a lot of people, this account that I'm talking about is the top of the funnel. So I thumbed through this person's account and out of the gate, it's really compelling. I mean, I mean, amidst like the tumult of a worldwide pandemic, right, when like nearly every American is feeling isolated and overwhelmed, myself included, who doesn't want a lavender backdrop little quote, her account is full of these like super optimized maxims like that buzzwords like trauma and paradigm shift and healing are broad enough that people can project whatever they

want onto them. And this is a person who, by the way, is full of contradictions. So first of all, she is a licensed therapist in one state and is very proud of that. Well, like, what's staying? I don't want to say. Oh, right. You can't. Okay. Is it an annoying state? Yeah. Okay. Then like, literally, who cares? Is she really licensed if the state is annoying? So she simultaneously is like very proud of this credential, but also denounces the mainstream mental health institution as, you know, being like fundamentally corrupt. Oh, what you're saying is that she's drumming up all this attention on social media to be like, Oh, I'm breaking down barriers because the things that exist now are wrong, which is partially true. But she's taking it to an extreme. Yes. She's

making claim that I and only I have the solutions to your problems. And while the majority of her followers follow only casually, a lot of them come to worship her really zealously. Some of them sign up to be members of like her monthly healing circle. And some of them will create their own offshoot circles based on her wisdom. Some of them disavow their friends and family and community and go down rabbit holes into more dangerous conspiracy theory kind of territory. And those people might not even know her have never met her have never DM'd with her. Does she have any association to those smaller groups? No, it's like perfectly parasocial. You know, what is having an influencer career in general in the first place? It's like Instagram is your

marketing platform. Maybe you get a sponsorship. But like, it's what you use to hawk other things like a book or a subscription service or product. And that is how she uses it. But she's not selling eye cream or whatever. Yeah, she's selling you your mental health. And that's pretty dangerous. And I think that's what a lot of these Instagram therapists have in common is that the stakes are really high, particularly now. Yeah, I'm a little scared. And it's like getting dark out. I know it's the perfect lighting. Yeah, the evil Instagram therapist. It's like Dr. Death, but Instagram therapy. Oh, anyone listen to that podcast? Great podcast. Yeah, it's so tough to talk about. It's like that quote you always tell me,

cults are like porn, you know it when you see them. But I don't actually think that's true. Cultishness is in the eyes of the beholder. Actually, you're right. Some HBO shows these days are borderline porn and we are not talking about it. Yeah. So it's like, you might think of a cult as magabros in their mom's basements. But those people think of cults as Black Lives Matter protests 100%. There are qualities that all cultish groups have in common, the conformity and the buzzwords and the exploitation, you know, things that we talk about on this podcast. But I think a person can't always tell at first glance if someone is cultish or not due to just their own biases, you know, 100%. Like intuition is real and should be trusted if we're talking about like

in person interactions. Yeah, but online. That's where you're making it all up in your head because you're just projecting. Yes. Although maybe I shouldn't use the word projecting because that's like a therapy word, right? And I don't know how I'm using it. Oh yeah. And we'll talk about that in a second. So I talked to a woman who used to be a fan of this particular Instagram therapist who told me a little bit of her story. She said she started following this person because she'd been looking for a therapist for six months and they were all booked solid. She was a young mother who was diagnosed with ADHD and OCD right before the pandemic hit. So feeling just completely unmoored, helpless and unable to find a traditional therapist, she was thumbing through different

therapy accounts on Instagram and stumbled across this person. Wait, wait, wait. So what time period is this? It's like mid 2020, so recent. This woman told me like she spoke a lot about attachment theory and that really struck a chord with me, then decided to introduce her brother and her sister-in-law to this account. And they were struggling with finances and marital issues and had four kids under 10, so they were in a vulnerable position. They couldn't swing the cost of therapy, so this woman recommended this Instagram therapy account. And they just glommed onto it. They were obsessed with it from the jump and long story short, it's now been over a year since she's spoken to her brother, sister-in-law or any of her nephews and nieces. Wait, they started

following the account and they just kind of fell off the grid? They just got really, really involved with the teachings of this one person, signed up for like every course, everything she was offering. The brother went off his meds, attempted to take his own life, and then even amidst all of that, had to cut the sister out of their lives because they told her she didn't have a high enough vibration. Wait, okay, that's insane. That it's a high enough vibration. But also, that is so true that a good therapist can do wonders for you, but a bad therapist can literally fuck up your life. And the fact that this Instagram influencer is giving questionable therapy to millions of people and they're taking her at her word is definitely just fucked up. Actually, this reminds

me of a lot of the conversation I've seen on TikTok around the importance of having a minority therapist if you yourself are a minority because it's different communities and different cultures value communication within your family more. And a lot of white therapists who have POC clients don't know how to give advice to those clients. They just give them black or white advice like, cut this person out because they're toxic, never talk to them again. And that's not healthy. Yes, that is such a good point. Overuse the word boundaries. You don't even value community care anymore. Yeah, and people just avoid confrontation. They avoid discussing what the problem is in order to like remain in that community. They just instead leave

their family or isolate themselves. Yes, they almost take on a paranoid stance of like, no one else can help me. I can only help myself with the help of this one guru. So what ended up happening to this person? So they cut her out of her life. Then the sister-in-law decided to launch her own offshoot of this person's teachings and now leads like a mini in person mental health cult of her own. So now they're fully in this sort of like new age alternative mental health world and refuse to consider anything else. That's so messed up. And it's messed up because of like many reasons. But the way that I see it, if you have a platform of millions and millions of followers, you should be giving people resources on how to

find affordable therapy on how to access therapy on where to find therapists in your area. Like, I found my therapist on latinxtherapy.com because I saw a tick talk about it. Yeah, I am obsessed with my therapist. I was like, I want a therapist who can like relate to me and like immigrant life vibes. And it changed everything because all that person did on that tick talk was give me a resource. A thousand percent. And I think making certain mental health concepts available for anyone to learn about for free is beneficial. But I think the fact that these relationships are parasocial and that these Instagram therapists never meet the people that they're giving advice to in real life, if they're giving absolutist advice at all,

that's a red flag. Yeah, because they don't know you. Have you ever gotten like bad therapy advice in person? And if so, what did you do? I've had a couple of therapists before I got to the one that I have now who I really like. And I don't think I've gotten bad advice, but I have seen friends who have had really bad therapists who have isolated from their support groups. I have friends who are like, yeah, my therapist told me that it's all my parents fault. And then they blame everyone for all their problems. And I'm like, I think that's the worst therapy advice I've ever seen someone get is a therapist who digs so deep into like the daddy issues or the mommy issues that

they let their client blame everyone for everything. And I'm like, bro, no, a good therapist should be able to see through that bullshit and like, acknowledge for sure that like your past affects who you are today. But we're adults, like we need to take responsibility for our actions. That's such a good point because certain ill-intentioned Instagram therapists who are really treating it as a brand building exercise rather than a resource are just telling people what they want to hear, right? Because that's going to keep them on their account longer. So I asked a board certified therapist named Dr. Aaron Weiner. Shout out. I asked him about the potential repercussions for a therapist dispersing, let's say quackery,

like false mental health information. Yeah, I love the word quackery, to their patients in private practice, like in real life, expecting there to be a litany of checks and balances in place. But I was surprised to find that instead, malpractice in behavioral health is a very wiggly concept, he said. Because with psychotherapy, there are not the same treatment algorithms that there are for say treating like a broken leg or an infection. If someone has a license to practice therapy in a certain state, they can kind of say whatever they want. Malpractice in behavioral health is a really easy gray area. In medicine, there are algorithms sometimes for how you treat things like leg pain, or if you have a certain infection, there are certain antibiotics that you really

should be using that sort of stuff. When it comes to behavioral health, we don't have that. So when you're talking about online, I mean, you could say what you want. There's really not there's no gatekeepers online. There's nothing to hold you accountable. It's actually a bit of an issue. And it kind of bridges into this question of, do we need more gatekeepers in behavioral health to ensure quality? I feel like that's not okay. I'm not a professional here. But I feel like in order to create safe practices, they should have a rule where like, I don't know, like your therapist shouldn't be allowed to tell you what to do. Like, isn't the whole point of therapy that like, your therapist helps you get to that conclusion? Yeah, I mean,

but, but there's different styles, but there's different styles. And it's, and it's so individual. Like, even if an ethics complaint, let's say, is filed against a certain therapist for doing something as wrong as, you know, telling you, you should go off your medication, even though that resulted in harm for you. Unless there's some clear legal breach, like sexual assault, there's virtually no way to strip someone of their license. And that's in person therapy. Like when you're talking about online, you can truly say whatever you want, because even if in person you did something so wrong that you got stripped of your license or whatever, it wouldn't matter for Instagram because there are no credentials needed to practice as an influencer.

Yeah, I feel like that's also why this Instagram therapist is so beloved, because clearly, like you just mentioned, there are a lot of issues with the institutions that exist around therapy today. There needs to be more research done for minority groups. There needs to be more research done for immigrant children or people who speak English as a second language. I think psychiatrists shouldn't be so quick to prescribe medication, especially to children. I think a lot of big institutions are working on improving the therapy that we have today. But this Instagram influencer is tapping at those insecurities and be like, Oh, the system is so fucked up. It's so wrong. It's so incorrect that you should just follow me and my practices, which are worse. This is our worst.

A thousand percent. Yeah. And I think we're also living in a weird time in terms of mental health and Instagram, because there are so many people now who throw around mental health buzzwords and diagnoses to the point that they've lost their meaning. Like who among us has not heard terms like gaslighting and narcissists use wrong? Literally, I feel like Gen Z is showing up to internships being like, I'm sorry, I'm late. It was my trauma. That's so true. Okay, trauma is the biggest buzzword that gets misused, especially because I 100% believe people who say they have trauma. I think we currently right now as a society all have trauma from COVID-19. Yeah. Like in some capacity. The way that like at least this Instagram therapist that we're talking about

right now talks about trauma is in a way like offensive because she'll say things like, I believe all disease is connected to unresolved childhood trauma. She'll say statements in really absolutist ways like that. Not all children, not everyone has trauma. Not everyone has trauma. And if all disease is connected to trauma, what about like childhood leukemia? Yeah, it's victim blaming. We just said trauma so many times. Did you know that if you say trauma 10 times fast in the dark, Trump shows up at your door? I do think the spread of therapy speak on social media is partially a good thing because it means there's more acceptance in general about like emotions and childhood experiences that can shape you. But it also is a bad thing because when people think,

Oh, I follow a bunch of therapy accounts on Instagram. So I know what trauma and narcissism mean. It makes the terminology less meaningful, like 100%. So there are other followers of this woman that I talked to who had family members who went down QAnon rabbit holes by following her because even though she doesn't post QAnon stuff, she follows people who do. And so when an algorithm works, it's magic that can send certain followers. She follows people who post QAnon stuff. Oh, hell yeah. Instagram should come out with a feature that like you select groups or things that are red flags for you. And if someone you follow follows those red flags, it like flags it for you. Oh God. Yeah, I'm so smart. Instagram hire me or maybe don't. Is that too complicated? That makes

sense. Yeah, although I guess it's a slippery slope because if you fill your Instagram feed with too many things that you already fully agree with, then that's just true. We bubble in. Yeah. This brings me to another point was just like, if you're seeing a therapist in person, whether you like them or not, you are staring at like an in the flesh human. And so you know who exactly is giving you that advice. But if you're following an Instagram therapist account, anybody could be behind it. A catfish and intern, you don't know who's behind that account. Yes. So that inherently is problematic because I only know this because my therapist and I were both going out of town and like really random. I was like, Oh, I can't meet next week because I'm going to be in Paris.

And she was like, wait me to and we'd only ever met online. So she never told me this, but she was like, I just want to go over like the standard practices. She was like, if we were to run into each other, I would not acknowledge it. If I saw you from across the room, I would pretend that I didn't. And if you felt comfortable, you're allowed to come up to me and introduce yourself. But that's your decision to make. And I really liked that she like explained that to me and that that was a standard practice. But the problem with this woman on Instagram, if people were to like run into her at the grocery store, they would be like, Oh my God, you know, like they're fans of their therapist. That's so toxic. Like she has people eating out of her hand.

Telling someone how to do something or pretending that you know more about how they should live their particular life that they do. I don't even do that in therapy. You know, we could talk about it. I'm there to be a mirror. I'm there to help people explore options. I could provide, in fact, you know, science based insight onto certain things or what techniques seem to work for most people. But you never should tell people what to do. Additionally, if we tend not to speak in absolutes very much. So like this will work, you're going to feel better. This is the only way to do it. Real psychological science and clinical acumen comes from seeing shades of prey. So this is one of the reasons why I take issue with the concept of social media therapy in general,

because even if you are a credentialed mental health practitioner in real life and not all of these people are the mix of medical advice and social media is such an awkward modern revelation. The American Medical Association's code of ethics had this no advertising rule in the beginning that was in place for over a century that basically was trying to prevent against treating doctors as celebrities as rock stars. Because that has the potential to go awry. I mean, think about Dr. Oz, who a few years ago got in trouble because he created this mass hysteria about there being like toxic poison and apple juice all over the country. I think there is a way to make mental health care more accessible using the internet. But combining mental health care with

celebrity, particularly social media celebrity, I think that's where you start to get major cultish problems. Okay, what a conversation we've had today. But Amanda, now we've gotten to the end. Out of the three cult categories, live your life, watch your back, or get the fuck out. What category do you think Instagram therapists fall into? So I think Instagram therapy in general is for sure a watch your back. I would not encourage anyone to wholesale unfollow every mental health related account that is in their feed. Like I follow an Instagram therapist, but her posts are incredibly nuanced and she's not trying to sell anything. Yeah, and she's not giving advice. Yeah, if it makes you feel good, like follow the account,

you know, I think she's smart. I like the resources and books that she that she recommends. I think that that is a safe account. But I think that the Instagram therapist that we've been referencing this whole time is a get the fuck out. Do I think she set out to wreak havoc on some people's lives? Do I think she even thought she'd gain as much power as she has? No, I don't. But intentional or not, when you find yourself holding that much power over people's very sanity, you have to be responsible about it. Because at that point, you're not just a brand anymore. You're a cult leader. Yeah, like she's definitely become a charismatic leader. She's gotten her hands in your pockets for your cash. She's taken advantage of people's vulnerability for that profit.

And she clearly doesn't feel like she needs to roll it back because her Instagram is still growing and growing and growing. If a social media therapist is being overly self promotional about their methods, is hawking products and programs, making fantastical or absolutist claims and properly citing their sources, or like straight up giving advice at all online, like those are cues to unfollow, you know? Yeah. And if there are people following this person and creating their own little groups based off of that person, then, you know, now you're just an MLM. Yeah, it is. It's like a mental health pyramid scheme. I don't know. That therapist, Erin Weiner, that I spoke to earlier, he has a decent following actually online, but it's on

LinkedIn, which is just like a chiller platform than Instagram. And even if he has online fans, they are not the terrifying zealots that some of the other Instagram therapist fans are. That is so funny because I agree that LinkedIn is a lot more chill than Instagram, but they have their own thing going to like people are out there being like, I am so honored that I have been accepted into this position at X fucking Lamo company, like, you know, cult of LinkedIn for another day. Yes, it's counterintuitive. But if you see an Instagram therapist with millions of followers in a blue check, that's not a queue that you should follow them. That's a queue that you should run. Yeah, run as far as you can, throw your phone across the

room. We've all done it. Well, Jesus, not to scare you, but, you know, be vigilant out there. That's our show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay culty, but not too guilty. Sounds like a cult is created, hosted and produced by Amanda Montell and Issa Medina. Kate Elizabeth is our editor. Her podcast studio is all things comedy. And our theme music is by Casey Cole. Subscribe to sounds like a cult wherever you listen to podcasts. So you never miss an episode. And if you like our show, feel free to give us a rating and review on Spotify or Apple podcasts. And check us out on Patreon at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult.