When people find social media off-putting, often one of their complaints is that people present a fake persona online. Of course, people have long tried to curate their image in person, too. It's just a lot easier when you can curate, crop, and filter your photos compared to, say, putting on makeup any time you leave the house in case you run into someone you know at the grocery store.
A lot of us hide our care work responsibilities. Most of us are providing care for someone who would not want us to go public about what we do, since needing care is a source of both internal shame and external stigma. The people I see posting on social media about their long-term caregiving are generally taking care of someone with advanced dementia or profoundly disabled children, two categories of people who aren’t capable of worrying about personal branding.
I'm in a position where people often tell me that they don't know any other caregivers. I'm also frequently told no one talks about caregiving. I wonder about this, since caregiving drives the plot of so many movies and there are awareness campaigns in the news daily. Caregiving feels to me like an inescapable topic.
It's easy to imagine that people consumed by caregiving are not reading the news, not watching movies, not scrolling social media, and not chatting with friends. People who withdraw from the world — and their friends — as they take on a caregiving role may be more likely to end up in a support group. So are people whose friends aren't capable of providing the support they need. We can be surrounded by people going through similar experiences, yet remain profoundly alone.
Quite a few people know they could talk about care work with their friends, but they don't want to. They want a corner of their life to feel normal, to have that touchstone of who they are and the life they have outside of caregiving, so they'd rather discuss care work with a new social circle. Perhaps it's simply easier to talk to people with whom we have less history. In a support group, especially an online one, we know what we say won't potentially end up as fodder for the rumor mill.
Is it fake to be thoughtful about what aspects of your life to share in public and which to save for a smaller circle? Are we expected to make our whole life public, or are we allowed to have layers of privacy to our experience? Are shame and stigma the only reasons to keep things private or are there many reasons behind our decisions regarding what to discuss with who?
When there's a notable gap between someone's social media persona and how I see them, I find it interesting to get this fresh perspective. On social media we are shown how someone wishes to be seen — perhaps who they wish they were and the life they wish they led. There's an undeniable authenticity and vulnerability to that.
Donna Thomson and Denise Brown have been discussing how caregivers aren't getting their basic needs met. They want to hear from you:
Do you have your basic needs met? and
Do you have caregiver support policy ideas for the federal or provincial levels of government in Canada?
Tips for choosing a US medical insurance plan
Good news: "For the first time, beginning in January, Medicare will allow marriage and family therapists and mental health counselors to provide services."
"Where conventional medicine shrugs its shoulders, the wellness industry brims with answers."
From Creative Mornings:
“Some things can become true merely because we believe in them — that pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When modern economists assumed that people are innately selfish, they advocated policies that fostered self-serving behavior. When politicians convinced themselves that politics is a cynical game, that’s exactly what it became.”
― Rutger Bregman