Episode 90: Protect Your Space — Social Media Boundaries (solo episode)

In this solo episode, I …

share about my personal experiences with cancel culture, accountability culture, online callouts, harassment, stalking, and bullying from 2020-2021
discuss the necessity of having boundaries with followers on social media, especially if you’re an entrepreneur, healer, or teacher in the holistic + trauma-healing + nervous system + activism spaces
talk about the regulation and dysregulation of the nervous system and what that looks like on social media
talk about the game of Hot Potato we can play with our followers if we meet their dysregulation with our own dysregulation
discuss the subject of “safety” and triggers on social media and how a false responsibility to create safety for our followers is keeping creators stuck
share about my own Good Girl’s subconscious reactions, fears, and hypervigilance and how that affected my ability to access and express my Authentic Voice
explain why trying to appeal to the masses on social media will force you to dilute the potency of your Message, your Medicine, and your Magic

About Me

Lindsey Lockett (me!) is a trauma educator, nervous system coach, and the host of the Holistic Trauma Healing Podcast. After leaving behind the dogmas of fundamentalist religion and toxic wellness culture, Lindsey experienced her own dark night of the soul. During the healing journey that followed, she realized that trauma affects us as WHOLE people and therefore, we need to heal as WHOLE people.

Although Lindsey has benefitted tremendously from therapy and psychiatry, these modalities never totally resonated with her because she found that they forced her to fragment herself rather than heal holistically.

She set out to find an affordable and accessible approach that integrates the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and ancestral parts of our being… and discovered the magic of the nervous system!

Lindsey lives on the North Shore of Lake Superior with her husband of 20 years, their 2 teenagers, and 2 dogs. She enjoys cold plunges in the Lake, foraging for plants and making plant medicine, and shaking her booty to Dr. Dre.

Transcript

hello, welcome back to the show. Um, I am okay. I’m alive. If you don’t follow me on social media and if you don’t get my emails, then you may have wondered if I fell off the face of the earth. No, I did not. I’m okay. I have noticed that I have really big ebbs and flows of energy to create this podcast or not.

And I have been in an ebb of podcast creation energy for a few months. Um, I’m not sure if winter has something to do with that or not. But I suspect that it might, um, the month of December for us was crazy that I don’t even know, it, it seems cliche to call it crazy because it’s just winter, like it’s just Minnesota winter.

But, um, it was crazy. Um, we had two really big blizzards in one of the blizzards. Our power went out and we did not have any electricity for 45 hours, so almost two full days with no electricity. Thankfully, we had just purchased a generator and so we were able to power my laptop, our wifi modem or router, whatever you call it.

Um, our phone chargers, the electric Tea Cuttle, and the Instant Pot. on the generator. Um, we got 30 inches of snow in two days. The wind was blowing like crazy. It blew over trees, it blew over power lines. Um, We were lucky we didn’t have any damage on our property, but we know people who had damage on their stuff.

And, um, it was just a really crazy blizzard, something that we’ve never experienced before because we’ve only been here for seven and a half years. So, um, we were even melting snow on our wood stove. So we were, we got all of the big bowls, you know, big mixing bowls and big pots and stuff that we have, and we would fill them up with snow and then we would set them on top of the wood stove and we would melt snow.

Um, and obviously whenever you melt a pot full of snow, you don’t end up with a pot full of water because snow is bigger than water, so it reduces when it melts. And so we would have to keep an eye on the pots, on the stove and periodically refill them with more snow until we finally hours later would get a full pot of water.

Um, the snow was so wet and heavy that it kept clogging up our snow blowers. We have two snow blowers. Um, my husband couldn’t move the snow with his plow truck at all, and it kept clogging up our two snow blowers. So one day I worked on just snow blowing our deck and a path to our driveway, and it took me six hours.

The snow kept freezing up the auger of the snow blower. And so then I would have to come in the house, get a pot of warm water that was really melted snow that had taken me like all day to melt. And then I would have to pour that on the inside of the snowblower to melt the ice that was freezing the snowblower up and then keep going.

It was so exhausting, . Um, thankfully the second time we got the blizzard, uh, another blizzard, the power did not go out. , but then we still had so much snow to remove. We had a massive amount of snow slide off of our roof on the west side of our house. It slid off of our roof and it completely blocked the back door and the windows that are on the west side of our house.

And, um, a full two and a half weeks after that blizzard, we finally got our neighbor who has like a front end loader and he came over and it took him four hours to move the snow that had slid off of our roof in front of our house. It was crazy. Um, yeah, it was crazy. So December was also really hard for me.

Um, if you take the blizzard and the power outage and all of that out of it, December was also just really hard for me in terms of no daylight man. and I, and I’m not gonna call it seasonal effective disorder, like I, that, that would be like the term that I could use, that you would understand what I mean.

But I really shy away from using that term because I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with our bodies. Whenever winter hits and it’s cold and dark and we’re just way more tired and we don’t have any energy or motivation and we don’t wanna do anything, and we feel sad and slow and heavy, like, I feel like those are very, very normal ways to feel in the wintertime.

Winter is all about rest. Uh, most mammals are either hibernating or they’re not even very active for, you know, most of the day, maybe, maybe 16 to 18 hours a day. They’re sleeping, they’re curled up in their hole, or they’re den or they’re nest and only a few hours a day do they come out and only to feed and drink water.

Um, and humans I don’t believe are much different. We’re mammals too. And we have this system of corporate capitalism that we all live under that says that we’re supposed to be able to put out the same amount of work every day, day in and day out, regardless of the time of year. And it completely ignores the effect that the season’s change has on our bodies.

And so December, um, especially in the Northern United States and Canada, the Northern Hemisphere, um, of the globe, it gets very dark, right? It’s, we were at less than eight hours of daylight by the time the solstice hit and all of that darkness. It affects the amount of melatonin that your body produces, so you produce more melatonin than you normally would, which makes you feel sleepier than you normally do.

It gets darker earlier, so you’re producing melatonin earlier in the day than you would normally produce melatonin because your body is like taking the cues from the natural light and it’s going, Hey, the sun’s gone. It’s time for bed even though it’s only 5:00 PM so I don’t wanna call it seasonal effective disorder.

It’s not a disorder if the body is just doing what the body does in response to a change in light and temperature. It’s not a disorder or a disease. It just is. It’s normal. It’s healthy. Even we can’t be in constant productivity mode. 24 7, 365. That’s not sustainable. So we have winter. And a lot of us can’t rest during the winter, and I’m very fortunate that I can.

Um, and so December was a lot of just lounging around, um, laying around in my pajamas, uh, going to bed at five o’clock and watching Netflix not feeling motivated, feeling heavy and slow in my body. Um, everything was slowed down, like my digestion even was slowed down. And I noticed the voice in my head trying to pathologize it and trying to tell me that there was something wrong with me and that I needed to get help from my psychiatrist or whatever.

I noticed those stories and then I just kept reminding myself like, it’s winter. Of course I feel this way, . There’s nothing wrong with me. My body is doing exactly what it’s meant to do, which is slow down and rest in the wintertime. So I quit fighting it. I just leaned in and I let it happen. And the solstice came, and the solstice went, and here we are.

Not even two weeks after the winter solstice, and I am already feeling so much better, and it’s just because there’s a little bit more daylight. Um, so that’s my like, personal life update. Um, but the point of this episode is not to talk about whether seasonal effective disorder is real or isn’t, or whether corporate capitalism has anything to do with our, uh, nervous system health and mental health.

Uh, newsflash it does. Um, the point of this episode is actually to talk about something that’s unrelated to both of those things, which is having boundaries specifically on social media. Now, if you are a loyal listener of this podcast, then you’ll will have already heard episode 56, where I had a hilarious conversation with my friend Lux.

We talked about integrity, cancel culture and boundaries on social media, because at that time, Lux was teaching a workshop about boundaries on social media. I took that workshop, it was amazing. And that workshop, if she ever offers it again, sign up for it. But it’s about self boundaries on social media.

So it’s about having boundaries with your time so that you’re not addicted to social media, so that you’re not compulsively picking up your phone and not even knowing why, um, and scrolling longer than you intended to scroll. And you know, the endless scrolling sucks away your time and your creativity and your energy, and it makes you irritable.

And then you feel guilt and shame because you wasted all this time on your phone. So Luck’s workshop is about having boundaries with our. In terms of like our time spent on social media, um, definitely recommend, and that is episode 56 of the podcast. I will link it below in the show notes in case you wanna give that a listen.

But what I wanna talk to you about is not the boundaries that we have with ourselves on social media. It’s about having boundaries in our social media spaces. Doesn’t matter what platform you’re using, um, particularly for content creators. Now, if you don’t consider yourself a content creator, that’s fine.

This episode will still be helpful for you if you’re on social media, if you are a content creator or if you are thinking about becoming a content creator, especially if. You would be creating content around things that can be controversial, divisive, even though you don’t mean for them to be divisive.

Um, challenging to people, things that push back against commonly held beliefs or practices. Um, if you’re doing any kind of activism, work on social media. So it’s not just for people who are like business owners on social media, it’s for anyone who is or wants to create content, um, and about protecting your space with boundaries.

So I’m gonna talk a little bit about that in this episode. And what I really wanna share is, um, it comes from my own personal experience, . So, um, I don’t know, you know, you, you guys have been listening to the podcast for two years now almost. And, um, I went through in 2020 and 2021, I went through several months long periods of, um, harassment, stalking, uh, cancel culture, callouts, bullying, um, several times during both years.

And it wasn’t just like a couple days at a time. It would last for weeks or months, and there were a handful of accounts. It is crazy to me, even to this day how these accounts were able to have so much power and reach because they were relatively small, like less than, less than 5,000 followers each. But there were a handful of these accounts, like maybe three or.

That because of some of the people that I was friends with online. And the way that they determined that we were friends was because I was sharing their content and they were sharing mine. Um, or because we were leaving comments on each other’s posts. But essentially I was quote unquote associated with certain people.

Um, Clementine Morgan is one of those people. I was a quote unquote known associate of Clementine Morgan. And Clementine has been on this podcast, uh, twice, and she is a very, um, outspoken person against cancel culture. She even has a podcast with she, she hosts it with, um, her partner Jay. Um, it’s called Fucking Canceled.

I will link to it in the show notes. , uh, Clementine has undergone massive cancellation to the point that she had to move. She lost her housing, she lost community. Um, she lost income. It was wretched. And when I was going through s the beginning of my own experience with cancel culture, um, Clementine reached out to me and they were like, Hey, if you ever wanna talk, uh, I’m here

Like, I know this sucks, and I can connect you with other people who are going through this or have gone through this, and if you wanna talk to them or feel like you’re less alone or like you’re not crazy, like, just let us know. And Clementine was just a really amazing friend, an amazing resource. But because we were quote unquote Instagram friends, these accounts were after Clementine.

Because she was, air quotes problematic and because I was then a known associate that meant I was guilty by association. Um, and it, I’m telling you that I could, I could not make this shit up. It’s absolute crazy making to try to make sense of it. Um, but essentially these handful of accounts that were making accusations against, They were accusing me of things like being a member of Pastel Qan on.

Now I have my computer open here, so I will tell you what pastel qan, um, means and . Um, so according to Wikipedia, pastel Qan on is a collection of techniques and strategies that used soft and feminine aesthetics, most notably pastel colors that are used to attract women into the qan on conspiracy theory, often using mainstream social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, telegram, and YouTube.

pastel qan on social media. Influencers focus on aspects of the theory that tend to appeal to maternal instincts, such as the prevention of child sexual abuse and child sex trafficking, and use emotive and personable language. They are popular among wellness, yoga, and new age influencers. The term was coined by Mark Andre Aino, a researcher at Concordia University Canada.

So it is connected with QAN on pastel. QAN is connected with QAN on, and qan according to Wikipedia, is an ongoing American far right conspiracy, uh, politicals conspiracy theory and mass political movement centering around false claims mi made by an anonymous individual or individuals known as Q that a cabal of satanic cannibalistic sexual abusers of children operate a global sex trafficking ring that conspired against former US President Donald Trump during his term in office.

So I was supposedly a part of the pastel version of Qan Aon, um, complete and utter bullshit like, and it, it just makes me, my jaw drop to this day, other accusations of if being in a part of pastel Qan Aon isn’t enough. The other accusations that were leveled against me was that I was also part of an anti cancell culture cult, because I was friends with Clementine.

So they just automatically said that we were part of a cult that was against cancel culture. Um, I also attended an anti cancell culture Think Tank in May of 2021, which this handful of Instagram accounts, uh, discovered because I wasn’t trying to hide anything. So I posted about it on my Instagram page and because other canceled people had attended there and also posted about it, they put two and two together and then said that I was a rape apologist because someone that was part of the cancel culture think tank, um, had been accused of rape even though no charges were ever filed, no DNA evidence was ever collected.

Uh, no police report was ever filed. Um, but they were just claiming on social media that this person was a rapist and that they were trying to get their racist, uh, or their rapist to come to accountability. Um, and so because this person, the supposed rapist, was at this think tank, um, and I was there with them, they, I was grouped in with them as well.

And so that made us part of a cult. Um, and I wanna be clear, Clementine Morgan was not part of that think tank. Just wanna make that super clear. Um, other accusations against me were that I was recruiting people for the nex i m sex cult. Um, and that I was a racist white grifter, and I didn’t even know what a grifter was, so I had to look that up.

And it is a person who swindles people. So these are the accusations that this very small handful of very small Instagram accounts were putting against me, charging me of. And the only quote unquote proof that they had was taking screenshots of my content and drawing their own conclusions. Which were totally out of context and were not backed up by any fact whatsoever.

And then they would repost these screenshots on their stories with their own commentary about it. And so if their followers really believed what they had to say, then they were making a really good case against me. They were doing a good job of convincing people that I was part of pastel QAN on, and that I was a rape apologist and that I was recruiting people for the Nexium sex cult.

To this day, to this day, there are still at least three Instagram accounts that I know of that have highlight reels saved with my name on them, and they have my photos, my content, screenshots of my stories. Um, they like, they made memes out of me, like all of these different things. And these highlight reels still exist now.

Do you think Instagram did anything? Fuck. They did not. No, they did not. I blocked and reported these accounts over and over. My followers were blocking them and reporting them, and obviously they had burner accounts because they were still coming back, or they had, their followers were following me, and I didn’t know who their followers were, so their followers were screenshotting my stuff and feeding them information.

I’m not actually sure how it was all happening, but, um, they were an obvious violation of Instagram’s terms, um, and conditions and community guidelines, and we reported them to Instagram until we were blue in the face and Instagram literally did nothing. Nothing. These experiences were so dysregulating to my nervous.

And at that point I would’ve said that like, yeah, I’m, I’m a pretty expert person at regulating my nervous system and being aware of what’s happening in my body. But these experiences totally would throw me into relapses of anxiety, of insomnia and panic, of feeling hypervigilant. Um, I got so hypervigilant because they were watching me like a hawk, like I wasn’t gonna get anything by these people.

And so I began to see my own content the way I thought they would see my content and started like censoring myself to make sure that whatever I posted wasn’t something that they could come back and screenshot later, and then twist and turn out of context to provide further proof to their followers that I was in QAN on and recruiting people for the next Sam Sex cult.

Um, so there were a lot of times when I wouldn’t let myself say the things that I wanted to say on my own Instagram account. Um, because I knew that they were constantly watching me. Um, they were stalking me, like I was blocking them and reporting them, and somehow my content was still landing on their stories and in their feeds, even though they had been blocked.

So they were still finding ways around that. And they were stalking me. They were harassing me. They were absolutely bullying me. Um, And it was crazy making. There were times when I thought about deleting my Instagram account. There were times whenever I thought about deleting this podcast, there’s even a couple of bad reviews on this podcast, um, that talk about me being racist.

And those reviews were left on iTunes around the time that these cancellations were taking place. And so I have no doubt whatsoever that the people who left those reviews were part of the campaign to get me canceled and to get my work canceled. Um, So I felt hypervigilant, fearful, um, very dysregulated in my nervous system, and Instagram was doing nothing.

I was powerless against these accounts. And then I realized Instagram is not coming to save me. Like it may be their responsibility to do something about this, but they’re clearly not doing something about it despite the number of times that I’ve reported. Um, so I have to take my power back because I have really important things to say.

I have an authentic truth to speak and I have worked too hard to find my authentic voice to let these random. Mentally ill strangers on the internet come after me like this and let it have power over me. And I don’t say random mentally ill strangers in a derogatory way. I mean, if you were to see these accounts and the people running these accounts, like there is no doubt in my mind that they are severely dysregulated people, um, who were probably alone and without community during a pandemic.

They didn’t have contact with the outside world. They were isolated. and Yeah. Mentally Ill, like, I’m gonna say it, they were mentally ill. Um, they needed help. They needed medication, they needed therapy, they needed help. And I saw their posting and their incessant screenshotting and the amount of time, oh my God, the amount of time and energy that they had to spend because they weren’t just doing this to me.

They were doing this to Clementine, they were doing this to several other accounts. Okay? This wasn’t just about me. Um, the amount of time that they were spending was ridiculous. Like it was more than a full-time job. It had to have been more than a full-time job because they were posting stuff 24 7 about us.

So I had to take my power back from those people because I ha I worked way too hard to find my authentic voice, to let them take it away in the sense that I was censoring myself and silencing myself and diluting my truth to make it more palatable and less controversial so that they wouldn’t screenshot my stuff and re-share it with their own commentary.

Um, I hope this is making sense, . Um, so I had to start protecting my space, my Instagram space. Um, and the only way I could do that was to start having boundaries like a motherfucker, boundaries. Um, the more I set and I held boundaries in my own platform, the more regulated my nervous system became, the less hypervigilant I felt, the less fear I felt, and the more I was able to show up and speak my authentic truth in my authentic voice.

and I have had to maintain these very rigid sometimes Instagram boundaries with my followers since then. So it’s been over a year of, like a year and a half now since anything has happened. Um, and I also just wanna say that like, not only did I, you know, block and delete and set, uh, keyword parameters and comment limitations and DM limitations, like I absolutely used my Instagram settings to hold these boundaries.

But, um, I also began to take full advantage of the block, restrict and delete options on Instagram. and I continue to maintain boundaries like that. And I, even though I’m not going through the like attempted cancellation and like the stalking and the harassment and all of that anymore, it taught me a really valuable lesson going forward.

And that is that there are always going to be dysregulated people on the internet. Um, unfortunately whenever you’re creating an Instagram account, there’s not a box that you have to check that asks, do you have a regulated nervous system? Maybe one day there will be, because dysregulated people don’t need to be on social media.

Um, but they have the right to be on it just as much as we do. So, you know, they’re human beings just like we are. They deserve our compassion and our empathy and our respect just as much as regulated people do. However, when there are always going to be dysregulated people on the internet, period. There’s nothing we can do about that.

And as a content creator, especially in the, at the intersection of like trauma healing and nervous system and spirituality and awareness, like in that space, um, there are a lot of dysregulated people. And that space also intersects with like activism spaces. And there are a lot of dysregulated people in activism spaces.

So what I wanna talk about now in the episode going forward is that, We don’t have any control over our dysregulated followers. Like no matter who you are, no matter what you’re talking about, no matter what kind of content you’re putting out, no matter what kind of creator you are, there are going to be dysregulated people in your space and at some point those people are going to leave you a really rude, snarky comment.

They’re going to call you problematic and harmful. They will point out your, the color of your skin and tell you what privileges you have and why you don’t have a right to talk about the things that you wanna talk about because you don’t understand it from their identities perspective. There are always going to be people who land in your dms and they wanna write you a novel about what a shitty person you are and how bad your content is, and what harm you’re doing to people and how you’re taking advantage of people and whatever else.

It’s always gonna happen. There’s nothing you can do to get around that. . However, you can have boundaries like a motherfucker in your space, and I want you to understand that boundaries on social media are not a luxury. They are non-negotiable. Non-negotiable, especially if you are a content creator and you use social media to market your business in any way.

I would even go so far as to say that I actually don’t think it’s possible to use our voices in authentic ways online without having hella boundaries. Um, and obviously you can still have excellent boundaries and you can still get shitty comments in dms like having boundaries doesn’t guarantee that people won’t show up in your comments and dms and be shitheads.

It doesn’t guarantee that you won’t be called out or canceled, but having those boundaries is. The gateway to more spaciousness for yourself to speak your truth, to share your message, your medicine, and your magic with the people that you’re trying to reach, the people that are following you. When our followers are in a dysregulated state in their nervous system, meaning that some part of their nervous system, whether it’s their sympathetic part of their nervous system, or whether it’s their, uh, dorsal vagal part of their nervous system, which is where the immobilization of our nervous system is, some part of their nervous system is activated, and they take that activation, which has sensation in their bodies.

Chances are they were already dysregulated when they came on social media. They may even be using their phone as a tool to distract them or dissociate from the dysregulation that they’re feeling. And they’re scrolling along and they come across your content or my content. And something about our content triggers them, challenges them, uh, asks a question that they don’t wanna be asked.

Pushes back against a belief that they have, brings a different idea to the table, shares a perspective they’ve never thought of. Um, something right? Something about it triggers them. And in their dysregulation, they vomit that all over us as creator. It’s like playing a game of hot potato. So the dysregulated followers, pain triggers, activation, uh, fight, flight, or freeze response is the hot potato.

And because it’s too hot for them to hold, because they’re not meeting it with awareness, it’s too hot for them to hold. And so they throw it at us as content creators. And now suddenly we are supposed to figure out how to hold their pain that they don’t even know how to hold. Now, I’m a trauma educator.

I’m a nervous system coach. I have held space for people to share their pain and their dysregulation. I have regularly been with clients and students when they are in an active state of dysregulation. The difference though is that everyone that I work with knows that I’m gonna always point them back to awareness.

So if they’re not meeting their nervous system dysregulation with awareness, then I’m going to invite them to do that. But I can’t do that with 37,000 followers and growing , right? I can’t do that. I can’t hold space for that many people, nor am I obligated to. That is something else that I wanna talk about, is that there seems to be this pervasive belief that if you have a public platform and if you are a healer of some sort, coach, therapist, energy worker, some sort of healing practitioner with a public platform, that that means you have to create safety for all of your followers.

Let me ask you this, what is safety? What is safety? If you’re a content creator listening to this right now, or someone who wants to create content and you believe that if you’re going to talk about trauma or the nervous system or activism or you know, whatever, whatever you wanna talk about that you have to do it in such a way that anyone who comes to your account feels safe and won’t get triggered.

What does that even look like? Because what safety for you might not be safe for someone else and what safety to someone else may not be safe for you? Just like what triggers one person may or may not trigger another person. And there are 8 billion people in this world, 3 billion of which are on Instagram at this point, I believe.

Let me google that really fast because I don’t wanna give you, uh, an inaccurate number. How many people are on Instagram? Google. Oh, 1.386 billion. Okay, . So not 3 billion. 1.3 billion. Um, so there are 1.3 billion people on Instagram, and how in the world are you ever supposed to anticipate what is a trigger for each one of those people and what could potentially, um, feel unsafe to each one of those people?

It’s impossible. , it’s absolutely impossible. So if you have that belief going into putting out content that your content has to be suited to everyone, that it can’t trigger anyone that it has to make everyone feel safe, then you might as well not put anything out. Or you might as well just put pictures of like cute puppy dogs out.

But even cute puppy dogs are probably triggering to some people. Um, maybe rainbows. Maybe you could put out pictures of rainbows. But like, I can’t think of anything that you could post that would guarantee that it is safe for everyone that follows you and that it isn’t gonna trigger anyone who follows you.

But if that’s the standard you have for yourself, then you are going to stay so stuck and you will never share your authentic voice. You will never put out content and the thing that you wanna say because there’s this fear and this false sense of responsibility that your follower’s safety is on you.

And that’s absolutely bonkers. Totally bonkers. It is not our responsibility as creators to create safety for our followers because we cannot hold space for hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. You are a human being. You are one human. You cannot hold the pain and the responsibility for the safety of 1.38, 6 billion people.

And I know from my own personal experience, but also in working with creators, I know that when that sense of responsibility is there, the creativity is blocked, the message gets diluted, the magic gets diluted, the potency of their medicine gets diluted, because the truth is where the potency is. And if you have to dilute the truth to suit everyone, then it’s no longer the truth is it?

And obviously everyone’s truth is different because truth is relative. So. I know that if you’re a content creator or you wanna be a content creator, especially in healing spaces, I know that you wanna put out amazing content for free. But when you see other people getting called out and getting canceled, or you see the, the comment threads that go on underneath a controversial post, that’s fucking terrifying.

Right? Like, I get that, that’s terrifying. I don’t read the comments on Instagram. Sometimes I don’t even read my own comments on Instagram. Um, but when I have read comments, I, I see that human beings, when they’re behind a screen and an anonymous Instagram handle, they can be so awful to each other. Oh my gosh.

We can be so awful to each other. We would, we say things to people we would never say to their faces, and that’s how you know that these people have a, a very extreme lack of boundaries. I know that as a content creator, you have medicine that you wanna share through your content. But when you feel that pressure to cater to everyone, then you’re gonna dilute your message.

You’re gonna dilute the potency of your magic and the potency of your medicine. I know that you desire to be your most authentic self in your online spaces because I do too. But from going through what I went through in 2020 and 2021, fear . Fear is the thing that is going to keep you from being your authentic self.

When you fear being misunderstood, or you fear being labeled as problematic or harmful, or you fear you’re privilege being called out, or you fear that you’re gonna have a comment that you just don’t know how to handle, you’re gonna stay stuck in your creativity. And when you feel that pressure to create safety, whatever the fuck that means, um, then you’re not in freedom to say the thing that you wanna say.

Because you’re trying to create safety for everybody, and I can promise you that your truth is not safe. Nobody’s truth is safe. Nobody’s truth is safe. Our truth is challenging. It is hard. Um, it is like a double edged sword, right? Like it can hurt, the truth can hurt, but the truth can also set us free. Um, and I know that this is how you feel as a creator or a potential creator, because I felt it too.

I know what the voice in your head says. I know that the voice in your head tells you that you have a responsibility to create safety for everyone who follows you. I know the voice in your head says, oh, I can’t trigger them. What if I do? I I’ll be bad. I’ll be wrong if I trigger them. I know the voice in your head wants you to, you know, dilute the message a little bit.

Just make it a little bit softer. Just make it a little bit more palatable. The voice says, I know that that’s what the voice in your head is saying, because I have the same. I have the same voice in my head and going through what I went through in 2020 and 2021. And to this day, I continue to receive, like on a daily basis, I get at least one dysregulated, rude, hateful, snarky comment and or DM every day.

And I’m only on Instagram, I’m not on Facebook, I’m not on Twitter, I’m not on Snapchat or TikTok. I’m not anywhere else. I’m only on Instagram, and that’s literally the limit of what I can handle. I can’t imagine those of you listening who are on multiple social media platforms, but going through what I went through in 2020 and 2021, like taught me, I’m never gonna be able to please the masses.

There’s always gonna be somebody who has a problem with what I say. There’s nothing I can do about that. I’m never going to be able to anticipate every single one of my followers triggers. I shouldn’t have to, that’s not my responsibility. I’m never gonna be able to create safety for all of my followers.

I’m never gonna find the people who are meant for me when I’m trying to please everybody. , right? I recognize that I’m not for everyone. Like I have a message and medicine that is not going to resonate with everyone. I’m not even trying to resonate with everyone, right? I’m not even trying. I don’t wanna please everyone.

I wanna find the people that are resonating with me, and I wanna cultivate those relationships. I also know that I’m never going to create my best content when I’m in a state of hypervigilance and fear. If I’m seeing my content before I even put it out into the world through the lens of someone who’s going to criticize it and then changing it and tailoring it to be something that someone’s less able to criticize, I’m never gonna create my best content out of that place.

Neither are you. I’m also never gonna feel freedom in my content creation. . When I’m feeling watched or feeling pressured to create safety or to not trigger people in 2020 and 2021, I felt watched. I knew those people were stalking me. I knew that they had their little flying monkeys that were taking screenshots of my stuff and sharing it with them so that they could put their commentary on it and add it to a highlight reel with my name on it.

Like, you know what I’m talking about? Like, yes, I know that 37,000 people are watching me because that’s how many followers I have at this current moment. But I don’t feel like I’m being watched like surveilled, like waiting for me to fail, waiting for me to say the wrong thing, waiting for me to fuck up.

I don’t feel that way. Now in 2020 and 2021, during those chunks of time, I absolutely felt watched. So if you’re a content creator listening to this or you wanna create content, I just wanna tell you that you need boundaries like a motherfucker on social media. You need to be able to use the block, delete and restrict buttons with zero guilt, with zero hesitation even.

I will even go so far as to say with zero hesitation. Um, and you need to stop diluting the potency of your medicine and your magic and your message to try to suit the masses when you are never, ever, ever going to please everyone. The truth about our dysregulated followers nervous systems is that they’re dysregulated.

Whether they’re dysregulated because they’re living with complex trauma, so they’re kind of always in a chronic state of dysregulation, whether they’re regulated when they get on the internet, and then they come across your content and that triggers them, and then they’re dysregulated. That doesn’t really matter.

They deserve compassion. We’ve all been dysregulated and we’ve all said and done things that are out of character for us that we would not normally say and do things that we’re not proud of when we’ve been dysregulated, right? So there’s no judgment, there’s no, um, harsh criticism of people who do this because we’ve all done it because we’re all humans with nervous systems that behave exactly the same way.

But when our dysregulated followers throw the hot potato of their dysregulation on us as creators in the comments in the dms, if we as the creator are not meeting our own nervous system dysregulation with awareness. And making conscious choices about how we wanna respond to that dysregulation. Then we go into unconscious mode and we’re in a dysregulated state, and then we throw the hot potato back.

And now instead of having a regulated creator and a dysregulated follower, now you’ve got a dysregulated creator and a dysregulated follower, and they’re throwing hot potato back and forth at each. . That’s crazy making. And we’ve all seen this happen. Maybe this has happened to you before. Um, it’s crazy making.

I kind of wanna talk a little bit here about, especially if you’re in the like, mental health, nervous system, trauma healing space. I wanna talk about the importance of what we’re modeling to our followers. Um, so I’ve been very vocal about my boundaries. I’ve created carousels on Instagram and reels and stories about my boundaries.

And I’ve gotten a lot of mostly really good feedback about it. And the feedback has been like, thank you for modeling what it looks like to set boundaries on social media, or, I love these boundaries. I never thought about these, but I’m gonna implement them for myself. Um, or I’m inspired by these boundaries and now I wanna think about the boundaries that I wanna have on my own space.

Like, I get messages like that. It’s wonderful. It really is. But again, it shows me that. People are watching, and I don’t mean that in a stalker kind of way. I mean that like in the space of trauma, nervous system, spirituality, healing like we’re all trying to learn so that we can heal ourselves and be better people for ourselves, for our marriages and our partnerships for our kids, for the generations coming after us.

Like we’re all trying to heal our shit and get. . One of the ways that we can do that is when we are in a relationship with someone who sets good examples for us. And so we may not even know that we have a lack of boundaries until we’re in a relationship with someone who’s very boundaried, but they’re very respectful and kind about it.

And so our, the boundary doesn’t feel the way that boundaries may have felt when we were children, right? Like where the boundary is like yelled at us or the boundary is a punishment or something like that. It’s like a sovereign, grounded boundary that doesn’t feel icky. You know what I’m saying? I hope, I hope that I’m explaining the difference in a way that makes sense, but people are, are watching, especially if you are a creator in these spaces and your followers, I can guarantee you that your followers.

They go through your comments. Sometimes they’re reading and watching what you’re saying to your other followers. Um, they’re seeing how you respond to people. And so if you are not modeling the boundaries that you hold in your online space consistently, then I can promise you that your followers probably subconsciously, um, they’re picking up on that.

And so why would someone ever hire me as their coach to help them set boundaries and regulate their nervous system around that if they don’t see me modeling my boundaries in a regulated way? Right? And the only experience that they have of me is either through listening to this podcast or maybe they’ve taken a workshop of mine or they follow me online.

right? That’s their only experience. They’ve never had a face-to-face conversation with me. They don’t know what I’m like in real life, but they see how I handle disgruntled followers. They see if I have a snarky response to somebody’s comments. They see if I take my dysregulation and throw it like a hot potato on other commenters in my comment section.

So it’s not just about like, oh, we just need to have boundaries in our social media spaces. It’s also about like if you’re a creator in this healing space, your followers are watching you and they’re seeing how you’re interacting with and engaging with your followers. They’re seeing what happens when there’s a snarky comment or when someone is rude or when someone calls someone else out, they’re seeing.

If you let arguments in your comments, just go. You know, ad nauseum for days or whatever. They’re seeing all of that, and that is a reflection on you as the creator who could potentially be someone that they invest in, right? Whether they hire you as a coach or they, they buy one of your courses, or they buy a workshop, or they join a group or something that you’re doing, like they’re making that decision subconsciously or not based on what they have seen and what you’ve model.

in your online space. So that’s another reason why we have to have boundaries. It’s not just about our own protection, it’s also about like our businesses. And I do not believe for a moment, and my account is proof of this, that having boundaries in our social media spaces limits us in terms of growth and business success.

In fact, I believe it does the opposite because it calls out the people who are not meant for us, who are only there because they have an agenda who just wanna prove themselves, right? Who just wanna argue with us. It calls those people out and it cultivates a space where there are people who are genuinely interested in learning, in growing, in healing, in engaging.

Um, and maybe those people are connecting with each other in the dm, so they’re creating community like that’s that. is just as much of a reason to model our boundaries as it is to protect our own space and our own sanity and our own creativity. And speaking of protecting creativity, if we’re talking about our magic, our medicine, and our message, it requires a lot of creative energy to take something that’s like hazy and nebulous like your medicine and put it into like a cognitive piece of content, right, with words.

Sometimes that’s difficult and like it takes time to cultivate that, but you’re gonna dilute it down and your message is not going to be your message when you’re trying to make it please everyone. And so you could be spending your energy on moderating comments and trying to come up with the perfect response, for every shitty comment you ever get, um, and every DM you ever get.

Or you could spend that energy in creativity mode. I don’t know about you, but I would far rather be in creativity mode than have to be dealing with people’s dysregulation all day, every day in the comments and dms on Instagram. Now, let’s talk about your nervous system as a creator. Let’s talk about my nerve system as a creator.

Okay. Um, so there’s a big component in whether or not we feel safe and comfortable to set boundaries in our online spaces that I have not talked about yet. And that is, we could call it a part of us. If you’re into internal family systems and parts work, we could call this a part of us. Um, we could call this an archetype in us.

Um, it’s a wounded part. It’s a wounded archetype, and we know a, we know it as the good girl or for men, it’s the good. I talked about the good girl, the archetype of the Good Girl in episode 87 of the podcast. So if you’re interested in, um, learning more about that, you can click over whenever you’re finished listening to this episode.

But essentially, the Good Girl or the Good Boy is that part of us that is ruled by shame, that desperately wants to please everyone. And that fears disappointing everyone. And the way that shame runs the show for the Good Girl or the boy, the bad, the, excuse me, the good girl or the good boy, . The way that shame runs the show for these archetypes is through shoulding.

So, oh, you should do this, you should post that. You shouldn’t post that. You shouldn’t say that. You should say that. Um, so there’s a lot of sh. , uh, which is very, very heavily informed by shame. Um, and then there’s also a lot of this binary belief that if we disappoint people, if we don’t please everyone, if we say something that offends someone, if we post something controversial, um, whatever, that we are bad and wrong.

Um, and so the good girl or the good boy’s, worst fear is being seen as bad and wrong. And their other worst fear is disappointing people because they are massive, massive people pleasers well. , as you can probably guess if you put all of this together, what that looks like when you’re showing up in an online space as a good girl or as a good boy, is that you’re not saying the full thing that you really wanna say.

You’re not using your authentic voice and speaking your authentic truth. You’re not sharing the full potency of your medicine, your message, and your magic, because one, you’re terrified that it’s gonna disappoint people because it won’t be palatable for everyone. And two, you’re afraid people will see you as bad and wrong.

So good girls and good boys have a terrible time setting boundaries because they know my boundaries are gonna disappoint. And they can’t handle that. And they know some people are gonna say that I’m bad and wrong for having boundaries. Some people are gonna call me selfish for having boundaries. Some people are gonna say, I’m entitled by having boundaries.

That’s a way that they’re disappointing people. So they have a big fear around setting boundaries. So this is a recipe fear of disappointing people and fear of having boundaries is a recipe on social media for disaster, right? Like if you’re in a space wanting to share your medicine and your message and wanting to speak your truth and find your voice, but you have this, this good girl or this good boy sitting on your shoulder telling you what a piece of shit you are, telling you how bad you are, telling you how selfish you are, telling you how wrong you are, telling you how disappointing you are to other people, you’re never gonna find that authenticity never, because it’s hidden under all of that fear and shame.

The good girl or the good boy archetype, um, is always driving us to stay small and quiet by using guilt and shame. Um, the good girl or the good boy is terrified of offending people. She wants to be liked by everyone and she wants to really believe that she’s good. So she’s constantly seeking certainty, trying to figure out how can I be good?

How can people see me as good and worthy? And when people used to leave me shitty comments and dms, when all that cancellation shit was going on in 2020 and 2021, um, my good girl was so scared and ashamed and the hurtful words that other people were saying about me or to me were proof that my good girl.

To say, Hey, what you fear the most is that you can’t and won’t please everyone. And look, it’s happening. , your worst fear is happening. So when my good girl was trying to please everyone, my authentic voice was silenced, repressed, and censored. And, um, I taught a workshop about the good girl with my really good friend Chelsea Horton, back in September of 2021.

Um, I’m sorry, 2022. Jesus. Uh, and we’re gonna teach it again twice in 2023. And we’re also gonna have a four week group program following it, which was highly requested after we taught the workshop last time. Um, so anyway, that’s upcoming. Just stay tuned for that. I’ll put a link in the show notes below for the wait list for the Good Girl Workshop so that you can be notified by email when that’s happening again.

Um, so the good girl or the good boy’s nervous system is literally stuck because as a child. Her self-defense and her personal boundaries were not, uh, honored. You know, like her personal space, her, her body, um, her, no, her self-defense. These things were not honored. And all of these things, boundaries are no.

Our self-defense, all of that are aspects of our healthy fight response and our nervous system. And so over time, when this healthy fight response was shut down by parents and caregivers, usually through shame, right? You’re not, you’re not supposed to talk back to. Good girls don’t talk back to their parents.

Um, good girls don’t say things like that, or good boys don’t say things like that. So over time, that fight response didn’t work. And when our fight response doesn’t work, the nervous system has no other choice but to resort to a dorsal, vagal state of immobilization. And that can be anything from freeze all the way down to full on collapse.

So the good girl is spinning her wheels. She’s desperate to please people, to explain herself, to be seen as good and worthy. Um, as right. Uh, she’s spinning her wheels trying to figure out how can I be seen this way, but I can’t protect myself because that doesn’t work. That’s gonna be punished or that’s gonna be shamed.

Um, so it’s like the gas and the brakes are going at the same time, right? The wheels are spinning, but the car’s not moving. And she’s stuck in fear, worry, hypervigilance, and people pleasing because of this fear. She’s mortified at the thought of being called out. She doesn’t trust herself to know how to respond to a dysregulated follower.

And she feels obligated to respond to every comment in every dm. I know I’m calling somebody out here. The good girl lets other people’s entitlement dictate how she shows up in her own space. So when people are demanding, when they’re asking for free coaching and the dms, when they’re coming into your comments and they’re harassing and bullying other followers, they’re showing up with a sense of entitlement.

And a good girl sees that sense of entitlement and she’s afraid of it. And so then she shows up differently in her own space. Most sadly, the good girl dips her toe into the waters of authentic expression and creation. But the moment someone gets upset by what she shares, she quickly runs away and ducks her head.

She wants to go back under the covers, and this means that she’s not accessing and sharing her most authentic self and her true voice, and it’s all because of fear and shame. So I wanna bring this episode to a close because I’ve been talking for almost an hour. Um, so I wanna bring this episode to a close by inviting you to a brand new workshop that I’ve created.

I bet you can’t guess what it’s about. It’s about setting and holding boundaries and our social media spaces. The workshop is called Protect Your Space. And after sharing my own boundaries on Instagram and having a lot of people say, I’m so inspired by how you set boundaries, I would love to learn how to do this.

Or one day. one day. I know that I will find my authentic voice the way you have. That’s the comment that like always like rips out my heart because it makes me so sad that there are people who still have not found that all because of fear and shame, nervous system dysregulation and the stories in their heads.

Um, I get a lot of comments about this. People really like how I’ve modeled boundaries and so I decided to just create a workshop to teach you how I do what I. So the workshop is called Protect Your Space, and the focus of the workshop is how to set and hold boundaries on social media to protect your space, your sanity, and your creativity.

This workshop is happening on Tuesday, January 17th, 2023 at 6:00 PM Central Time. It will be live on Zoom, and a replay is also included. Tickets are $77 if you need financial assistance because $77 is too much for you right now. Please reach out. We don’t ever want money to be a reason why you can’t attend one of my workshops.

Um, you can email support@lindsaylocket.com and just say, Hey, I need the discount for the Protector Space workshop. That’s it. We’ll give it to you, no questions asked. You don’t need to explain your circumstances or what situations are happening in your life, or if you’ve lost a job or if you have medical bills.

You don’t have to explain any of that, just. Just email support and say, Hey, I need the discount for protector space. Um, please, if you do email support, make sure you spell my name correctly. We have a lot of people who get upset whenever they, um, their emails don’t get read or received, and the, the mistake that they made is an easy one, but they put an a y in my name.

So my name Lindsay, is spelled with an ey, not an a y. So if you do email support, make sure you spell my name right or your email will not get where you want it to go. And we very much want to help you get the discount because we want this information to be available to everyone who needs it. In protect your space, I am going to be teaching why boundaries are a non-negotiable for creators and healing spaces.

I’ll also be teaching how to keep your own nervous system regulated instead of playing hot potato with your. I’ll be talking about how the good girl, good boy programming shows up on social media and all the sneaky ways they’re running the show. No matter what you’re doing, whether you’re creating content, scrolling, engaging, or even offline.

Because trust me, in 2020 and 2021, even if I didn’t have my phone in my hand, wasn’t on social media at all. My good girl’s voice in my head was ruminating constantly about what if this happens again? What can I post next time? How can I do this better? How can I be seen as good? Um, so no matter if you’re online or offline, that good girl programming is showing up.

That good boy programming is showing up, and he and she are very, very sneaky. I will be answering the question, isn’t it silencing people to block them and delete their comments? I will be answering that question. I’ll also be teaching why your followers deserve your compassion, but they, you are not obligated, um, to share your time, your response, or your energy with them.

You’re also gonna learn what your responsibilities as a creator actually are. Yes, you have responsibilities, especially if you’re a coach, a therapist, or other healing practitioner. I’ll be sharing what my personal boundaries are on my Instagram platform and why I’ve set these boundaries for myself and my audience.

Feel free to implement any of them that you like or that resonate with you. I’ll be sharing why your boundaries on social media will only grow your business and your account and will not limit you. I’ll talk about the nervous system states we encounter online through the lens of polyvagal theory. I’ll be teaching a practice.

This will be an experiential part of the workshop on how to mobilize your nervous system if you default to that freeze state where you get so overwhelmed that you don’t do anything when you’re creating, or even when you’re just scroll. I’ll talk about, um, what’s driving the good girls fear, self-censoring and shutting unconsciously, and then how to counter that with conscious responses.

And then just the nuts and bolts of using your Instagram settings to set and hold energetic boundaries in your space because you can do that. Um, so again, this workshop Protect Your Space is happening on January 17th, 2023 at 6:00 PM Central Live on Zoom. It’s $77. If you need financial support, please email support lindsey locket.com and we will give you a discount, no questions asked.

This workshop is happening live on Zoom, and part of your purchase includes the replay. So whether you can attend the workshop live or you can’t, does not matter. You’re gonna get the replay either way, and you’re also going to get all of my teaching slides. They will be downloadable afterwards. Um, thank you for not using them for yourself and your own work, and thank you for not sharing them with anyone, but you will have access to my teaching slides.

and I want you to show you that your boundaries on social media actually empower you to show up in your spaces as your most authentic self without censoring and silencing yourself. And that communicating the full undiluted truth of your medicine is really what your followers need. Because if you’re a content creator, especially if you’re in healing spaces, you are a leader.

You’re here to lead, you’re here to heal and to trailblaze, and all of that requires potency, and you can protect your potency with. . So I will have all of the information on protector space below, as well as a link where you can go get your ticket. Um, tickets are gonna be on sale until we sell out. So I’m selling a hundred tickets total as of right now at 3:40 PM on Thursday, January 5th.

We have sold 25 tickets, so we are 25% of the way sold out. Still plenty of tickets left. Um, but that is all I have for you today, so thank you for listening. Um, I would love it if you would give the show a rating if you’re on Spotify or iTunes. Um, give a star rating and then also leave a written review of the show if you have loved it or benefited from it in any way.

That really helps the show to be found by other people and go forth and set boundaries. Go forth and set boundaries without fear. And if you do feel fear about setting boundaries, I have a workshop for that. I will talk to you all soon. Um, the next episode on the podcast, I’m super excited. I have Dr. Russ Kennedy, the Anxiety md author of the book, anxiety Rx.

He’s gonna be the next guest, so stay tuned for that. I will see you inside, protect your space, or in the emails or in the dms or wherever I see you. Thank you so much for listening and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your 📍 day rest of your week, weekend, whatever, whatever it is you’re doing, whatever time it is that you’re listening to this, um, I wish you love and light and um, yeah, thanks for being here.

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