Navigating Self Disclosure and Privacy on Substack
Balancing Personal Storytelling with Professional Boundaries
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Dear friends
How do you navigate self disclosure and privacy in your Substack writing?
For those of us who are therapists, we are used to bracketing our personal life and history from clients, apart from the odd occasion where it may facilitate growth, or strengthen our working alliance.
But what about in our writing? Sharing and self disclosure can be the very thing that connects us with our readers.
How much can we share? Can we show something without showing it? Should we put everything behind a paywall, or use a pseudonym to protect our client work?
Which of our stories should stay tucked inside our journals?
It can be hard to get the balance right. Too much disclosure and we may feel over exposed or have our client work undermined. To little and our work could come across as distant and disengaged. This post has my thoughts but it is also to open the conversation, so feel free to join in.
As I no longer see clients in my private practice due to the lingering effects of long covid, I have felt free from these tensions - though I do still keep much of my writing, and life private: boundaries are our protection.
We don’t owe anyone anything.
I hardly ever share photos of my daughter online, just occasionally with her permission. Boundaries are often beautiful, as this photo illustrates!
My psychotherapy clients mostly never knew I was a mother, my experiences of loss, my travels, my pain, my growth. I only shared details about myself in a handful of cases - only ever in the service of clients.
In therapy, our clients see us, and feel our presence. There is an unspoken, embodied relationship that would not be possible without all the personal work and growth we have been through, and hopefully, out the other side. Clients often pick up that we understand at great depth - but we don’t need to explain.
In writing, we want to connect, to find ways to convey that we understand others, and disclosing and owning our own process can be part of that. Clever writers can do this with metaphor and poetry, and a light touch of disclosure that reveals the quality of what matters rather than the events themselves.
Self disclosure is often different for coaches, who are more open about their lives, using their own journey as an inspiring example to follow, proving what is possible.
For our work here, for it not to sound always authoritative, or distant, or expert, we have to share some of our selves - it almost feels imperative for substack.
Considerations for Privacy and Self Disclosure
I am not sure if I would disclose so much about myself in public posts if I was still seeing clients. My therapeutic model worked best if I bracketed most personal details, to keep the process and work all about them and their development.
I still protect myself with paywalls here, but I would follow the relevant strategies below more stringently if I had a practice of clients right now.
Can we write on Substack without harming the therapeutic work we do off platform? One answer is to share our understanding without always sharing the wound.
Before posting, consider:
Are you wanting validation for yourself? I found sharing my personal experiences of loss (my two babies long ago, and resulting divorce) so validating in the community of grief writers on Substack of which there are many. The most vulnerable post that documents my life story went behind a paywall after a while, as I felt I wanted more protection. My viral note I wrote about here was also highly personal, bringing in 724 subscribers. If it is validation you seek, Substack is a great community for it, though you can balance this with what is good for your clients and your professional life too.
Sharing creative writing is so therapeutic. My story tumbled onto the page with my tears. This is the story that enabled me to work at depth with those who experienced loss and trauma, though I never needed to tell them, I could just hold them while they healed.
Many of us are wounded healers, and we are still on our own healing journey. I talked about this in a previous post. It doesn’t excuse us from doing our work to progress through our issues, but we must also accept where we are now too.
Establish if this piece of writing is for your benefit or is it in the service of the reader? Often it is both.
Will over-sharing inflict damage or make us appear incompetent?
Create an unspoken ‘working alliance’ with your readers. I share to improve their mental health and wellbeing - so I do this in the best way I know how, which involves a mix of self disclosure, knowledge and exercises that work.
Will sharing this publicly build trust with your readers or erode it? Does it reveal your authenticity and humanness, or does it make you appear as someone who cannot hold or guide them?
Conversely, on Substack when we do self disclose, we are saying I understand you. All humans are more similar than different. We say when we share, you are like me you are welcome here. I am flawed and so are you but we are also fabulous.
Past posts: Crickets in the Tumbleweed: Engagement Rates | Uplifting Songs Around the Campfire | The Wounded Healer-Writer | 724 New Subscribers: is Going Viral all it’s Cracked up to be? | Harmonise your Substack with Ikagai | the Campfire - Inspiring Quotes | 32 Editing Tips | The Highly Sensitive Therapeutic Writer | Introduce Yourself!
Ways to Navigate Privacy and Self Disclosure on Substack
If you are a therapist wanting to write but not to reveal yourself too much, so your client work is not at all undermined, (you do not want to be worrying about this while you are working!) - there is lots you can do that you may have already thought of but it is worth iterating:p these 14 ways: