What am I actually protecting myself from when showing up online feels so f*cking hard?

After intentionally posting online again for the first time in a long time, I started wondering whether some of what I've called avoidance has actually been protection.

That question takes me back to 2024: a joke during a continuing education training that turned into a complaint against my counseling license, another person sending screenshots from a private Facebook group to the board, and the months I spent wondering whether something I said could change my entire career.

I'm talking through what that experience did to the way I show up publicly, all of the shoulda-woulda-coulda that came afterward, and the weird contradiction I'm sitting in now: I want to show up authentically, I need people to actually see the work I'm creating, and I also know firsthand that I can't control what someone does with what I say.

So maybe the question isn't how to stop caring what people think. Maybe it's how we let our work be seen without letting other people's responses decide whether we keep showing up.
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👋🏼 Find Becca
Want to learn more about Becca, explore resources, work together, or see what else she's making?

✨ Authenticity with Becca → Everything Becca
🏢 The Therapy Office → Therapy + The Therapy Office
🧠 Free Make It Make Sense Guide → Get the Guide
🛍️ The Shop → Browse Resources

🧠 A Quick Therapist-y Disclaimer
Becca Ferguson is a Licensed Professional Counselor, but Professionally Messy is not therapy, and listening to this podcast does not create a therapist-client relationship. This podcast is for educational and informational purposes and includes Becca's personal experiences, opinions, and general professional knowledge. If something here makes you think, “Well shit, maybe I should talk to someone about that,” that's probably a conversation worth having with your own qualified healthcare or mental health professional.

It took me nine months (and at least six or seven deleted versions) to record Episode 2.

Somewhere in all of those attempts, I kept getting stuck on the same question: What does it actually mean to be “professional” when you’re also a human dealing with burnout, anger, ADHD, grief, business stress, and your own shit?

In this episode, I’m processing the difference between being professional and being ethical, and whether we’ve started treating those things like they mean the same thing. I talk about therapist burnout, social media and the pressure to perform professionalism, autonomy, self-as-context in ACT, and what it has looked like to keep showing up while questioning whether I was showing up the “right” way.

I don’t think I beat burnout. I’m not sure that’s even how burnout works. But I am learning to think less about fixing it and more about building a life and business that are actually sustainable... even when things are still messy.

👋 Find Becca

Want to learn more about Becca, explore resources, work together, or see what else she's making?

✨ Authenticity with Becca → Everything Becca
🏢 The Therapy Office → Therapy + The Therapy Office
🧠 Free Make It Make Sense Guide → Get the Guide
🛍️ The Shop → Browse Resources

🧠 A Quick Therapist-y Disclaimer

Becca Ferguson is a Licensed Professional Counselor, but Professionally Messy is not therapy, and listening to this podcast does not create a therapist-client relationship. This podcast is for educational and informational purposes and includes Becca's personal experiences, opinions, and general professional knowledge. If something here makes you think, “Well shit, maybe I should talk to someone about that,” that's probably a conversation worth having with your own qualified healthcare or mental health professional.

As therapists, we spend our days talking people off the ledge, but what happens when we’re the ones standing on it? Where do we turn when the system keeps telling us to stay “professional” while everything inside us is falling apart?

Today, I’m talking about the platforms we love to hate. If you’ve ever opened a social media group looking for community and instead found gatekeeping, toxic comments, or people tearing down your work, you already know this energy can wreck your confidence fast, especially if you’re neuro-spicy, sensitive, or already carrying too much.

And let’s be honest… a lot of us are carrying too much. We’re trying to hold our clients’ trauma while navigating our own family chaos, burnout, grief, and the “can I please catch a break” moments that never seem to end.

This episode is for the therapist who is:

✨ navigating burnout while pretending they’re fine

✨ feeling the pressure of a field that demands perfection

✨ trying to trust their values when fear gets loud

✨ rethinking old systems that no longer fit

✨ exhausted from holding everyone else’s trauma and their own

✨ tired of toxic online spaces that make everything feel worse

This isn’t a five-step plan or polished advice. It’s me, a therapist and business owner, hitting a moment of “this isn’t working” and choosing honesty over survival mode.

If you’re trying to build a practice while managing real life and a real nervous system, you’re not alone. I’m walking through this in real time with you.