Therapists often walk a fine line when it comes to showing up online. You want to build trust. You want your content to feel real and resonate with the people you’re here to help. But you also want to respect your own boundaries, your clients’ privacy, and your professional role.
It’s easy to feel torn between two extremes:
- Staying “professional” but sounding flat or distant
- Being open and “relatable” but worrying you’ve shared too much
And let’s be honest: neither feels particularly sustainable.
The good news is there’s a middle ground! You can be authentic without oversharing. You can build trust online without turning your personal life into your brand. And you can market your practice in a way that feels safe, aligned, and true to you.
Authenticity Doesn’t Mean Telling Everyone Everything
There’s a common misconception that in order to build trust, you need to bare your soul. But for therapists, curated authenticity is much more effective.
You can:
- Acknowledge that you’ve had your own mental health journey
- Share personal insights that shaped your professional path
- Express strong values around the kind of work you do or the clients you support
…but none of this requires you to process your life online, or disclose details that feel vulnerable to share.
Authenticity is about alignment, not exposure.
You’re allowed to choose what parts of yourself you share, and which you keep private. In fact, the ability to choose is what makes it authentic in the first place.
Not All Vulnerability Builds Trust
In an effort to avoid sounding “too clinical” or detached, some therapists lean hard into “messy human” content: talking about current burnout, the emotional weight of their caseload, or how they’re personally struggling to function.
And while honesty is important, frequent posting from a place of real-time overwhelm can leave your audience unsure whether you’re in a position to hold space for them.
Let’s ground this with a relatable example.
Imagine This…
You’re looking to hire a social media manager. You come across two profiles:
One says: “I love helping therapists show up online with more clarity and confidence. I’ve worked with dozens of private practices and know how to build an intentional presence that feels good and gets results.”
The other says: “Honestly, I’ve been struggling to keep up with my own content lately. I get overwhelmed by the tech and sometimes don’t post for weeks.”
Who are you more likely to hire?
Probably the first one.
Not because the second person isn’t good at what they do, but because they’ve centred their struggle rather than their strengths. And when we’re looking for support, we want to feel that the person we hire has capacity, not just empathy.
Now bring that back to you as a therapist.
Your clients aren’t expecting perfection. But they are looking for someone who feels grounded and safe enough to support them. Someone who can model reflection, regulation, and resilience, not just someone who “gets it.”
You can be honest without undermining your own authority.
What Does Build Trust (Without Oversharing)
So what actually works? How do you connect with your audience without feeling like you’ve left your emotional front door wide open?
Here’s what works ethically, effectively, and with integrity.
1. Speak from Patterns, Not Personal Processing
Trust builds when your audience feels like you understand them not when you turn your feed into a diary. Social media is not the place to process what you’re still actively moving through.
Instead, share experiences you’ve already integrated. Experiences that shaped you, built your empathy, or gave you insight into how you now support others. You’re not hiding your humanness, you’re offering it with boundaries and perspective.
You can absolutely share that you’ve experienced anxiety, burnout, or people-pleasing. But share it from a place of steadiness, not struggle.
Instead of:
“I’m finding it hard to function at the moment. My anxiety has flared up and I’ve barely kept up with client work.”
Try:
“As someone who’s navigated anxiety and burnout in the past, I understand how hard it can be to slow down when your brain is wired for high performance. One thing I now do when I feel that familiar pressure creeping in is pause and ask: what am I trying to prove right now?”
This is what we might call professional empathy. It says: I’ve been there, I get it, and I now have tools that help. You’re modelling something emotionally honest and practically useful without centring your content around current dysregulation.
You’re showing capacity, not collapse.
2. Position Your Client Work Responsibly
Another boundary that’s increasingly blurred online is how therapists talk about their clients.
Even if you change the name and location, if a client could read your post and recognise themselves—or worry that you’re posting about them—it’s too close. “Anonymised” doesn’t always mean safe. And for your audience, it can raise subtle questions about how you manage confidentiality more broadly.
That doesn’t mean you can’t share your expertise or bring your work into your content. But you need to do it in a way that protects your clients, your integrity, and the safety of your space.
Here are two ways to do that well:
Speak to themes, not cases
Zoom out from individual stories and talk about the patterns or dynamics you see across your client work.
Instead of:
“A client came to me this week because her partner called her selfish for needing alone time.”
Try:
“I often work with clients who feel guilty for needing space—especially in relationships where they’ve been told their needs are ‘too much’. That guilt is often a sign that their boundaries are actually starting to work.”
This allows you to speak with authority, without compromising anyone’s privacy.
Create composite case studies (with transparency)
You can also build example scenarios based on a blend of client experiences, especially if you’re clear that they’re illustrative, not real.
Example:
“Jane came to therapy feeling stuck in her relationship. She’s been afraid to ask for what she needs, convinced it’ll make her seem ‘too much’. Through therapy, she starts to notice how often she shrinks herself to stay acceptable—and begins to set boundaries that feel more aligned.
Jane isn’t a real client, but her story reflects a dynamic I see all the time: the tension between self-expression and fear of rejection.”
This kind of storytelling can be powerful and relatable but only when it’s clearly fictionalised. It allows you to demonstrate how therapy can help without putting any one client under the spotlight.
Whatever approach you take, the principle is the same: share your insight, not someone else’s private experience. Your role is to protect the space and illuminate the work, and it’s absolutely possible to do both.
3. Bring Your Voice, Not Your Vulnerability
You don’t need to tell your whole story to show people who you are. Often, the most powerful posts aren’t so much personal as they are principled.
Your perspective on identity, justice, or power might feel “too political” to some. But for the clients you most want to work with, it can be the thing that makes them feel safe enough to reach out.
You’re allowed to be a therapist with a worldview. You’re allowed to name what matters to you, clearly, calmly, and without apology.
Example:
“I believe that people deserve to be fully themselves without needing to explain or justify their identity. That’s not political, it’s the bare minimum. For many of the clients I work with, that kind of safety is something they’ve never experienced before.”
This isn’t oversharing. This is positioning. It tells people what kind of space you hold and whether they’ll feel safe in it.
4. Let Your Work Speak for You
At the end of the day, visibility isn’t about being louder or more vulnerable. It’s about being clear.
- Clear in your voice
- Clear in who you help
- Clear in the transformation you offer
- Clear in what people can do next
Sometimes the most trustworthy thing you can do is communicate with grounded confidence, not to impress but to make it easy for the right people to connect with you.
Final Thoughts
You don’t need to disappear behind clinical language or show up with perfect polish. But you also don’t need to share your most private moments to prove that you’re real.
The most powerful content often comes from reflection, not reaction.
You are allowed to be human and boundaried. To be warm and clear. To build a presence that honours both your story and your standards.
You don’t have to choose between real and responsible.
Want Help Setting Boundaries Online?
If you’re not sure how to protect your professional boundaries on social media without sounding cold or clinical, I’ve got you.
My Social Media Disclaimer Template for Therapists gives you a ready-made, fully customisable way to:
- Clearly state your boundaries around personalised advice and DMs
- Set expectations around confidentiality and therapeutic limitations
- Let people know how (and when) they can get in touch with you
- Add a layer of ethical clarity to your bio, highlights, or pinned posts
👉 Click here to download it for free and take the pressure off wondering what you can or should say in your content.