If you prefer the Instagram version of yourself, read this book

My Instagram Story persona could not be further from the real me. 

She’s chill, constantly smiling and laughing, and always living her best life in some far-flung place that looks as if it were built with the ‘gram in mind. To be quite honest with you, I sometimes prefer her to my IRL self. 

Scratch the highly-curated veneer of the 2-dimensional version of the life I purport to lead, and you’ll see someone struggling daily with severe anxiety and low self-esteem.

This gaping chasm of difference between these two identities became a source of anxiety for me this summer. “Will people be disappointed when they see I’m not as fun as my Instagram self?” I worried as I returned from a summer holiday in France, which I’d documented on my Story.   Read more…

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