This is the 4th part of my series Self-Help, LLC, which I'm replaying over the summer! Enjoy!

If your Instagram feed or Explore page looks anything like mine, then you likely see a preponderance of posts about personality types, conditions, or other self-knowledge. We’re hooked on learning about ourselves! And perhaps even more hooked on sharing what we’ve learned—which means that the Instagram algorithm (as well as TikTok’s and Pinterest’s algorithms) has learned to love this kind of content, too.

In this episode, I explore discovering ourselves versus making ourselves, why self-knowledge is big business on Instagram, and how creating viral personality content can wreak havoc on the creator’s psyche. To dig into this with me, I invited @ninetypesco creator, Steph Barron Hall, onto the show.

Footnotes:

• Find Steph Barron Hall on Instagram (@ninetypesco)
• Learn more about working with Steph
• How to be Authentic by Skye Cleary
• Learn more about the Enneagram and find your type
• The Nine Types of Rest
• Self-Help, INC by Micki McGee
• “Double consciousness”
• “Looking glass self”

Essay versions of each episode are posted at whatworks.fyi every Thursday.