Some of my female patients are struggling with the way life is exposed on social media. It is becoming extremely problematic not only in relation to the beauty standards exhibited online, but also the family models that are exposed.
Some women — who struggle with their role as working women and mothers or housewives — have difficulty in understanding that behind a bright young entrepreneur who constantly shows herself on social media as a loving mother and wife, immersed in an opulent and perfect reality, there is a hidden world of waiters, nannies, makeup artists, hairdressers, drivers, airplane pilots and photographers, who certainly do not appear in videos and Instagram stories.
My job, in dealing with these patients, is to relieve them of the sense of frustration and inadequacy that arises from the comparison, trying to bring them back to the level of reality. And yet it may be reality itself that is the biggest obstacle in any of my therapeutic efforts.
For it is looking ever more true what one of my patients, Gennaro, once told me: “Dottoré, this story that money doesn’t buy happiness is bullshit. It was invented by the rich to comfort and trick those who have nothing…”
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