32. When Your Favorite Influencer Evolves and You Feel Betrayed: The Identity Crisis No One Talks About

Ever felt that jolt when an influencer you trusted completely flips the script? In this episode, we unravel the recent uproar around Therapy Jeff and M.J. Gray, not to spotlight their controversies, but to hold up a mirror to the deeper identity crisis we experience when our trusted voices evolve.

We’ll explore why these shifts feel so personal and how the real story isn’t about them...it's about us. Discover how influencers like Therapy Jeff and M.J. Gray become stand‑ins for our own certainty, and what happens when we’re forced to look inward.

If you’ve been outsourcing your self‑trust to strong online voices, this episode is your invitation back to yourself...back to building your own compass. And if you’re ready to dive deeper, let’s connect for a discovery call and start that journey together.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Heal Thrive Prosper. I'm Andrea Tanase. And if survival mode made you forget who you are, I'm here to help you remember. After hitting rock bottom and rebuilding my life from the inside out, I now guide people like you, the cycle breakers, the strong ones, the overachievers, to unlearn harmful patterns, reclaim your worth, and build a love and life that felt like freedom, not survival. So grab your favorite snack and let's heal, thrive, and prosper together. Welcome back. Have you ever felt that strange sense of betrayal when an influencer or an online figure or even just a celebrity you trusted suddenly changes their messaging, their opinion, or they say something, or there's a controversy that just completely collapses their image in your mind. Today we're going to talk about how those moments when people evolve or devolve can really unsettle us as human beings who looked up to them. We'll unpack why we get so attached to online figures who give us a sense of stability and certainty, and highlight that for a lot of women, a lot of influencers serve as surrogate guides, and it becomes a form of emotional safety. This week specifically, two influencers changed their stance. And actually, it was a lot more than that. One of them said something that was completely inappropriate, multiple things and other details are being uncovered, and the internet has been in a frenzy. I'm going to go into these examples and show you what this looks like in real time. But the real story here isn't them. It's what happens inside of us and how we view ourselves through their messaging. And so stick around because towards the end of this episode, we are going to talk about what this means for you. If you're new around here, or even if you're not, relationships, healthy relationships are my wheelhouse. And so when these stories came out and there was so much back and forth discourse, even over the last 24 hours, I knew I had to take a moment, reflect, pause, and think how does this affect the people that I work with, the people that I impact, the people I have influence over? And what can I say about it that isn't just reactive and adding fuel to the fire? So I'm going to quickly anchor us into these examples. So our first one is Therapy Jeff, a licensed therapist, turned full-time influencer who sparked very big backlash, to say the least, after posting a question about the existence of hotlines for men with harmful urges related to SA. And a lot of people, given the climate currently, also, but just in general, found the post insensitive at the least, and also just destabilizing in terms of the type of person that he has put himself out there to be as a champion for women, as someone who is a therapist that helps people through their relationship issues, how to navigate different conflicts, etc. And there was also a tweet, not a tweet, a thread that he replied to a question regarding a sexual situation and his preferences in that situation. And a lot of people found that very inappropriate. The way it was written also seemed strange. And even the fact that he wrote that, given that you have a platform where you're a licensed therapist, you're not a sex therapist, you're a general therapist who now gives relationship advice on social media and has millions of eyes watching him. Many people did not like this. Myself as a survivor and other survivors and other just women allies as well, found it to be insensitive, inappropriate to center men that harm and men that assault and asking where the help is for them, as if it is a compulsion or OCD or something they can't control. When research has found that due to many factors, um it's actually a deliberate choice to harm somebody. I have seen her things, I believe, on TikTok, and she hosts a podcast, but she built a whole brand and a huge following on anti-marriage messaging. And here's the hard part of both these situations is a lot of what these creators are saying, there is truth to it. For Therapy Jeff, definitely not his recent post, but a lot of people found his posts to be so helpful and found safety and support in them. Same thing with MJ Gray. A lot of people really resonated with her messaging of the fact that women used to be considered property, hence the misses, hence the, you know, taking the last name of the man and tradition and patriarchy and all those things. And that is valid, and all those things are true. But then here's the kicker. She announced her engagement after nine months of being with somebody, but after so long of her saying that women should never get married, marriage is a scam, saying that she was never going to get married, and now her audience is rightfully so feeling very blindsided. So this isn't about whether they're right or wrong, although I'm sure we all have opinions that Therapy Jeff is definitely in the wrong. And MJ Gray, in the least, went about this in the wrong way from a PR sense, at least. But like I said, this isn't about that. It's about why their evolution and us uncovering some truths about them feels like a betrayal to us, to the audience, and what that reveals about our relationship to certainty, identity, and self-trust. Themes that I explore deeply, deeply, deeply with my clients in my newsletter, in this podcast, on my Instagram. This is my wheelhouse, like I said. So we're gonna get into why, especially us as women, attach to strong online voices. I remember when I left my abusive relationship, I had nobody, at least in my mind, I had people I could reach out to, but they were so disconnected from what was going on, what was going on in my life. I had been so isolated. Online is where I found a sense of how to start healing, right? And so when you've come out of chaos, the first thing you look for is certainty and creators that have a very predictable stance and take, and you align with that, it feels like safety. And as a hyper-independent woman at that point in my life, I clung to those strong opinions because they felt like structure. And influencers in general that speak in absolutes, that have polarizing opinions, will go viral, will be more popular, and they feel like emotional anchors for that reason. So this is where the influencers become surrogate protectors, especially the ones who validate women's pain, women's lived experiences, call out the people that are inflicting this pain and speak with such fire, such conviction, and such strong opinions. They feel like they could be your older sister, your mentor, your personal therapist, or the protector you've never had. And this is where it gets tricky. We confuse resonance with reliability. You see something and you hear something, and you think she said what I've always been feeling. He is calling something out that resonates with me. And it turns into this person must be right about everything. This person must be a good person. This person must be a trustworthy person. Or the person's validating your experience, like I said. So it goes from validating you to this person is my compass now. They are going to tell me what's right or wrong, they're gonna tell me what the red or green flags are. I'm going to listen to them and take their advice as truth. Now I don't want to say that anything goes without saying. As someone who runs a podcast, I have to say it. I have to say that taking anything as an absolute truth without filtering it through your own belief system and through your own values and your own experiences, and trusting that just that one person can tell you a truth that applies to you when it's just general advice put on the internet is dangerous. And this part I actually don't want to say, but it's the truth. A lot of influencers, a lot of coaches, a lot of therapists, a lot of a lot of things, people with various titles that have platforms and have a following will actually prey on people and draw them in with that pain messaging, with that. Oh, I know you've been through X, Y, and Z and this and that, and have just strongest polarizing opinions, and that's how they grow so fast, is because they have a clear stance, a very clear, one-sided, definitely not one size fits all stance, but it resonates with the majority of people, and so it gets pushed out there, it gets shared, people like it, but it is dangerous, and I will tell you why. As someone who's a creator and a consumer and a coach, I see this from multiple perspectives from a consumer standpoint. A lot of us will follow people not for the advice, but for the safety that it creates for us. And when this advice goes off the rails, there is an internal collapse we have to deal with. So Therapy Jeff's shift triggered confusion. His posts questioning the existence of hotlines for men with those urges felt jarring. And yes, because of the topic, but also because it disrupted the predictability that people relied on him for. And it raises the question: if someone can get this so wrong, if he can get this so wrong with a million plus followers, what else could I be wrong about? What other creator am I wrong about? What else in my life am I wrong about? What if I took his advice? What does that mean? Same thing with MJ Gray's engagement, feeling like a betrayal. She built a platform on that anti-marriage messaging, then she quickly got engaged and her audience feels duped, abandoned, and even embarrassed for believing her stance and then her switching it on us so abruptly, seemingly, and doing exactly the opposite of what she said she was never going to do. So when the person you borrowed your identity from evolves, you're forced to confront the parts of yourself that you've been avoiding. If you don't know who you are without someone telling you, especially if you're a woman who grew up self-reliant, under-supported, or emotionally neglected, which I was all of those things, certainty becomes your new coping mechanism and you don't even realize it. Someone else's evolution exposes your lack of internal clarity. The betrayal that you're feeling is actually self-abandonment. If you've abandoned your own discernment and you've outsourced your internal compass, you've let someone else's journey become your identity. And let me get this straight. It is okay to tell people that the advice they're giving is straight up wrong. It's hurtful, it's harmful. But when it starts intersecting with who we believe we are, that is not okay. And that should signal that something needs to shift inside of ourselves. The betrayal isn't that they changed. The betrayal is that maybe you stopped listening to yourself and you started listening to other voices that don't know you, don't know your story, don't know your situation. Those voices should not be stronger than your own voice. Your identity within yourself should not be superseded by somebody else's identity. I also want to make clear that I am not calling you out if this is you, because this was me for such a long time. And it doesn't mean that something's wrong with you or that you need to jump to fix yourself. It means that you need to start with this reframe. You don't need a protector, you need a compass. Other people are allowed to evolve. Influencers are allowed to show their true colors, good or bad. You are allowed to evolve, but your identity cannot be built on someone else's healing arc. What do I always say? Do not outsource your own wisdom. You can find somebody, find a guide, find a coach that can help you build discernment, that can help you build your own identity and find that within yourself. Someone that can help you transform your patterns. Because discernment is better than certainty. And building your own identity and being sure in that is better than hot takes on the internet. And transforming your patterns is better than searching for influencers to validate your pain. Your pain is valid. But what now? What's next? So if this episode hit something tender and you realized you've been outsourcing your identity to people online, I'm inviting you back to yourself. This is exactly the work I do. I help high-achieving, hyper-independent women build that internal clarity, that self-trust, and that relational identity that no influencer, no pastor, no teacher can give you. You can only find someone that can help guide you there. And if you're ready to stop borrowing certainty and start building your own compass, I have a few discovery call spots open this month. So get on a call with me and let's talk about the version of you who leads herself not from fear, not from survival, but from truth and builds relationships on that strong foundation. Don't forget to hit the follow button on whatever platform you're listening on. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you next time.