Charli D’Amelio: Heart Your Haters
Channel: Brooks Gibbs
Date: 2021-10-30

SQUABBLES TV presents...
Influencers Episode 1:  Charli D’Amelio, Heart Your Haters

She’s the first person to reach 100 million followers on TikTok.

At 17 years old, Charli D’Amelio found herself becoming the fastest rising star on social media. It seemed like a dream come true but quickly became a nightmare. 
 
If you are on social media, you have to watch out for two destructive personality traits that you might start developing. 

Perfectionism and Approval Addiction.

With the millions of people now watching her videos, she became super-self-conscious about how she looked, slowly becoming a perfectionist.

With millions of people commenting on her videos, she became obsessed with her critics, slowly becoming an approval addict.

Watching Charli emotionally struggle, begs the question: is this fame worth it?

Charli’s parents are torn. On one hand, they want to protect her, on the other hand, they want her to keep living this adventure. 

It would be cool if Charli was emotionally resilient, mentally strong enough to handle the platform she is on. But she’s not right now… she’s developed a crippling anxiety disorder, suffers from daily panic attacks, and is crumbling under the pressure of fame and fortune. 

If I was working with Charli, or anyone like her- I would design a therapeutic challenge that is a combination of Exposure Response Prevention Therapy (ERP) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). This unique combination will challenge her to engage with her online critics (as opposed to avoiding them). It will also challenge her to re-think their criticism in a way that improves her life and doesn’t destroy it.

The therapeutic challenge I designed for people like Charli is called “Heart Your Haters.”

When you see criticism in the comment section ask yourself the following:
Did their comments:
H. Help you? 
Perhaps their comments pointed out an area that you need to improve. If so, give them a heart.
E. Entertain you? 
Perhaps they said a joke at your expense. You demonstrate emotional resilience when you can laugh at yourself. So give them a heart.
A. Advise you? 
Perhaps they gave you some good, but harsh advice. You can take or leave the advice, but be sure to give them a heart.
R. Rebuke you? 
A wise person receives a rebuke. It keeps them humble, and humility will always look good on you. So give them a heart.
T. Toughen you? 
At the very least, the criticism may reveal a weakness in your insecurities, and give you an opportunity to toughen up. Like a good boxer needs a sparring partner to point out our vulnerabilities… we need haters to do the same for us. So heart your haters.

Every time you heart your haters, you are training your brain to find gold in the garbage. There is tremendous value in criticism, you just have to find it. 

For SQUABBLES TV, I’m Brooks Gibbs.