Once upon a time I was a very successful attorney and a very successful addict. Today I am neither.
On Validation Addiction, Instagram, Art, and Recovery // Introduction to GENRE: Art Projects with Beth Stanfield
In 2005, I became a lawyer and got really good at it. In 2019, I got sober but remained fused to my career path. In 2023, I left BigLaw and founded my own law firm because I thought it was what I wanted. In 2025, I closed most of my firm because it wasn’t.
And five minutes ago, I launched this Substack account and kicked my addiction to validation. Just Kidding—I’m still an addict, but this—this Substack experiment—is a small step in the direction of recovery.
This is the back story, and it’s important for you to read it, otherwise nothing I am doing here will make any sense . . .
From the time I entered law school in 2002 until 2023, the majority of my life force energy has been dedicated to becoming the best attorney I can possibly be—not only in my own eyes but in the eyes of a boss. That’s over twenty years grinding it out in a notoriously unforgiving profession not known for producing happy, balanced, embodied people. I am no exception.
As I neared the twenty-year mark, I was hungry for change: for a way to do work that really matters without the pointless corporate bullshit. For the freedom to be my whole self without having to hide the most interesting parts of what makes me, me. So when I became my own boss in 2023, I thought that was it.
Autonomy! An online business of my very own! No more grinding down my precious days building someone else’s dreams! No more having to make up reasons at work for why I can’t meet for drinks or just seem different for no apparent reason! No more climbing the corporate ladder! No more playing the game! No more seeking approval from the people who pay me! No more seeking validation from an outside source!
Nope — I forgot about social media.
In the Christmas movie classic Love Actually, Billy Mack (played by Bill Nighy) delivers one of the movie’s best lines:
“Hiya kids, here’s an important message from your uncle Bill. Don’t buy drugs. Become a pop star and they give you them for free!”
That’s Instagram today. The pervasive social macrocosm where everyone is a pop star and the drugs are free.
But if Instagram is your job, the free drugs are not only unlimited in supply, but widely accepted as a natural byproduct of putting out good content. In fact, when your paycheck depends on the degree of social media interest directed at you and your work, more interest = more validation hits = professional success. And because professional success has always been the holy grail, this formula was a perfect set-up for me—a raging approval addict disguised as a really great worker.
Of course, for over a decade, experts have been tracking the deeply problematic impacts of social-media-driven living on mental and emotional health. But because I wasn’t really raised on Instagram and because I largely ignored the online business world until I decided to enter it, I didn’t see it coming.
So in mid 2023 when I started transitioning my personal Instagram account to mostly business, I took no steps to fortify my mind and heart the way I would if I was spending a long weekend with friends who like to drink. Moreover, I didn’t perceive myself to be the typical “problem” social media consumer. I had little interest in scrolling. I always had a legitimate reason to be engaging with the platform (either work or to promote my weekly Turn Up dance fitness class). And I followed only writers, dancers, artists, select female entrepreneurs, and a handful of people working very hard to save our democracy and fight for human rights.
Plus, I told myself, my motives were good—I had a mission and vision bigger than my tiny Instagram account and regular-sized ego. In the end, the problem presented not in what I was consuming on Instagram, but what I was putting out and expecting in return.
In theory, I was a female entrepreneur on Instagram promoting a business I founded. In reality, I was selling myself. Every time I posted, I put my own body and heart up for sale. And it was market-driven: the value of my self-worth became what the Instagrammers would pay in follows, engagement, and clicks on links. And eventually, I sold myself out. Completely. In fact, toward the end, I couldn’t even give myself away. It was so humiliating. But the whole time I thought I was just “doing my job” and “building a personal brand.” (Also, in case you were wondering, personal brands can be legally monetized, trademarked, valued as a distinct asset, and sold—so don’t think for a second I’m using the term “selling myself” metaphorically.)
In theory, I was tapping into Instagram’s limitless potential to reach a broader, more aligned audience. In reality, I was tapping into Instagram’s limitless potential to deliver quick validation hits. But those hits never came fast enough or lasted long enough to compete with Instagram’s limitless potential to make me feel like a desperate, old, talentless, washed-up, worthless failure.
As an entrepreneur on Instagram, I simply went from placing my self-worth in the hands of a bunch of men in Milwaukee to . . . all the women of the internet. It was the same validation high-low cycle I thought entrepreneurship was saving me from, but way worse because I made selling myself my main job and gave several thousand women the ultimate right and authority to evaluate my job performance.
Damn.
To state the obvious, the “GENRE: News” is a totally fake publication with made up headlines that are mostly false but part true and all funny (to me at least). I’ve always loved a touch of satire. It somehow orients me to the topic in a way my longer form narrative does not. It’s like tilting your head and looking at something from a sideways angle. And it makes me smile.
The online Biz Beth era lasted eighteen months. It started with five-star reviews and ended with three separate, painful interventions from a set of close friends and family members.
Here’s the story of my spiral in a nutshell.
Through the end of 2023 and all of 2024, I put all of my energies into building a law firm and legal services business predicated on a personal brand. I developed programs and offers a person like me (but is not me) would love. But when it came time to promote said programs, I couldn’t effectively do it because the “me” who is actually me didn’t actually love the program. And despite knowing (deep down) this fundamental misalignment was the actual problem, every disappointment reinforced my belief that the problem was me because that’s what I was selling—me. Every letdown meant I wasn’t working hard enough. I wasn’t clear enough. I wasn’t compelling enough. I wasn’t likable enough.
And the lower I got, the harder I went—clinging to the belief that the next thing was getting me closer to a place of authenticity and flow. Plus, every single entrepreneurial course, podcast, event, and Instagram caption told me this is just what it takes to establish a business predicated on a personal brand—lot’s of hard work, lots of content creation, lots of pivoting, lots of “putting yourself out there,” and lots of “providing value” for free. But the more I promoted my “personal brand”—the further I strayed from promoting work I actually love—which, of course, is entirely predictable since a “personal brand” will always obscure the actual person. It’s a hologram.
And when the dopamine waned and the validation hits stopped coming (inevitably, because there is no actual market for the human being that is me) I doubled down on what was not working. I worked harder (yellow flag). I increased my posting frequency and modified my “voice” to sound more relatable (orange flag). I talked myself into new career paths on almost a monthly basis (red flag). I deeply discounted my expertise because I was desperate for something—anything—to work (big red flag). I became less and less creative (bigger red flag). I started listening to everyone else who seemed to have their Instagram shit together instead of my own intuition (flaming red flag). And finally, I became manic (five-alarm fire flag).
For weeks, I stayed awake all night—frenetically trying to diagnose and fix the problem. I refused to admit defeat, and my brain reacted like I was gulping amphetamines. During the day, I pulled hairs from my eyebrows and hovered over my laptop—the screen inches from my eyeballs. I covered myself in makeup, stuck my face in cameras, and recorded shit I wasn’t ready to talk about. I medicated my massive headaches, anxiety, and insomnia with OTCs—way too many—and increased my anti-depressant—unilaterally.
I felt like I was losing my mind because I was losing my mind. I was losing me. I started to wake every day with dread just like my law firm days. Then, I started to wake everyday with self-loathing just like my drinking days.
And that’s when things got really dark. I was losing myself during the era in which I was supposed to be not only finding myself, but pursing a professional existence that aligns with my deepest, truest self—an era I fought so hard to envision and sacrificed so much to pursue. I was supposed to be proud of myself. But I was profoundly not proud and not myself. It made no sense.
Except it made perfect sense. It was obvious. Everyone could see it.
I was losing myself because I was selling myself.
I felt worthless because I was giving myself away for free.
I was using external validation to give me a transient feeling of purpose and progress without ever being truly aligned with what I was putting into the world.
I was still an addict.
I was having no fun.
Everyone could see it except me. Unlike my abuse of alcohol, which I secretly managed for over 15 years, my validation addiction was public. And unlike my addiction to alcohol, I was in denial. But this discrepancy does not surprise me. Alcohol is legal, everywhere, but still regarded as bad for your health. The behaviors that feed validation addiction are legal, everywhere, and widely regarded as beneficial for personal/professional success.
Even so, when I said earlier that I “didn’t see it coming,” I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. I can’t credit myself with true ignorance. I think I saw a possible problem coming; I just thought I was stronger and better and further along in my recovery. I was wrong on all counts.
Count I: I thought alcohol was my only real addiction. By 2023, I was pretty settled in my recovery. The year marked 4.5 years of solid sobriety, and I didn’t get there by running blindly into danger zones or engaging in risky behavior.
Count II: I thought I was an exception. Throughout my academic and legal career, I operated as a high-performer everywhere I went and in everything I did. I accepted this as a given without ever grappling with why. Why do I work so hard? Why am I so driven? Why do I have to be the best? Why do I judge my mistakes so harshly? Why is no level of achievement really enough? I did not entertain these questions, assuming I was just made this way, and there was no point fighting my DNA.
Count III: I thought I was a badass. I spent twenty years in a highly-regulated, intensely-guarded, cutthroat professional environment, so I thought my skin was thicker than a genuine crocodile handbag. I could not imagine a world in which I would possibly feel worthless because of what did or did not happen on an app. An App! I had always been a successful employee; why wouldn’t I be a successful entrepreneur? When I jumped into the online law business, I actually thought I had “conquered corporate” and had nothing left to prove. I was simply taking the grand leap into entrepreneurial freedom to complete my career.
After eighteen months, the jury has now returned verdicts all all three counts. Wrong, wrong, and wrong. It’s crazy the picture an addict can paint for herself when she doesn’t want to see.
I don’t have enough hindsight to see the full picture, but a few things are now clear. I never “conquered corporate”—I had become desensitized to both the highs and lows of that particular environment. When I started selling on Instagram, I was not leaping into freedom—I was headed straight in the belly of my earliest and most enduring addiction: the need for approval and validation.
I couldn’t see it then, but my leap from corporate approval to social media approval was an escalation of my addiction. I needed validation from a larger audience because the “hits” from the corporate world no longer made me feel high. The promotions didn’t work anymore. The money didn’t really matter. I needed approval at a higher level, a greater frequency, and from a more “aligned” audience.
I needed quantum-level validation. I needed it like my life depended upon it. And when I didn’t get it—not quickly or consistently enough—I unraveled.
It’s a really old, predictable story arc. Not even interesting. But even so, understanding and disrupting this story arc is critically important. The rest of my life is on the line, and I do not want to live it as someone I am not. I want to live it as me, in freedom. My sanity, my sobriety, and my soul require it.
So, it’s official. I can’t handle Instagram as anything other than an old-school bulletin board at my favorite coffee shop. Not now, at least. Maybe never?
And that’s why I’m here.
And yes, I know. Substack and Instagram are different, but they are still exactly the same. The hits are still everywhere and unlimited in supply. So, I am doing everything in my power to protect my sobriety and listening—very, very closely—to myself as I explore what happens here.
But I’m excited about it. It feels good. And fun.
In my next post, I’m going to explain what this Substack is, why I named it GENRE: Art Projects with Beth Stanfield, and what’s coming up for May and June (that’s as far as my current planning goes).
But I want to go ahead an address something important up front. I have been told there is an unwritten rule that we are supposed to make everything here free for some unspecified amount of time before introducing a paid option. I can’t do that for a few reasons. First, I’d like to point out that I have followed the rules my entire life, and that never took me anywhere I wanted to go. I have a different relationship now with “The Rules”—written or unwritten.
The second thing is the most important. I can’t go back to selling myself. No matter what happens here, I will never again give myself away for free or discount the value of my work and expertise. Everything of full and true value will exist inside the full subscription. It has to be that way. My sobriety does, in fact, require it.
So, I do hope you choose to come along for the full ride, but there will still be fun and beautiful things for you every month when you subscribe regardless of plan.
Ok, that’s all for now. I love you & would love to hear from you! — Beth
Subscribe to GENRE: now and stay tuned for my next post about this space and the upcoming Easy 30-Day Writing Project, which is coming soon!!!!
Welcome to Substack! I love you!!! The REAL you.
Thank you for sharing your story! Love your headlines too- so funny!