Your worth was decided before your first post. Likes can’t vote on it.

Numbers on a screen measure how one image performed on one particular afternoon, and nothing else. They feel like a verdict because they arrive as one, instantly and in public. But whatever makes you worth something was in place before you had an account, and a count does not move it. The audience has no jurisdiction here.

Try one week of posting without going back to check. Or take the counts off for a day and notice how quickly the urge to look returns. Pay attention to who you are when nobody is counting.