Hello Brenda! That particular article is a mess, and I've since learned more about the psychology of internal family systems and the voices/impulses of my ego, but many thanks to you for taking the time to read it!
Following people is a way to establish a following for yourself. I always follow an author if I enjoyed their article and usually do a "follow for follow" as a courtesy, though often I'll get business, tech or crypto-currency followers that publish work I likely won't read. If you're looking to build an audience, commenting, replying to comments and following are things that can help. I would absolutely suggest submitting your work to publishers within the Medium community if you really wish to be noticed though. That can skyrocket your reads, follows and earnings here. I submitted my first entry to an addiction/recovery publisher and was rejected, rather cold-heartedly, and have been publishing directly to Medium ever since. I have just over 1000 followers after over 3 years, which is totally cool with me, since I mostly read here anyway. However, I have witnessed brand new writers get a few thousand followers almost instantly by writing for established publishers within the platform. .
Best wishes for your success here. If you do follow me, I've pinned a couple of articles to my profile and there's other messy and raw work there too. 🤪