Tag Archives: facebook

Facebook Tribulations

I have been on and off Facebook so many times the last few years, I have lost count. I took an occasional Facebreak, but I first got blown off in December 2013. I was pleading for help from people I thought were friends, and one I most trusted told me basically to shut-up.

I was blown away. I did not understand what was happening. I still don’t totally. But I have been unsuccessful at staying back on FB ever since. There is more to fear, than to gain. I am on right now, but I don’t visit often… mostly just to post about a new Blog.

I enjoyed the banter… but that aspect is gone now. Most people I was FB friends with back in better times, won’t respond to friend requests the last time I tried – in June. This time I have sent out few requests… though I was surprised at not hearing back from some.

There have been a few friends that have always come back. that makes me smile. J

Even so, it is not the same…

That was, and still probably is, the only avenue I have for human interaction. The Blog is mostly one-way. So I have come back to try FB from time to time. It just never feels safe, or right anymore.

It is self-perpetuating… the more I go on and off, the fewer people show any interest. That makes sense to me. They are tired of dealing with it – so am I. Maybe that’s it… I don’t know. But whatever it is, Facebook draws me like a fly to a lamp. I try again…

Unstable to the Last

I have to be very careful about interacting socially. Recently I tried getting back on Facebook. It was okay, as I tried to hold a low profile. But it wasn’t enough, and I got sucked in.

I pretty much stayed to myself, and on my own page. I “liked” some posts, and posted on my own page. A couple days ago – or was it yesterday – I commented on a friend’s page. It was a simple little comment… but someone decided to call me a “fool”.

I felt it physically. All through my chest I felt a swirling that I know all too well. My mind started to freeze up… and the world seemed to go a little dark. I could feel the panic. I deleted my comment, and went off Facebook. Then I went to bed.

I tried going back on a couple hours later, but just couldn’t stay. If I cannot comment on friend’s pages, then what is the point? I cannot know how people will respond when I don’t even know them. So I have to stay away from friend’s pages.

Fear took control… and there is nothing I can do about it.

I am emotionally unstable, and it makes me want to hide away even more. I am going to stay home… for a while. Now it will take me some time to put the pieces back together. And I will try again sometime…

Anxiety rules my life. Fear takes control. I have to take a back seat when anxiety takes over. And of course, depression is not ever far behind. Hours… days of hiding away, only to be right back in the same place a few days or weeks later. What has happened will happen again.

Nothing ever seems to get better. Today I am not as optimistic as I normally can be.

Coming Unglued

Sometimes things happen that cause my mind to become unglued.  This usually results in a quick trip to bed to hide under the covers – literally.    There it can take hours to relax enough just to be able to think again.  More hours are needed to recover.

And then there are times… when everything I know seems to be flying away from me.  Suddenly my entire live is fading, and there is nothing I can do to save myself.  All is lost.  I may just sit on the floor, and cry.  My mind goes into a very dark place.

At such times, I had an occasional habit of reaching out… groping for help.  On Facebook I would cry out, pleading for someone to bring me back down to the ground.  Ranting…  Repeated posts would go unanswered…

Sometimes someone would jump in to try to help.  And it did help when I was able to follow thru with contacting them.  But mostly I was met with silence.  The most aggravating thing for me was when people would contact Lori to find out if she was okay… if she was okay.

That was like the little twist of the dagger in my chest.

She has friends… I do not.  Though!!!  A special thank you to the 3 people who have reached out to me over the last few years.  One I was never able to get back to.  I lost his name in deleted Facebook posts.  Now my Facebook account is deleted!  Deleted… not just closed.  I needed to make it go away.

It will help.  Now there is no place for me to reach out… and Lori will not have to tell people that she is okay.

I Know What I Should by Writing About.

I should write about my plans, and my progress.  And the plans still look good, and there is still progress.  Things will get better.

But my mind is not there.

I do not want to be here right now.  I wish I could sleep for 3 days, and everyone else could do what they want.  I am staying home for Christmas… no-one is coming over.  I can not deal with the whole Christmas thing now.  There is no joy in it for me… I just wish it was over!

So my thoughts are now about trying to get thru the next few days without ruining things even more than I already have.  Everyone blames me for things falling apart – that is fair.  It is my fault.  I just want to more on to things I can actually improve.

So I will go on now… and try to survive it all.

Merry Christmas!

I Know I Over-react… But Doesn’t that Mean I Am Reacting in the Right Direction?

I have emotional issues – everyone can see that.  Sometimes I over-react to things, and people run away.  But I think my reactions are at least going in the correct direction – I am reacting correctly at least initially.  Then I go too far…

I understand that people are taken-aback by it.  But I never hear from them.  Oh there are occasionally people who try to help.  But the people I thought I could rely on most, are nowhere to be seen.  And so I withdraw farther into my own world.  It is a nice world… it could rain more though.

Maybe people think these are issues best dealt with within the family.  For me, that means between me and Lori – there is no other family.  Or maybe I should talk with my closest friends – those were the people on Facebook.  So I am left with writing about things here, in my journals, and talking with my cats (not great conversationalists).

The process is very familiar to me.  It has been a central story in my life.  I reach out, and others pull back.  Lori gets more responses to my over-reacting than I do.  But it seems to me clear that I am the one most in need.  It is a dynamic that sucks the energy and hope out of me.  I have to deal by myself.

The first step for me is always to pull back, and go farther into hiding.  If they do not need me, I can not let myself need them.  It is not as easy as it sounds, so I am not sure how others do it!  Maybe they just click their friend-counter down one notch, and move on.

Now… that is a bit harsh.  I am not giving them a break.  Clearly other things are affecting them in their choices.  I just do not know what those things are.  I am left to my imagination as to what is really happening, and why.

Whatever is happening, it is centered on me.  It is my fault… and my responsibility.  So I will go on, and reach out where I can.

The Internal Battle…

Okay… there are many internal battles, but right now, they all seem to be melting together.  Everything is related.  And it means there really has to be one encompassing solution – probably not all at the same time.  But what I have been trying has not worked.

Now I am trying to find ways to start over… or more accurately, to find some way to keep going, but with some changes.  There is no point expending energy on things that can not help.  I need to be able to live alone, and keep to myself, while finding some kind of – if not happiness, at least non-unhappiness.

One thing that will help will be to avoid social media – it just engenders a false sense of optimism.  There are no answers for me there.  I have deeply set issues with no real-world solution.  I will have to create my own solutions.

And that will take forcing myself to avoid making the same mistakes.  Number 1 is the myth that I can find a pleasing place in the social media world.  I require a closer contact than that.  I need to know it matters.

Also I am rethinking these Blogs.  I love to write, but this writing does not generally make me feel any better.  I do not know who is reading – though I am sure few of my on-line friends do.  A few do, and I appreciate that.  But I seem to lose more friends than I gain.

And I am not going to go to session for a while.  I am not convinced it has been doing me any good.  I am better, but I do not know why.  And I think I need to be more self-reliant.  I need to just find my way on my own.

Another Blow…

I have been hit by another blow this morning… and it is another one surrounding Facebook.  I made a couple of friend requests to people I know from (group name deleted).  We had a lot of friends in common, so I thought they might accept.

It would appear I was incorrect about that.  Someone complained, and now I have been BLOCKED from sending any friend requests.

I thought Facebook was a place to make, and communicate with friends.  But some people are offended by my friend requests.  They could have just said “no”… or ignored the request.  But not so much…

So what is the point?  How do I reach out to anyone???

That’s Just Crazy Talk!

This is all just one of my “moods”, right?

I left Facebook about a week ago, and have wondered at times about whether I should go back on.  It is a very difficult issues for me.  I left because there is a major hole in FB for people like me.  Most people on FB are normal people, with jobs, and friends, and activities in their lives.

There are some though, that are more like me.  To me, Facebook was almost my only contact with the outside world.  So to me it was an important, and serious thing.  I took my friendships there seriously.  These people were pretty much the only friends I had.

Facebook is not a game for me… so sometimes the triviality of it drives me away.  I need some serious contact in my life – I need real contact.  And most of the time, Facebook is not the place for that.  Not with most people anyway.

I have my Blogs… and they give me a chance to voice some of my feelings, and the struggles that are going on in my brain.  But Blogs are not friendships either – even less so than Facebook.  There are very few responses here.  It is a very  different kind of place.  This is very one-way.

So what should I do?  If I want any human contact, I need to go back on Facebook.  There are people there who know me.  But how well do they know me?  Not so well it would seem.  I have not heard from anyone since I have been off.  That is my fault of course… I do scare people away.

But if I do go back on, people will think this all was just one of my moods.   They knew there was nothing really to it, and I would be back.  Maybe they are right…  But for me it would just put me right back in the same position I was in before.  And it would only last until my next “mood”.

It is not about my mood.  Being on Facebook, or not, is a matter of me trying to find a way to be a small part of the world, and to be able to share with people who would miss me if I were gone.  If these were the ONLY friends you had, wouldn’t it matter to you more too???

Great Session! Then, Kaboom!!

I went to session yesterday morning, and it was really great!  We came up with 2 things for me to plan, to work on over the next 3 weeks.  I went on to see my psychiatrist, and ran into my first problem – she was double booked, and I could not see her.

I went off home, and did not stop for the errands I had felt so good about doing, just an hour before.  I was wiped out, and my anxiety was high.  I felt depression coming on, but I knew it would pass, and I would be okay.

Then the roof fell in.  Not literally, but that would actually have been better.  I can not say what happened, but it blew me away.  I am off Facebook again… this time I think it will be a long time before I go back.

I am physically ill about it.  My hands are still shaking.  I have not eaten, and have no energy for it.  My world just got a lot smaller.

It is so hard to try to be social when you are an agoraphobe… Social Media was a God-send.  Was…  Now I feel more alone than I ever have been.  And I do not know what to do…  I can not trust anyone anymore.

This will have a great negative affect on my Blogs as well.  The great majority of visitors were FB “friends”.  So this too may fade away now.

I don’t know.

I Saw it Coming

I knew when I stood up for a friend, things would get messy.  I have lost several friends on Facebook – most of them were totally predictable.  Cliques have that affect.

My Blog on Cliques   (you may have to scroll down)

I have been called all sorts of names before being unfriended… I expected that too.  It is part of the pattern.  In a clique, if one person “feels” insulted, it radiates to everyone, and they all act in unison.  Their leader is very powerful.  The others will act to protect that person.

Every aspect of my live has been called into question… my teaching, coaching, mentoring… it turns out I was not so good at any of it.  And I have been accused of trashing, bashing, and otherwise attacking a “great” person (as I have pointed out many times over the last couple of years, this person has done some fantastic work with charities).  Though no-one seems to able to point out what I said that was so terrible.

BUT!  I have received even more thanks.  And from unexpected people too!!  Both people who knew about the situation, and some who didn’t, have tried to be supportive of myself, and the original victim.  So I feel good about that.

I struggled with this last evening, but after a nap, I was fine again.  Of course the countdown of my FB Friends may continue… but that is part and parcel of the process of standing up against cliques.  It’s all good.

People in cliques always deny it.  They always say it’s not a clique…  The key is to look at how that group dynamic works.  Especially important is how people enter, and leave the group.  There is more on my other Blog (link above), and I think I have more to say about them as well.

Happy unfriending all!

What are “Friends”?

A situation has come up in my life today that has got me angry.  A few months ago I was unfriended on Facebook by someone I had spent time trying to help in a time of deep crisis.  But I made the mistake of giving some advice about a year after that… unfriended.

That’s okay.  But today I found out that same person threw away her “best” friend, and someone I like and admire, for an even smaller misstep.  And then she had all her friends unfriend this person as well.  Nice…

So I posted that anyone who unfriended MY friend because of this, should unfriend me as well.  2 people have unfriended me so far.  One of them said I am a “horrible human being”, and “Thank God” I am no longer a teacher.  Nice.  I have NEVER bashed the person who started all this on Facebook, or anywhere really – or anyone else for that matter.  I have even made comments about great things she has accomplished.

“Thank god you’re not a teacher any longer!!! Shame on you for bashing former students on your FB page! You’re a terrible human being” is the full post.  I have done no “bashing” of anyone.  I have not been a teacher for 13 years.  Why am I not allowed to have my own feelings and thoughts about former students?  Is that somehow not allowed??

Here is what I had posted: “A NOTCE to my "Friends"… if you have unfriended (name removed) in the last year and a half because of T.B., then you should unfriend me too! This is NOT right!!!”

Where is the “bashing”?

This has been surprisingly NOT upsetting.  It has made me a little angry about how people for Cliques, and try to hurt those they see as an enemy of the clique.