I Hate Facebook

[starry]

I really do. I apologise for coming on here for the first time in a very long time so I understand if I don't get many replies to this. I just felt alone and needed to go somewhere where I felt less alone....like here.

So everytime I log onto facebook I feel like absolute rubbish afterwards. It just seems to remind me how alone and different I am.

My PTSD started when I was 21 years old, well that is when the event/s happened. My world crumbled and since then I feel like I have been trying to claw my way out of this pit of hell called anxiety, depression and PTSD. It has been hard, exhausting and probably one of the toughest times of my life. 6 years on, yes 6 years on I am better, but honestly the scars of my trauma still affect me to this day. I have flashblacks still, moments where I am overcome with sadness and sob uncontrollably on the floor. I just still sometimes can't believe what has happened to me and how much it has changed every fibre of my being.

But then, I log onto facebook and apart from being sad myself I have this constant reminder of how much happier other people are. While I have spent the last 6 or so years, honestly trying to just survive, I see other people have dated and fallen in love. They have travelled the world with friends, had many a lovely dinner full of wining and dining. Their twenties appear to be like in the movies, full of fun, laughter etc and it just makes me feel so much worse. I already feel sad sometimes at how I have turned out and then to see other people so happy, or at least with 'happy experiences' its like I am being stung by 10 bees. It just really, really hurts. Its like pain on top of pain. I become agoraphobic due to my PTSD.

I had to relearn how to drive, how to catch a bus, I even had a therapist help me just leave my house and walk around the block. The strength it took to get to the point where I can work again has been enormous and I feel angry that other people my age, never had these struggles. I know that's bitter and 'wrong' but I feel it's unfair. I was/am a good person and why did i have to get so sick? Why did i have to learn just how hellish life can turn? Why was it not them? They did not do anything 'better' then me. In fact, some of them were less hardworking, less caring and yet life has treated them very well. I know how I sound- like a miserable person. I just go on facebook and all these questions run through my head. I am here despite my problems but I feel so alone and so different and going on facebook and seeing people live happier lives then me, even if they are not happy lives, but happier lives rubs salt into the wound.

Do other people feel like this? how do you block them out?

 

[Ice_Fire]

Yep, I felt like this too. That and another issue on Facebook led me to leaving Facebook.

I've no real suggestions, but I would like to reassure you that most peoples Facebook page are 'edited highlights' of their lives. Heck, I looked like a happy and fun person online when I was actually in the worst depression of my life.

 

[starry]

^ Thanks for your reply. Yes I quit facebook for two years and I rejoined a year ago. I felt I was missing out on people's photos etc but really all I was missing out on was another reason to get depressed. I only log on once a week but always feel like rubbish afterwards. Your right, I know logically, that is really is just an edited highlight. Yet it still bothers me they have those things.

Gosh I know I sound so sorry for myself and I always feel guilty about being punished for not being grateful for what I do have. The truth is though sometimes you just feel sad and alone and I have always found it this weird paradox. I feel alone at home, by myself sometimes, when I isolate myself and I miss out on 'life' and living. Yet often, when I do go out and I am with others my age I feel more alone, more different then I do then if I was by myself. Probably because I feel I am missing out on things and when I am with others I am reminded of this whereas when I am alone by myself I don't have painful reminders of who I could of been or what I am missing out on which happens when I am with company. I guess I romantize other people's lives, I need to stop doing that. I just see how happy-go-lucky they are and how they just expect things to 'just work out' cos they always have and I am jealous of their innocence and naive faith in the world.

 

[Kas_Can_Fly]

I left Facebook and decided that the people who I genuinely cared about on there I would email and the ones who were there for very little reason or by extension of another didn't really matter. I haven't missed it once. The reason I left was different to yours but I still feel that it was the right choice, plus now I know I don't have to live up to other peoples standards only my own and those who genuinely care about me, believe the same. When I'm better (and I will be someday), my standards will be better, but for now, they're what I can cope with - which is very little, but that's ok.

AJ
xx

 

[starry]

^thank you :). So true especially about the point 'my standards are what I can cope with'. You are right I think I am trying to meet their standards which are just impossible at this point as we are living in different realities. I am seriously considering quitting too as it just always leads to misery (going on facebook). There is nothing worse then going through hell only to see that in the mean time everyone else seems to be in heaven.

 

[Bernie's_mom]

I barely even know what Facebook is. I signed in one time because I was directed to something specific that I wanted to check out. I refuse to make any sort of profile, or respond to requests to be "friended". And Ice is right. All you are seeing are 'edited highlights'. Reminds me of those annual form X-mas letters I get from my cousins, telling about their "perfect little lives" (Susie did this, Johnny did that, we're all so busy busy busy).

I was/am a good person and why did i have to get so sick? Why did i have to learn just how hellish life can turn? Why was it not them?

I really appreciate the perspective that my family Dr. gave me on having PTSD. She said, "Everyone gets dealt a wild card. Your wild card just happens to be PTSD."

A friend's daughter has MS. Another friend of mine just had breast reconstruction surgery. She waited 10 years after having survived cancer. She also has diabetes. Another lady I know will have to receive treatment for Leukemia for the rest of her life. I had a sweet customer at the store who had surgery for what the doctors thought was a brain tumor. Her brain was so full of cancer she was sent to the nursing home to die. A nice kid in town was in a snowmobile accident last winter. He will be paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. Another high school kid around here died in a car accident. His parents will spend the rest of their lives without their son. A family in a nearby town had a natural gas explosion. The one small child who actually survived will be disfigured for the rest of her life. A young lady in town has both physical and mental handicaps. Cerebral palsy (?) and the mental capacity of a 12 year old. Her family didn't want her. She is the sweetest, most delightful young lady I know.

My wild card could have been any of these things. No thanks. I'll take PTSD any day.

 

[starry]

Yes your right, there are worse things and I feel terrible for feeling this way especially when there are others worse off.

I guess I just seem to know a lot of people who have no major wild cards yet and it upsets me that there lives are relatively easy. However I should not be ungrateful for my blessings you are right.

 

[Bernie's_mom]

there are worse things and I feel terrible for feeling this way

That's okay, Starry. We all have those days--even me sometimes. That's why we have friends here on this forum.
(((hug)))

ps:

I just seem to know a lot of people who have no major wild cards yet

key word: yet

 

[Joseph_PDX]

Facebook is truly a powerful medium... it accentuates and amplifies our social interactions beyond what is natural very often causing a lot of ironic unnaturally intense suffering. It is a catch-22. You want to connect... and Facebook can provide a form of that. If it helps, know that you're not alone in this. Even though I don't suffer from PTSD there are days where I want to howl at the moon and it's 384 "friends." ;-)

Be good to yourself... feel free to cut Facebook off if you need to. Also feel free to login again it serves you. Don't feel guilty about any of it.

 

[The Hermit King]

Facebook is the devil. haha No but seriously I had to delete mine. I did it because I isolate so hardcore sometimes that by having no Facebook it's one less option for people to contact me. Plus I never posted anything, ever.

 

[Philippa]

If it is too hard to be on facebook, then maybe think about not going there for a while, until you are feeling better.

I think when we compare our lives to other peoples, it's not hard to be miserable about it. With facebook though, you have to remember, it isn't necessarily the truth of that persons life that you are seeing. They are editing it to appear the way they wish people to see them. Nobodies life is perfect. I used to feel the same way you do a lot when I was much younger. It took a while to realise that some people are just better at hiding their troubles, and just because they look happy, does not mean they are necessarily happy. Some are, and it is very hard to be around happy people when you are depressed and in a hole. I know that very well.

I saw some friends who met and fell in love and are now together on facebook, and I'm happy for them. They found each other in this world, and although I am still alone, and working on stuff that is blocking me from finding anyone, I'm a big believer in the idea that if I want something I can go after it as well, that I don't have to just sit and be jealous for not having what someone else has.

It takes work though, and I'm not saying all this to make you feel worse. I'm saying it to let you know that you do have options in how you respond to seeing people living a life that you think is free from struggle. We're living in a recession. Most people are struggling in some form, except maybe the rich ones...but even they have their issues.

If you are single, depressed, in a wheelchair, with a hearing impairment, PTSD and a host of other difficulties, then yeah...it's tough. It's tough enough to get through the day without having to have someones happy life shoved in your face. Accepting our realities is never easy, and it's always testing to have someone else with a seemingly easy life shove it in your face. We don't really know what anyone else is going through though. You never know what their lives were like prior to them falling in love, or being really happy. Maybe they were in a situation just like yours once? You just don't know.

I was struggling really hard at one time, with ptsd, inability to get and keep a job, loneliness, depression and all sorts of family relationship stuff, and it was made worse by hearing a friend who was also struggling and was pregnant with a child she didn't really want get nasty and tell me I had an easy life because I had no kids, wasn't pregnant, had no husband or miserable marriage...I was free in her eyes. She didn't know the first thing about what my life had been like up until that point, and she never will know.

Everyone has their own challenges, even if they seems like they are having the perfect life to you. It's in the comparing that we get it wrong.

 

[shoulderblades]

((((((((((starry))))))))))

I understand you only too well. Facebook is a bad place. It's not just bad in the sense that it forces people to focus on such petty and ridiculous things; it's bad in that it's used to openly profile people and exploit privacy. It has been the gateway to 'normalising' policing/profiling our every move and setting up a culture of fascist surveillancing where everything is transparent and all private information belongs to the government.

I have ditched the likes of facebook for this forum. I cannot and will not get the much needed support on other social networking sites like I do here. I do not need the added stress of people's drama and of people complaining about things in ways that makes me want to slap them and point out how good they have it.

What's worse about sites like facebook is: there is immense perpetuation and normalisation of rape culture, bullying culture and abuse culture. It upsets me on levels I can't explain.

I don't blame you for hating facebook. It does a great disservice to a lot of people; and the added factor of it being used as a means to profile us is just plain exploitative and unjust.