Day 2: who do I talk to?

Day 2 of quitting Facebook has been…lonely.

I work for myself, and most of the magic happens in my home office.  What I realized quickly when I went full time years ago, is that it is lonely to have no coworkers.

I quickly found my way to communicate with others and get an almost immediate response with Facebook.  After all, who needs coworkers and banter at the water cooler when you have 200+ friends to share your day with and tell jokes?

But after a few years of only having digital friends to entertain me during the day, I somehow crossed a line.  Instead of sharing funny jokes and happy pictures, I began sharing my gripes and complaints about clients and projects.  So much so that two of my friends (relatively new friends) pulled me aside in person and told me they didn’t approve of my conduct.  I am thankful for their concern, and quite frankly their bravery in being honest.  It’s one of the first things that led me to wanting to log out for good.

Anyway, today I was lonely and that’s what I noticed most.  I’m going to need to find a way to calm this lonely feeling in a productive way.  Because I can’t text my boyfriend all day, I’ll drive him mad.

-M

Day 1: I had to look once…

Day 1 in the Facebook experiment.  As a self-prescribed social media addict I can say it’s annoying trying to quit.

I’ve posted only one or two articles from my new administrator account for my business page, and they aren’t getting any views.  I’m worried that because my new account isn’t the owner of the business page it’s not posting correctly.  So to calm my worry about this potential issue I had to log back in under the “real” me.  To be honest I still can’t tell you if posting to the business in the new way is affecting performance or not.  Facebook is so damn confusing and I think they do it on purpose.

I’m noticing that I’ve grabbed my phone quite often throughout the day to for no reason.  I assume the reason I’m grabbing it is because I’m looking to “check” Facebook. But since the app is not on my phone and I’ll soon be “gone” I just put it down.  I have checked other forms of social media on my phone more often than I usually do.  Namely Instagram. I think my brain is searching for distraction in the form of stimulation, which is kind of pathetic when I think about it.  

After dinner I’m doing the dishes and I’m thinking about my friends on Facebook.  What are they saying, how was their day?My book club friends might not remember to tell me which book we are reading this month…should I log in and tell them not to forget me!?  No.  I can simply text one of them and find out.

Bedtime was easier than I thought it would be, and I probably slept better too.  I didn’t have anything to scroll through for an hour while laying in the dark.  I probably fell asleep within 15 minutes.

Anxiety is still there, but I made it through the day!

-M

30 days of real life.

Social media is a killer for me.  I have bipolar.  Sometimes I’m normal, sometimes I’m depressed, and sometimes I’m a total shit-show on the inside.  My problem is that my use of social media reflects quite clearly what is going on in my head to me.  It is an outlet.  But to others, it may seem like I’m a little too invested.  Quiting has been on my mind, but it gives me anxiety to think about not knowing what is going on.

I made my decision to quit Facebook on Oct 29th during an incredibly intense panic attack.  My boyfriend and I were having a small fight, which is one of my triggers, and I was losing my mind.  He wasn’t feeling up for talking so he went to bed. (We don’t live together.)  I was obsessed with keeping myself distracted from my anxiety to avoid the bad cycle I get into, and mindlessly scrolling Facebook was the only way I could do it.  I was a mess.  I was sobbing uncontrollably for hours doing everything I could NOT to post or comment and it hit me.  This is a dangerous crutch.

So I disabled my account.  Which, I will admit, caused me some more anxiety.

I own a small business and not only is it a good idea to have a Facebook page for your business, but I have a marketing firm that I pay lots of money every month, some of which goes to Facebook.  So as much as I want away, I have to keep my business page from turning off.

October 31st

I found out that when I deactivated my account, my business page went with it.  In order to keep the business page up, a person with a Facebook account has to be the owner.  I refused to let Facebook keep me completely trapped, so I re-activated my account and used a secondary email to create a new personal page just so I could have the business page remain active, under the new “rogue me.”

However, in doing so I realized that I am the administrator on another page as well as the creator of some groups and an event I’m hosting on November 5th.

I transferred admin status to my new “rogue” account so that all my groups and pages won’t die without me.  After all, I still want my friends to be able to enjoy those groups.  But I could not transfer ownership of the event.  

So until November 5th I still have my Facebook account.  But I have removed the app from my phone and have ensured I only log in from my new “rogue” account to post things relevant to my business.

Each day of this month I want to write about how I feel, what I notice and experience, and comment on what it’s like to live disconnected after quite an awful addiction.  Then I’ll decide if it’s worth getting back on again.

I will have a new category for these posts, and each day will be logged there.

-M

I was told to get off Facebook, by a friend.

Trigger Warning: details of suicidal thoughts.

Before you get mad for me, please understand that I get a little crazy on social media when I get a little unstable with my bipolar. I love my friend, I have known her for over a decade. I am open and honest with her and she is open and honest with me.

So here is how it looks.
It’s painful having anxiety attacks and thoughts of bullets going through your brain, and driving off the road every day for a week. It’s painful feeling desperate and unable to stop the ‘bipolar episode’ from snowballing into an avalanche, right?
Right.

Apparently it’s also painful for your friends to watch too.
I find myself constantly posting, scrolling, ‘liking,’ sharing, commenting… Because it’s keeping my brain occupied. It’s keeping me from ruminating about how I’ll never find a man who loves and accepts me. It’s keeping me from degrading myself and beating myself up about my recent bad life decisions and medication compliance failure. And it’s holding my attention.

But she is right. It’s bad for me too. It’s bad to be so overly active that I become obsessive. It’s bad to do nothing else but check it every 15 minutes. It’s bad, bad, bad.

Here is the thing. I have good friends. Hell, I have great friends. Friends who have learned enough about me to not only recognize this behavior, but to be brave enough to point it out to me and ask me if I am ok.

Yes, initially I was hurt. My thought was, ‘this is how I feel, this is safe, this is how I can control my feelings until my meds kick in.’ But after I take a step back, I see that they are just scared. They don’t want to see me suddenly disappear only to assume I’m in the hospital again. They want the best for me.

The problem is, I fight this line of wanting to be so, so open about mental illness that I’m not ashamed to talk about it on Facebook, to scaring the shit out of my friends when I am too open…

-M

Social Media & Bipolar

In my experience, its only bad to mix Bipolar Disorder with Social Media at two times: manic times and depressive times…ok make that three times, the actual “crash” itself is pretty horrendous.

I thought about this today as I realized that I have not felt as compelled lately to post and share on Facebook as I have been over the past few months. I am still recovering from an epic crash, but I’m back to my job, eating, sleeping, and for the most part feeling like a normal human again. I realized that when I crashed (which was triggered by the breakup of me and my boyfriend, again, yes again) I had been posting on Facebook like a mad woman. Sharing everything I liked, liking everything I saw, and status updating about how sad I felt, or how tired I was every two hours… It’s really gross to look back on. Not only were these posts quite frequent, but some of them were negative or even just plain scary. I had more than three people ask me what was going on with me because they ‘had been reading some of my posts and were worried.’

On the flip side I had been in a wonderful hypomanic state from March to June and I was also posting quite frequently, only this was more along the lines of checking in every place I went (every single place, even places no one cares about) as well as tagging all of the people I was with and of course including some type of photographic evidence that I was indeed there with said people, at said place. Another thing I noticed was how much I shared the more political or controversial news pieces, how frequently I voiced my opinion about a topic, and how willing I was to argue to the death about it – all on social media.

I think there are some people who just post on Facebook a lot. And that’s ok. I also know plenty of people who are barely ever on it, and those who view it several times a day but never post. Where is the line? Well that’s up to you, but mixing it with mental illness has been really hard for me.

For me there is a certain fear that if ‘its’ happening it will be on Facebook. And if I’m not on Facebook to see ‘it’ happen then I will miss out on ‘it.’

This is very dangerous when you are spiraling into a deep depression because you find any reason or any comment to find even more negativity and feed yourself more anxiety. And at some point, you start feeling suicidal and you want to reach out and ask for help, but you can’t just very well post “help I’m suicidal” in your status update.

It’s dangerous for our mania or hypomania as well because we post things, and we crack jokes, and we get likes and other jokes back. We are tagging people and going to so many places appearing to be the ‘it’ that is going on, we are SO great! Life is SO amazing, and we just wanna keep talking about it on Facebook!

I run a business and plan my daily social media posts out a week in advance. I see the value in shares and likes and comments and updates. I understand that this is the way the world is moving, and I stay on social media.

I think social media etiquette needs to be addressed for many people, but I tend to turn to it even though I know I shouldn’t. All I know is that I have found one more tool for measuring success and recovery, one more way of identifying ‘red flags’ of my bipolar. This new tool is evaluating my use of social media, maybe it can help me stop a manic episode or maybe it can help me from getting so depressed.

-M