No matter who you are, you can’t be liked by everyone.
When celebrities search for what people are saying about them online, whether they understand that determines how deeply they’ll be hurt.
People can tolerate pain they know is coming to a considerable extent, but sudden pain is much harder to bear.
For example, when a dentist drills into a cavity, you know it’s going to hurt, so you can endure quite a high level of pain.
I’ve also heard that in boxing, it’s difficult to withstand a punch when you don’t know where it’s coming from.
When I feel like I’m about to break down, I vent as much as I can and then go to sleep.
The people I vent to are close coworkers, my parents, or my best friends.
If I keep everything bottled up inside, I feel like I really will end up breaking down.
After some time has passed, I can accept that there’s nothing I can do about it.
I believe that, no matter what happens, it’s important for people to let go and accept things at some point.
We’ve seen female professional wrestlers lose their lives because of online harassment, as well as many cases of overwork-related suicide after people were led to believe that their jobs were their entire lives.
① First, stay away from people who post abusive comments.
Don’t look at the internet.
Spend time with people who genuinely support and accept you—family, friends, partners, and perhaps your papa (a male supporter) or other women?
It may be important to practice taking digital breaks even when everything is going well.
② When you’re tired, rest.
Spend a whole day sleeping it off.
You might also want to exercise somewhere that keeps you away from the internet. Go hiking somewhere without cell service, spend an hour at the gym without bringing your phone, or try something like a tea ceremony.
③ When you’re truly exhausted, see a psychosomatic medicine doctor or psychiatrist.
It’s common for a first appointment with a psychiatrist to be scheduled one or two months out. Some internal medicine clinics can also prescribe antidepressants or sleeping pills.
I recommend having a primary care doctor you can consult about minor concerns. That way, you’ll feel more secure when you can’t get an immediate appointment with a psychiatrist or similar specialist.
④ Change the way you think at a fundamental level.
Basically, since these problems are non-organic and not caused by a brain injury, they come down to the person’s way of thinking.
People end up taking internet posts—no more meaningful than graffiti in a public restroom—seriously.
You have many different sides to yourself: who you are as someone’s child, as a friend, or as a member of a hobby group. But some people convince themselves that their identity at their current workplace is everything, and keep pushing themselves until they break down physically and mentally.
Cognitive therapy can be practiced on your own.
People with religious faith also seem to be quite resilient. Perhaps Christians have an axis consisting of God and themselves. In Buddhism, people see life as inherently full of suffering and all things as impermanent, so they accept that suffering is part of life and understand that the current situation will inevitably change when the conditions sustaining it change.
Even outside religion, self-help can sometimes change the way you think at a fundamental level.
However, there are also malicious forms of religion and self-help that exploit people’s anxiety and abuse them mentally, physically, and financially. Please be careful not to get trapped in one of those.
