Cant stop Spreading Negativity wherever you go on the web?

[⋆DizzyLizz⋆]

I Always dreaded writing something like this anywhere on the internet but I am, I hope none of this comes of as particularly negative (I promise this gets slightly more positive and hopeful near the end ).

I mostly want to share and reflect on my shortcomings and my role in unfortunately spreading Negativity on the web recently.
so recently I took a break from the forum because my mental and physical health was worsening and my home-life ans relationship with my parents becoming a lot worse.regretfully All of these things still hold true 4 months later or are even worse now.

Also during this break I was using discord space-hey, and Instagram more often then I typically did before, while I occasionally posted things like art, photos and poetry I found myself engaging In habits I thought I left behind 5 years ago. I would vent to my friends often and usually in a way that was very sporadic and just exhausting for them, I would constantly talk about sh and suicide and selfishly always talk about myself, despite many of my online friends being mentally ill and struggling themselves.

most of them were often worried that I would harm myself in some way because of what I said. I don't intend to excuse any of this behavior with my mental health or situation, I was forcing people to care about me by threatening harm to myself and talking about very terrible things almost every time I messaged any of them. Today I realized that I really need to stop doing this, I don't want to lose the few friends I have left online, or continue being such a hatefully and negative person online despite my worsening situation and mental health. I really want to get better for the and for myself and hopefully never exhibit the same behavior on this forum and believe the web should be a more positive place sometimes :3

Feel free to give any advice or talk about similar experiences, It would put me at ease a bit knowing I'm not the only person whose ever been like this at their worse

[hikatamika]

I have gone through/am still going through similar experiences, and they've been reflected in my online writings and behaviors a ton as well. Often to my detriment. Especially in Discord servers, and "Private"/locked Twitter accounts when I still used them. The way I exhaled the suffering that I'd been experiencing outwards onto the web often negatively changed the way friends and strangers perceived me or interacted with me.

My theory as to why I did this is: humans are interesting creatures. We feel in chemicals, but we process and understand in language. Turning chemicals into language is how we process and express what we feel. In the pre-digital era, people would process their feelings linguistically by praying to gods, telling extremely close friends and family members, or writing in journals.

Then typewriters, and later, computers came along. Our words-per-minute were faster on those than writing words with pen or pencil by hand. Though the slowness of writing better enables us to process the weight of what we write, the speed of typing gets the yucky feelings out faster, leading to more rapid relief.

Even later, we got the Internet. Self-publishing on it used to be weird, costly, and technical, but the barriers to entry have diminished with webhosting services, paid and free, and social media/messaging platforms. It's easier than ever to connect one's thoughts to an audience.

When I was carelessly sharing expressions of my pain online, I felt faster access to a wider audience of people who could validate that pain. Unfortunately, that audience is full of a lot of people who have a lower-context understanding of who I am and what I've been through. So, without that context/understanding, they couldn't properly validate my pain even if they wanted to. Additionally, a lot of them are simply scrolling to get a quick laugh, or, even thoroughly entertain themselves, but not to understand or validate my pain. Thinking back on it, I'm not sure I'd even want them to.

What fixed the cycle for me was returning to journaling. I used to journal in grade-school, but stopped once a family member read through my physical journals, and Tumblr blogging took off (a side-account on there became my public, anonymous journal of sorts). I began my re-entry into journaling with Obsidian. It easily lets you make a vault of daily note templates that can be used for journaling, among other things. Syncing it to my phone with DropBox allowed for my digital journal to be within thumbs' reach. (Though I'd later move to SyncThing for data privacy. It runs on private home wifi.)

I've since moved back to a combination of physical and digital journaling. I use a fountain pen with invisible ink for segments I don't want prying eyes to read. As a result, I've stopped venting things I (in my right mind) wouldn't want strangers to read on Social Media, Messaging Apps like Discord, or even on my personal website. It's great. I even find that journaling allows me to cultivate and edit more raw and emotional thoughts into online posts that need to be said, but are easier for others to digest.

If journaling sounds lengthy, purple-prose-y, or intimidating to anyone here, I'd recommend Ryder Carol's, the bullet journal guy's, tutorial on how to journal via bulleted rapid logging. No rulers, markers, or stickers required. It's just a more rapid way of logging down thoughts, happenings, feelings, and actions. As someone with a history of rapid Twitter/Discord fingers when it comes to venting online, I've found that rapidly journaling feelings out has helped me a ton.

Edit: Typo