There are lots of stories surrounding mental health and social media and I’m not exempt from this as this very thing happened to me, here is how Facebook helped to destroy my mental health.
Everyone that knows me thinks I suffer from paranoia and the fact that I can’t often predict bad things happening before they actually do doesn’t help either.
I want to tell the voices inside my head to shut up and leave me alone, but sadly, the voices won’t listen, and that’s when it all becomes too real.
I was once a fairly popular person who almost everyone who I associated with, would add me to their Facebook until something strange happened in 2007.
Almost everyone started to refuse my invites, delete me or even go as far as blocking me despite the fact I hadn’t personally done anything to those people.
The first thing that came into my head was how dare these people blank me! I had previously had this at school and never thought it would happen again and again!
Then I was upset because the people that were ignoring and blanking me where adding individuals who were nasty to me for no reason, yet they liked them! I was being betrayed, and they were all against me.
It did happen again when I was going through a tough time in 2013.
Even my own cousin deleted me and months later when I was sacked from my job at a Cornish digital agency because of my behaviour due to my mental health, ex-colleagues also deleted and blocked me.
It was the social media site Facebook that was part of the reason for me getting the sack.
In August 2013, I was fighting with just about everyone, and I was bored at work because the place had become so serious. My so-called close friend had also blocked me from her boyfriends Facebook account.
Many people had left the company, following redundancies and changes at the beginning of 2013.
New recruits had joined the company, and everything was different.
There was no longer much banter, teamwork or team meetings even the Friday monthly meetings where we used to get free lunch had stopped.
We all sat at our machines from 9 am to 5.30pm almost in silence.
I was put into a new group and in another office and I was separated from my old team and my content team.
I was still working on Argos with them, and I was asked to desk hop while working on Argos.
One of the other team members was off, so there was a spare desk in the Argos team room.
I needed some help with some research, finding websites for household goods, so I came back into my old room. I was going through Google and checking out the websites until I came to a site called “Rachel Reveals”.
Stupidly, I clicked on the site, and I couldn’t believe what I saw! The site had many explicit images on it, so I told my senior, who looked at the site and laughed it off.
At first, I was concerned because I couldn’t believe how easy it was to find these types of sites. So I asked her about putting this site on the ban list.
She made a bit of a joke out of this and asked me to send it to another colleague along with our SEO Exec who for some reason never liked me, he also never added me to Facebook when I requested him.
A month later, I was pulled out of the room by my manager who said he wanted a quick chat with me.
I was taken into a private room, and as soon as I noticed the HR manager there, I knew instantly that something was wrong.
They asked about the site Rachel Reveals, and I told them that this was a site I accidentally stumbled across while looking for household good opportunities and that I told my supervisor.
She then asked if I had shared the link and talked about it to which I couldn’t remember because weeks had passed and that site had been forgotten about. So why bring it up now?
They told me not to talk to anyone about this investigation, took my pass and office key and sent me home.
Later that night, I got into a mess and asked a member of staff if she could remember the number of people that received the link because I could lose my job over it.
A few days later I received a phone call from HR saying that lots of people were involved with this and that my suspension had been lifted.
I was so relieved until she told me that this wasn’t over because I had to attend a meeting with her, which was taped.
I never spoke to anyone the day I returned to work. I cried most of the day, and at the end of the day, my Account manager went along to the medical centre with me.
On the Monday morning at about 9.30am, I was asked again by my manager for a private chat, again when he opened the door, I found the HR manager yet again.
She told me that they were going to have to suspend me again due to the outcome of the meetings. Again, my pass and key were retaken.
A few days later, I was sent all the interviews from the meetings, and I found out that the member of staff who I had spoken to on Facebook had printed off our conversation and had given all of it to HR to save her own skin.
She could have just not mentioned it, and maybe I would still have had a job. I was signed off work by the doctor and was receiving CBT counselling.
In the meantime, I kept receiving letters inviting me to a disciplinary hearing.
In November 2013, the HR Manager wanted to meet me because I had been off sick for almost 3 months.
I had the meeting in a cafe, which is owned by one of my ex-friends friend and she came to support me at the meeting.
After the meeting, I wanted to get this over with as Christmas was approaching and I wanted to get better, and the only way I could try was if my future was sorted out.
I took the HR manager’s advice and went for private counselling which my medical insurance through the company covered.
I decided to go through with the disciplinary and fight for what I felt was my future and told them how I wanted to progress within the company and that I was trying to hide what I thought at the time was depression.
However, all of this was ignored, and I received an email just days before I thought that I was going back to work to say that I had been sacked for Gross Misconduct and that my contract was terminated with immediate effect and that my counselling would also be withdrawn.
I contacted the private counsellor to let her know, and she said that she would continue my sessions because my counselling had been authorised before the contract termination.
I was upset to think that a silly little conversation and social networking site such as Facebook has helped to destroy my mental health.
I later found that many people from the company and people who had known me for years had deleted and blocked me from the site and this wasn’t helping my mental health.
I was so paranoid and destroyed that I decided to come off Facebook as a result of this.
It wasn’t until the end of 2016 that I reluctantly returned to Facebook under my blogger name, and the only reason I returned was so I could upload my blog pages and communicate with bloggers, freelancers and companies for collaborations.
Has Facebook ever or an incident on Facebook ever helped destroy your mental health?
Let us know in the comments below or join in the discussions on our social media pages.
Firstly I would like to wish everyone a Happy Bipolar Awareness Day. It’s a great opportunity to raise money for better research and treatments.
1-12, according to data released under freedom of information legislation, and officers fear the demand for help from the public will continue to increase.
I went to the Eco Retreat Spa for an eyebrow tidy up in time for a family gathering in Old Windsor.