Recently there have been many news reports reporting the suicides of young people as a result of the cyber bullying they have faced online. This in itself is an absolute abomination and should not be stood for, but imagine if this was occuring in a community which you thought was there to help you?
My problems with my mental health can only be described as like a roller coaster ride; there have been just as many highs as there have been lows. Throughout my years of suffering I have been a part of many different “communities”, and all of which have helped and hindered me in various ways. During the early stages of my eating disorder I came across the “pro-ana” community. These sites, along with various pro-mental health sites not only glamorize mental illness, they also offer each other tips on things like starving yourself, as well as triggering each other in various ways. It was here where I learnt the most effective ways to lose weight, including being encouraged to purge (which soon became a big problem for me) as well as seeing various pictures of emaciated girls which I’d use to trigger myself. Despite never having a pro-ana blog myself, I would look at them religiously, which became a huge problem for me. I thought that the people in this community understood me when nobody else did. I felt that they offered me an ear to listen to my problems. At this stage I could definitely have been described as vulnerable, and the lives that these people described seemed perfect to me and I became smitten with the idea of having one. It was these people who I thought understood the torment which was going on inside my mind, and perhaps they did, but it was these people who would send me the most abuse. It was these people who would tell me I was “fat“. They would tell me how worthless I was and how much I didn’t deserve to eat.
It was the comments which people made towards me that made my decent into my eating disorder worse. In my opinion, these comments were more harmful to me than the tips and the pictures themselves.
Currently I am a part of the “recovery” community on instagram, a large group of people of various ages and genders who are each recovering from their own torment, a variety of illnesses from anorexia to depression. Each person claims to offer support and guidance without the judging or bullying which the outside world torments us with. Despite these claims though, every day on my feed there are people crying over the comments that they are receiving from people, whether that be on instagram itself or on other sites such as ask.fm. Despite the help which being apart of this community offers, it also enables various people to send you hate which can potentially lead right back to a relapse. The comments being made are extremely similar to the ones I received myself from the “pro-ana” sites.
Although I would definitely recommend the recovery community as it does provide support and guidance that can really motivate you, I think that the comments we see being made are warnings of just the type of people that are out there on the internet. I do not believe that it is the communities themselves to blame, (rather unpopular opinion) but many of the girls and boys on the pro-ana sites are simply lost souls like I was who don’t understand what is going on in their heads either. It is simply that small group of individuals who ruin it for the rest of us, sort of like how in school your entire class would miss out on something just because Jimmy threw a rubber at someone.
The diary of a mental case 