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mousmeLJ is a public platform, and that necessarily drags a whole slew of problems in its wake. Where does one draw the line between the private and the public sphere? It's a delicate balance.
I've had this LJ for 12 years now, give or take, and I've mostly kept my entries public. Very few people read this, and most of them are people I know in real life. The rest are online friends I've had for what feels like forever. They are people whom I trust with my thoughts, with much of my inner life. Of course, a lot of that has changed since I stopped being single. I've carried on mostly the way I did before, though I try to remain circumspect about what enters the very public sphere of the internet. I have dropped the ball on a few notable occasions, it must be said, but I do try to keep a lid on things.
Have you read Hyperbole and a Half? If you haven't, you should. Anyway, in a much longer comic about depression, the author, Allie, came up with these panels:
I promise not to derail this into a discussion of mental health and how mentally ill people often find themselves in the unfortunate position of having to cope with others' anguish on top of their own whenever they try to share what's happening to them, the way we're told we ought. That's a post for another time.
The point is, there's a lot that goes on inside my head that I need to weigh carefully before I let it out into the public sphere, precisely because I don't know how people are going to react. I have always done my best processing by using the written word. If I simply think about things, they go round in circles in my mind and never get resolved. Writing them down forces me to clarify my thoughts and organise them in such a way that they make sense to me. Writing them in a public forum like LJ forces me to clarify them even more, because I know I'm writing to an audience, and that audience is going to interact with me and ask questions and make suggestions and generally hold me accountable for whatever comes from my keyboard.
Herein lies the difficulty. If my audience are all people whom I know IRL and with whom I'm close, if I try to process some of the harder stuff that's going on, I risk upsetting people. The closer they are, the more upset they'll be. If I'm talking about being stressed or overwhelmed on LJ, why haven't I discussed it in a place that's not a semi-anonymous web forum?
And, cowardly as it may sound, I don't really want to have that conversation. I am terrible at verbally communicating anything that's personal, especially when it comes to my own thought processes. My explanations come out garbled, because I haven't been able to take my time to sort out which words will be best suited to what I want to express, leading to others being confused, angry, hurt, or all three and with other negative emotions thrown in for good measure. I spend most of these conversations saying things like "No, that's not exactly what I meant," and "I can't think of a better way to explain it." I hate the look of incomprehension on other people's faces when I try to explain things, the look that says I'm actually a space alien who can't process the world like a normal person.
So, yeah, the written word is my safe haven. But when it intersects with the real world, I need to carefully weigh the pros and cons of leaving my thoughts where people might see.
:::ETA:::
Please don't get the wrong idea from the comic I used above. I realise now that the subject matter may lead readers to the wrong conclusion. I used it to illustrate my discomfort with people's reactions, not my own mental state. I am not in any kind of psychological distress, have no fear! I was referring to subject matter that's delicate in nature and therefore difficult to discuss in public, which is definitely not limited to mental health.
I've had this LJ for 12 years now, give or take, and I've mostly kept my entries public. Very few people read this, and most of them are people I know in real life. The rest are online friends I've had for what feels like forever. They are people whom I trust with my thoughts, with much of my inner life. Of course, a lot of that has changed since I stopped being single. I've carried on mostly the way I did before, though I try to remain circumspect about what enters the very public sphere of the internet. I have dropped the ball on a few notable occasions, it must be said, but I do try to keep a lid on things.
Have you read Hyperbole and a Half? If you haven't, you should. Anyway, in a much longer comic about depression, the author, Allie, came up with these panels:
I promise not to derail this into a discussion of mental health and how mentally ill people often find themselves in the unfortunate position of having to cope with others' anguish on top of their own whenever they try to share what's happening to them, the way we're told we ought. That's a post for another time.
The point is, there's a lot that goes on inside my head that I need to weigh carefully before I let it out into the public sphere, precisely because I don't know how people are going to react. I have always done my best processing by using the written word. If I simply think about things, they go round in circles in my mind and never get resolved. Writing them down forces me to clarify my thoughts and organise them in such a way that they make sense to me. Writing them in a public forum like LJ forces me to clarify them even more, because I know I'm writing to an audience, and that audience is going to interact with me and ask questions and make suggestions and generally hold me accountable for whatever comes from my keyboard.
Herein lies the difficulty. If my audience are all people whom I know IRL and with whom I'm close, if I try to process some of the harder stuff that's going on, I risk upsetting people. The closer they are, the more upset they'll be. If I'm talking about being stressed or overwhelmed on LJ, why haven't I discussed it in a place that's not a semi-anonymous web forum?
And, cowardly as it may sound, I don't really want to have that conversation. I am terrible at verbally communicating anything that's personal, especially when it comes to my own thought processes. My explanations come out garbled, because I haven't been able to take my time to sort out which words will be best suited to what I want to express, leading to others being confused, angry, hurt, or all three and with other negative emotions thrown in for good measure. I spend most of these conversations saying things like "No, that's not exactly what I meant," and "I can't think of a better way to explain it." I hate the look of incomprehension on other people's faces when I try to explain things, the look that says I'm actually a space alien who can't process the world like a normal person.
So, yeah, the written word is my safe haven. But when it intersects with the real world, I need to carefully weigh the pros and cons of leaving my thoughts where people might see.
:::ETA:::
Please don't get the wrong idea from the comic I used above. I realise now that the subject matter may lead readers to the wrong conclusion. I used it to illustrate my discomfort with people's reactions, not my own mental state. I am not in any kind of psychological distress, have no fear! I was referring to subject matter that's delicate in nature and therefore difficult to discuss in public, which is definitely not limited to mental health.
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no subject
Date: 2014-03-12 03:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-12 04:00 am (UTC)And I appreciate the metaphorical heart-clicking. :)
no subject
Date: 2014-03-12 06:02 am (UTC)I had one friend in particular, a roomie at the time, who helped me save my sanity by dragging me out of my own head and into the outside world, giving me things I could focus on to break the horrible circuit of thoughts that had developed in my brain. We're still friends and she is still amazing. And one of the reasons she helped so much was, she listened and she got me to do things (like learn to rollerblade), but if she was ever seriously worried about me, she hid it really well.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-12 06:16 am (UTC)There are some friends/family who are great that way, but the sad fact is that the vast majority of people have no idea how to be around the mentally ill/clinically depressed. That's pretty normal, too. It's incredibly distressing to know that someone you love is in pain and that there's not much you can do about it. The trouble comes when the healthy person's temporary distress threatens to overwhelm the ill person's suffering.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-12 03:03 pm (UTC)Um. What I mean is, yes, this sucks, and when words + a sense of writing for an audience are one's way of working out one's sense of self, feeling responsible for their reactions is a harsh burden that leads to self-censorship, which can adversely affect your own health on several levels.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-15 12:31 pm (UTC)*hugs* ♥
no subject
Date: 2014-03-16 05:50 pm (UTC)I generally posted in LJ to clarify myself, to post a picture of who I am. Sometimes, that involved other people who now read me, and then I have to worry about what they think. Sometimes, I don't want someone who knows me in another way to get that inside insight. Sometimes, it's just weird.
So yeah, I get what you mean. Maybe filters would help?