Flashbacks from a Discord server

[Markness]

I had to stop using a particular Discord server due to feeling like I didn’t fit in as well as constantly getting pushed to the wayside, getting ghosted, and being treated with hostility. I have pretty much stopped using Discord and don’t ever intend on joining another server. I also hate that I was ever kind to other users only for them to treat me like dirt in return.

But I can’t stop thinking about the bad experiences. My mind just wants to replay them over and over again, even when I am at work or driving a car. It’s like I am getting flashbacks and I am mentally scarred. I am getting literal headaches from these thoughts.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

I have noticed that you are fixated on the negative, and not just for this. You internalize the negative rather than learning from it. The people who treated you poorly do not warrant another thought. You are giving them power over you. Why do you want to do that?

 

[Rodafina]

https://news.columbia.edu/news/how-can-we-break-cycle-focusing-negative-experiences

Spoiler

We found that finding positive meaning in past negative memories had a long-lasting impact evidenced in increased positive emotion and increased positive content when remembering those same events in the future. We examined a potential mechanism by which positive meaning finding leads to beneficial changes, by leveraging the memory reconsolidation process that allows for new material to become incorporated into the memory trace. In other words, we found that we can actually change what we remember. This doesn't mean coming up with false memories, but that we can update our memories with new content allowing us to recall more positive aspects of an experience.

 

[Misery]

Trying to find real, genuine friends on Discord is like trying to find real, genuine friends on freaking Twitter. The very nature of it means you're searching for a needle in a haystack. Which is poisonous. And full of snakes. And even when you do find the needle it might just sting you for no reason or try to steal your wallet (scam you).

You could be the most amazing person to have ever lived, a grand, dashing hero who rescues puppies from burning buildings, and Discord would still be that way towards you. That's the nature of the beast. It was never about you.

I know you want to meet people and make friends but you keep diving into the sort of situations that are practically designed to result in exactly what you're going through now. Just doing that over and over and over again isnt going to create a better result out of nowhere.

Maybe it might be time to sit back and examine your thoughts going into it? Something keeps pulling you into that horrid mess, after all, despite the nature of it.

At the very least, uninstall the bloody program. Delete it. Be done with it, for good this time. You deserve so much better than what it keeps trying to hand you.

 

[tree]

@Markness

Given the mission statement of the particular server,
it seemed obvious to me that the experience had
great potential to go downhill fast.

Hope this time you can follow through with quitting
the place. And then stop beating yourself up with the
*if only I'd said/why did they say* etc stuff.

 

[Markness]

I finally have truly left the server that’s caused me so much grief this year. Someone who I thought I could be friends with again unfriended me when I messaged her today.