Hello, I suffer from strong depression. Every time someone online says something mean to me it extremely hurts my feelings and it triggers this extremely strong depression in me.
It just happened again and the depression is so strong that I have barely any energy and it’s very hard to write this. First it always feels like a strong overwhelming shock that’s paralyzing me and then it goes over into this state of feeling very down, having no energy and being hopeless and sad.
Every time something like this happens it blocks me for many days/weeks or even months. It increases the feeling of paranoia that I can’t trust anyone and anyone potentially dislikes me. Maybe no one likes me. It’s like people are so evil/cruel online and don’t care how the other person is feeling. I have the strong urge of being liked and if someone is showing the opposite and is mean to me it truly hurts me.
I think my depression comes from people hating on me.
Like others have said, take a break from the internet for a while. (After this particular post slows down and you digest what people here have to say, of course.)
On Lemmy, my habit is usually to block every controversial community that I can. If I see trolls that hang out in specific communities, I’ll usually block them before they get a chance to interact with me. My feed here is fairly clean, but it took a while to filter out the dozens of political communities. (Political communities are breeding grounds for controversy, so stay away from the comments if you can.)
If you game, stay away from any toxic gaming communities or disable all chat if you can.
You may feel like you are missing out on things the more you sanitize your interactions online. Don’t worry, you aren’t.
Its harder to filter for people who may randomly attack you online. Self-control is paramount: The second you read a word of something negative, stop reading that comment and block that person if possible.
Still though, blocking and filtering only goes so far. The internets can be a hostile place whatever forum you are on. When you are able, it just takes a ton of patience and practice to properly ignore what you read online.