Lingering Effects of Mistreatment on Mental Health

In Life, The Workplace, and In Between

Effects of feeling bullied or mistreated can linger for a long time in unexpected ways. This is especially relevant in the workplace and even during career transition periods where people may also feel overlooked or neglected. I’ve experienced my manager screaming across the room about my thick skull so loud people heard & asked if I was ok and I lied and said yes to avoid more conflict.

I’ve had lots of negative experiences in my in-person interactions and at times have turned to my online network and writing for better experiences. Most of the time this has been great. I rarely mention the other times, but they’re relevant now and serve to make my point. I’ve also been bullied and stalked online. I had a website before Working Mental Health and it became easier to stop updating it all together. The person harassing me even said to other victims that she’d stop tormenting them if I stopped writing.

Without too much detail, this became scary, or scary enough stalking – there were threats made to damage real lives off the internet. I doubt they would’ve gone through with it but who knows?

So I stopped. I didn’t put it together but I stopped feeling motivated to write because of this. I stopped thinking of ideas easily and I stopped getting excited to do anything with the bad ones that crossed my mind. It’s sometimes still hard, and writing has always been my main passion/ hobby. I’ve always struggled with having and maintaining interests, so this was difficult. Especially with depression.

And even though I stopped because I couldn’t take the idea of other people getting harassed because I had a website someone wanted to disappear, apparently I wasn’t quick enough. So she gathered people together to have me banned from other social media like Facebook. It took weeks to get my account back and I still, a decade later have restricted accounts.

I can’t share my website on Facebook. Even when people ask to see it. Even via private message.

Facebook bought Instagram. I can’t share links on here.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back it’s obvious, this contributed to ruining writing for me. I still work on getting it back every day and hope my writing doesn’t sound strained. The point is, random effects of mistreatment linger in life in ways you may not imagine. So that serves to make my point.

Why is it relevant? Because I also need a favor (sorry to sneak it in this way). Since I’m banished from most social media, that’s why it’s so important to get people to do my survey about mental health and job hunting on other mediums. Any help is appreciated. I hope my story helps others who have experienced verbal abuse and are too embarrassed to speak up. I am too. But it’s worse to let these stories rule my life. I just wrote about this, so this nightmare didn’t totally steal my passion and writing skill. Feel free to talk about your experiences in the comments. I’m listening.