A Journey With Cerebral Palsy

Have you ever heard the concept of an internet stalker? Someone who ventures online looking for information about a person or many people. They probably go online day after day, or night after night. Never really posting anything about themselves or commenting on the things other people post. They might be trying to keep a low profile, hoping most people might not even realize they are online. This described my behavior on social media for years. I was using it as a tool for gaining information about other people. I would jump to conclusions based on what I might see online. Sometimes those conclusions might be close to reality. While, other times I was projecting things without much of any basis. Social media was helping feed my paranoia and increase the chaos happening in my brain. It was like watching a world transpire that I wasn’t good enough to be involved with. Going online day after day, trying to gain information, and look for pictures, was only dragging me deeper into darkness. Causing my mind to swim for hours after leaving the computer. In my head, I continued justifying my impulsive behavior. Telling myself that everyone went on social media. It was the thing to do and if people didn’t want me to see things, they didn’t have to post them. Well, that might be true, but like in the real world, just the presence of someone can lead to discomfort.

Pulling back on venturing on social media platforms was challenging. I felt like going onto them gave me some kind of control over my life. Usually, many of the images or updates on there would be hurtful to me, in some capacity. It wasn’t the fault of anyone in particular. They were simply living their lives and posting things for friends to enjoy and become involved. It was simply people sharing the story of their lives. When I started being blocked out from getting information on my feed, I knew I had become a problem. I started feeling more and more like a creep, people didn’t want around. It struck a chord inside my soul. No matter where I go in the world, whether out in life, or on a social media platform. My intention never has been making people uncomfortable. However, I have found one of the byproducts of having an addiction seems to be an inability to control one’s behavior. Meaning even though I might not have wanted to make people uncomfortable. I didn’t have control of myself enough, to act in a nonthreatening manner. My goal, whether fully in my conscious or not, was to feed my addiction. That could have shown up in running into enticing pictures online. It could also mean looking for hurtful information, proving to myself people didn’t care, I wasn’t good enough. That feeling of negativity would help justify the pull of my addictive behavior. Making me feel like I was justified in objectifying images I might see, or woman I might come across in the real world. My habits of social media were helping feed the negative image I had of myself. Helping to continue the cycle of justification for my bad habits. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was no way of living a life. 

The only thing I seemed to find in looking at social media, day after day, was my own desperation. For the most part, it only incited my feelings of frustration and anger. Leaving me wondering why I was so undeserving of having the life I watched people projecting. The scrolling through only seemed to deepen the loneliness being felt. I didn’t know it then, but that feeling of loneliness and inferiority, was the enemy. The emotions scrambling themselves around my brain, even hours after logging out, left me desperate for relief. I wanted to gain some kind of control from the dark emotions I was getting from social media. That longing for control and escaping the stories I had conjured up from the images, had me reaching for my addiction. The obsession over this cycle I had created was challenging to escape. Logging on to look for images and updates on social media had become the first thing I did to start my day. At times, the obsession had become so great, I would awake in the middle of the night to scroll through my timeline. My life felt as though it was being lived inside of a fantasy, under my own creation. I thought by looking at social media, I knew what was happening in the lives of other people. When in fact, I had no idea what was happening for others, just by looking at a timeline full of images and updates. But, in my mind, it all contributed to my made-up stories, perpetuating my obsessive thought patterns.  

My desire for the control I couldn’t have and the acceptance I was missing, led into darkness. My control showed itself in spending hours watching dirty images on the screen. I was able to escape into a world where I didn’t have to worry about being accepted. I didn’t have to feel like I wasn’t good enough to be part of someone’s life. Those images on the screen were there for me, providing relief from the pain. They gave me the control of creating my own sort of secret world. One in which, I didn’t have to experience any kind of feelings of being left out. The problem was, the emotions I felt after spending the hours on the computer. Hiding away inside those videos of my choosing. Where no other person could have any influence over the way I might be feeling. Had become devastating to my emotions. The same message kept ringing inside my head, bringing me back to the timeline and the dirty screen, the one saying that having cerebral palsy made me inferior. My disability was the reason I felt lonely and isolated with every log into a social media account. Because, that emotional pain of having a disability was so expansive and unfair, I was entitled to stocking online and my watching of pornography. The strange thing about the cycle of my emotions around social media playing a part in my pornography use was, the online scrolling, pornography use and self-gratification, were the very things leading to me feeling lonely. If I could make the first, seemingly impossible change to my life, maybe better emotions would follow. 

To be honest, it has been a long time, since I set out in curbing my social media use. I do remember the feeling of having become some kind of online stocker. I also remember feeling like I had become a creepy individual in my everyday life. The combination, along with the uncontrollable use of pornography had me feeling, things had to change. The one thing I did realize pretty quickly was feeling better when I remained free of social media. My first step was to stop logging on in the middle of the night. Fighting that obsessive urge when I would awake in the middle of the night with anxiety. Wondering if there was more information of someone wanting to communicate something hurtful. The craziness going on inside my mind had seemed to spin out of control, making my first objective to stay in bed, when these thoughts woke me, in the night. It was the first practice I can remember surrounding the concept of easing my obsessive thoughts. After that first step was succeeding for a while, my next task was to stop myself from logging in each day. I was telling myself it was okay to look at social media, maybe every other day, but no longer was logging in each morning, appropriate. This plan was more challenging to execute, but I was able to accomplish it after some practice. Getting to the place of not going on social media every day, actually began making me feel better. For the first time, it felt like I was gaining some stability in my emotions. 

Once it became clear that decreasing my usage of social media was helping improve my emotions. I wanted to continue my efforts of staying away from the apps. I began to find an ability of stringing a couple days together of not scrolling through my timeline. The key of lessening these habit for me, has always been trying to replace them with structure. Like, instead of getting up in the morning and logging into Facebook. Get up in the morning, get ready, and go get a cup of coffee. I tried occupying my mind with another task, I had planned out the day prior. Or, I could log into social media if I first wrote two paragraphs for my blog. Well, by the time I had written a couple paragraphs, my feelings about myself would turn positive, and I didn’t care enough about what was online, to look at my timeline. All of the sudden, I didn’t feel much like an online stocker any longer. The feeling of being a creep, as I ventured out into public, also seemed to reduce. The process wasn’t easy and I think the amount of time it has taken for me to write about the subject is indicative of that fact. I had to fight every little urge that could surface unexpectedly. I didn’t have a laptop computer in my house, helping me remain far away from my desktop during moments of weakness. Forcing myself to remain seated in front of the television at times, instead of wondering toward my desk. To this day, I can recall times of giving into those urges, but over time, those moments became less frequent. 

Today, I look upon social media as a kind of gateway drug for my form of addictive behavior.  Still monitoring myself about the frequency I log into a social media platform. I look back at the challenges of being involved with my social media obsession. Recall the feelings of thinking about myself as feeling like a creep. Those emotions are not something I want to experience, again. So, even though it gets much easier as time passes, I remain diligent. Knowing the cliff into obsession and addiction probably isn’t too far away from my current place. The goal seems to be keeping the roadblocks in place and going back to focus on them, if ever I feel myself wavering. Making sure my time gets occupied with doing things that are productive. Even when it might be as simple as making sure laundry is done, or my room gets organized. I learned through my process that reducing chaos through organizing my spaces, has been super helpful. There was so much shame involved with all aspects of my obsession and addiction. There were horrible feelings attached with the frequency with which I ventured onto social media, trying to remain in the shadows, and almost spy on people. I used social media in an attempt to gain control, but instead it took control of me, promoting the darkness I felt about myself. I’m so thankful my obsessions have been healing for years and I have the ability to look back at their destruction. Instead, of living through it on an hour by hour basis. If you are ever feeling like a creepy individual, like I did, for whatever the reason. It takes work, but you can fight your way out of it, too.