Still well-dressed but somewhat depressed
Nothing particularly big or bad has happened recently to prompt the change. I have been feeling increasingly stressed by twitter-related tension for months now and I just burned out and reached a theatrical-sobbing-at-small-things stage over the last week. But I feel a bit better already for making the decision to shift my personal tweeting over to a more private account.
Mad Twitter (as mental health twitter is affectionately known) has overall been a fab experience for me. I joined in 2015/16 feeling isolated and confused by my experiences as a patient of a community mental health team where polarised ideas about mental health were not just debates out in cyber space, but had been a regular source of real-life conflict and a barrier to getting the help I needed.
Taking part in the wider mental health debates on Twitter has mostly been a healthy endeavour. I have made new friends and found extra support when struggling with depression and ADHD. Twitter has also provided my new and improved, chemically-balanced brain (!) with an endless and fascinating supply of cringeingly snarkworthy research material.
There have been some significant incidents along the way that have taken their toll though. Early last year, debates around mental health 'data-mining' from social media accounts hit me hard at a time I was already low and recovering from a long period of physical illness. I ended up deleting my entire online history and dropping into a black hole of depression for a while. (I wrote about it in a password protected post here. Password is INTEGRITY)
I'm relatively smart and well-educated, if I say so myself, but I simply didn't know that researchers were lurking and analysing deeply personal stuff from support forums or twitter. It rocked my world as I came to realise how widespread the practice is.
But, even after I learned that data-mining was a thing, I came back to social media and slowly returned to a pattern of over-sharing-as-usual. It's complicated but there isn't much 'real life' mental health support available these days and so I guess I've compromised myself in order to survive.
There was another incident, a year or so ago, when I discovered that an academic on twitter who I'd really admired and trusted was also running a sock account that, alongside its usual business, began fighting the friendly professor's corner against me in the research integrity debates. I was literally floored and threw up when I made the connection.
It's not that we'd been friends exactly but we'd had quite a bit of DM contact, and they had 'confided' enough personal stuff that eventually it made the connection between the charming academic and the hard-faced sock something that was easy to spot but, at the same time, almost impossible to believe. I felt so stupid and humiliated. At one point, 'they' had even engaged me in a 3-way conversation about a piece of their work! I was furious, but I was also so emotionally drawn in to the stories they'd spun, I actually felt guilty for finding them out and worried about harming their reputation if I called it out. Both of 'them' are long blocked by now but, as a consequence, I still hold tweeps I don't know well at arms length, and I'm not sure if my trust issues with the academics of twitter will ever be resolved. It was a very painful lesson of the need to be wary of those who spout loudly about the ways other people exercise power.
More recently, I've been bothered by the aftermath of reporting an unscrupulous psychiatrist to the GMC. I made the initial referral anonymously but later outed myself as the complainant in an effort to disrupt the rogue doctor's plans to blog about some of the details of the case which might otherwise have put vulnerable service users at risk.
I don't regret my actions but I have since felt very violated by his behaviour towards me, especially taking my twitter photo and using it on his blog without my consent and for the purpose of presenting a bizarre false narrative about me.
The GMC can't prevent retaliation against complainants; they can only deal with it after the event. So I need to take steps to protect myself and this is another part of my current decision to protect my personal tweets.
It's not just big events that have worn me down though. Something I find persistently hard is that, as a self-identified mental health 'service user', I'm not just a participant in the mental health debates but also a subject of them, and this feels painful and humiliating at times.
Twitter levels the playing field in so many ways. It makes it possible for clinicians, academics, survivors and and service users to talk relatively freely, without the obvious power imbalances that underscore relationships in formal settings.
Increasingly though, as I've got to know more and more tweeps as real people and as personal friends rather than just as holders of various positions in a debate, it has felt harder and harder to reconcile myself with my own position - and my human condition - as the subject of the debate.
I take my hat off to expert-by-experience researchers and practitioners for whom this is all in a day's work; I really do. But I'm having a bit of an existential crisis about it right now and this is another reason I need to retreat.
Rationally, I accept that there will always be collateral damage in debates where everyone is taking strong principled stances. Some of you genuinely believe some of us are duped by Big Pharma, co-opted to others' political and professional causes etc, and it is legitimate to express that. I know intellectually that few people on any side of the debate intend to hurt anyone else - but sometimes it does hurt.
So I've decided to open a separate account to share my most personal stuff rather than to continue making myself extra-vulnerable in the same place that I so often feel I need to wear steel pants to fight my corner over mental health issues.
I don't know if the new protected twitter account is the answer, but that's what I've decided to try. It's there that I'll be sharing photos, videos, personal anecdotes and disastrous dressmaking tips from now on.
If you are an academic or clinician and also a friend, feel free to follow but just be aware I have so many mutes and blocks set up I probably won't see a lot of your hardcore mental health content unless I am logged in as @RoseAnnieFlo.
@RoseAnnieFlo will be a bit quieter but I have been doing some blog-sorting over the weekend and hope to post again in the next few days. It will be one of my now ludicrous 36 (thirty six!) unfinished drafts, and will be the next installment in my research series.
Thank you for reading this self-indulgent wankfest. Bet you can't wait for the TED talk! ;)
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