I spent most of my therapy tonight talking about my FB postings. I’ve been feeling poorly over the past six weeks and not been as social and dynamic as I like. That cute girl in shul I didn’t respond to still eats away at me. So when I’m feeling isolated, I often take to FB to connect. I want to post things that will get a response. Sometimes that leads to a high where I feel like there are no consequences for what I write. Then I go over the top and people defriend me and I become more isolated and in response my FB postings become more bizarre, leading to further isolation.
Saturday night I was having such a high from FB posting and then there was the flame war over Islam and I got a headache from friends and it bummed me out Sunday.
My dad has a PhD in Rhetoric. I heard hundreds of his sermons growing up. As an adult, I determined to go in the opposite direction in some ways. My dad devotes himself to lifting people up. I devote myself to deconstructing ways of thinking and living I regard as false. Whenever I encounter someone who reminds me of my father, I lash out in certain ways and I’m stuck in this cycle of rage and rebellion.
One day in 1999, my therapist, after listening me talk about Dennis Prager for a year, said to me: “Dennis gave so much to you. By writing on him, you want to show him that you can impact his life too.” After that, I rarely spoke about Dennis Prager in my therapy. So I want that same sort of insight into why I feel driven to create flame wars online, why I so want to drive people crazy, to get away with as much as I can, to stir them up, infuriate them, drive them out of their minds.