How To Deal With Haters

Hate. It’s one thing we all feel and deal with at some point. Hate is a natural part of the human nature, along with greed, egoism, jealousy, and other vices. However, just like any other sins, it is us who choose to fall victim to this soul eating emotion.

Up until recently I had been thinking there is something wrong with me. I have learned to filter most of people’s negative energy through stupid comments I get on my blog, Instagram, Facebook, or websites I get featured on. And I’ll tell you what, that’s hell of a lot of effort, lying to yourself and support from the people you love. However, the absolutely mean heartless messages that some people send still destroy me every time.

But I have recently discovered that it is not my fault, and it has nothing to do with me individually. My lovely reader, Simone, who you also know as my 1 winner for the British Fashion Awards, asked me something that made me change my vision; she asked me how I have been dealing with hate all these years. She herself has opened a blog a few times, and every single time the negativity was so intense she’d end up closing it down. I found that sad because she’s such a lovely girl and a blog is something she’d always wanted to try, but because maybe even just one single person left comments under different names (yes, that happens very often), she had to quit her dreams.

A few days later my boyfriend sent me this random topic he stumbled upon on Reddit called “Has anyone ever tried killing you intentionally?”. How freaky is that title? I decided to read it out of curiosity since I thought it couldn’t possibly have much in it. To my great surprise, it turned out to be not as unique as I had thought. Apparently there are so many people out there who simply hate other people for no reason, without even knowing them, to the extreme where they would take away a person’s life. Crazy, isn’t it? Nevertheless, that’s the reality and we can’t help it.

Or maybe we can? Those consequent moments in my life made me realize one thing: there will always be someone to hate you, always, and the more people start knowing you, the more people will hate you. It’s just the natural course of history, every single historical personality has been loved and hated at the same time. People never have the same opinion about anything, be that religion, politics, fashion, literature, philosophy, astronomy, music, and so on. However, it is only when people take it to an extreme and hate what they don’t understand that bothers me. But there is an escape from that, and that is learning to deal with it and let go.

I am naturally a very emotional and kind person, and it’s really easy to hurt me. I can never, and I mean NEVER understand why people do what they do. I have so many questions for those people who spend days criticising and destroying other people’s lives, like….

Why can’t you just scroll down something you don’t like and simply ignore it? It is in your head for up to 1 minute, but your inability to just prevent yourself from being mean might make the person you’re criticising sad for days.

Why can’t you just understand that you don’t know so much about other people’s life? And because you don’t hold any personal information you can’t judge anyone; you can’t judge their decisions in life, you can’t judge the way they talk, the way they dress, the car they drive, the friends they have, the way the look, and everything else, because people just judge absolutely everything.

Why don’t you choose to spend your time building something yourself, educating yourself, spending the time with your beloved ones instead of spending hours creating fake accounts which only serve as a way to hurt and humiliate other people?

And there are so many other questions that will only make both me and you, those who have felt the same way, get even angrier, and we don’t want that, no. All we want is to get rid of that feeling of anger and frustration, move on and be happy.

My whole life i’ve built an invisible protection field around myself, but you come to a moment when you realize that the protection field is really only a superficiality, which lets you keep your emotions hidden from people around you, but it doesn’t actually grant you any emotional protection from the people themselves. I feel very lucky and blessed to have my boyfriend who in the past years has made me feel worthy of so much, and has slowly taught me how to deal with the awful things people sometimes say. After going through a lot on my own, learning from those I meet, reading a lot about it, I have thought it would only be fair to share my experience, since I am 100% sure every single one of you has been “hated” at least once in your life.

I don’t have any qualification in human behaviour, nor am I a psychologist, priest, or anything else, therefore my following tips and pieces of advice for you are purely subjective and based on my personal experience

1. Ignore it, don’t read it, delete it.

Yes, it might sounds cowardly, but if you keep reading, I’ll explain you why it’s a great way to avoid disappointment. First of all, you have all the rights to ignore it, not read it and delete it because your blog, your Instagram, your Facebook, they’re like your home. You don’t welcome someone into your home and let them throw dirt on your walls, or destroy your furniture, or break your windows, right? Well, then why would you let them upset you in your virtual home? You welcomed them on your page, you shared your soul, your heart, your passions, your life with them, and now the choice is theirs: they can either enjoy it along with other people and yourself, or if they don’t like it, they can leave. But in no situation do they have the right to disrespect it.

Now why you shouldn’t even read those ugly things people write is because it’s a “Pandora box”. Once you read it, you’ll want to read it again, just out of curiosity, then again, then again, and no matter how absolutely ridiculous and false that someone’s assumption is, it will slowly start getting to your head, and you’ll start believing it, then doubting yourself, then losing your confidence. That is why as soon as you see the comment starts getting rude, disrespectful, painful, just SPAM it the hell away!

2. Have your beloved ones there to support you.

As independent and strong as you are, you’ll always need a family member, friend, partner, to reassure you of how amazing, beautiful and good you are. We only doubt ourselves when we don’t have someone else’s approval. And I know it might sound a bit ridiculous, since the whole idea is to believe in yourself and blah blah blah. But trust me, one word from a person you love can absolutely change your mood.

3. Cry, yell and let it go.

It is very important to not keep your emotions trapped inside you. That is exactly why in case you did somehow read it or hear it, you should absolutely let your anger and frustrations out. Yell in your pillow, throw some books around, hit some fluffy toys, cry, swear, but only for 5 seconds. Set yourself a time limit in which you can pity yourself and hate the world, but make sure you count every second, because once you say 5, you have to let it go. Why? Well because that hater only spent approximately the same amount of time typing in that message, and about 55 seconds more thinking of you, and then went on with his/her life. To them you weren’t even worth more than one minute, so why should we give them the privilege of taking more time out of our life?

4. Surround yourself with positive people.

Throughout the past few years I have selected the people that make me happy and those who don’t, and decided that those people who simply don’t make me happy because they are always frustrated, jealous, negative, discouraging, simply don’t deserve to be around me. My life is very busy and complicate already, and all want to in this life is to be happy, and hopefully make some more people happy along the way. I simply don’t have the luxury to waste my time on senseless relationships with people who are forever displeased. What does that have to do with haters? Well, I have also noticed that every time one of them wrote to me, somehow those wrong friends I had around me made me feel even worse.

5. If it gets too agressive, report.

Every social channel has ways to protect its users, so you can always spam and block the person, or write to the website Administration. If that still doesn’t work, you can report someone to the police for verbal assault and (in some situations) threat. They will help you identify the person, and if it’s the case, take legal actions against them.

Don’t ever let anyone make you doubt yourself, and just follow your dreams and be kind to people!
Love you,
Doina xx

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