Six ways to cope with online hate as Katie Piper calls out Instagram troll
Katie Piper has said a troll's nasty comments are "beyond anything I can handle" in a Instagram post calling out horrific online behaviour.
The social media user commented, "Where is your nose?" on a selfie Piper posted on Sunday. Piper, 41, responded: "Being pulled into my face by this scar tissue. It's incredibly painful." The troll then followed up with a suicide suggestion, which Piper shared when highlighting the exchange with her 1.1 million followers.
She made clear that type of behaviour is "not ok, and it will never be OK." She added: "If you can write something, anything, negative online and press 'post', you are a special type of person. Publishing hate into the world hurts everyone, including yourself. Don't comment on my appearance, don't threaten my life, get off the internet and stay quiet."
In the caption, she added more context to this comment and encouraged people to continue to call out horrendous behaviour online as you never know the "heavy load'" someone is carrying.
"After completing my run this morning, feeling already depleted because of my bad time, I opened my phone to this. I can handle most things, but sometimes it adds to an already heavy load you are carrying," she penned. "You never know how people are feeling, what they’re going through, how their days are and even if you did, the only person we’re judging because of this comment, is you.
"I wouldn’t usually call this out so personally, but this is beyond anything even I can handle. This behaviour should always be called out, people need to do better."
The Loose Women star was the victim of a devastating acid attack in 2008 and suffered injuries to her face and eyesight and has been open about her ongoing medical treatment and surgeries to help her scar tissue.
Around 21% of people online have been the victim of online hate, which can often lead to feelings of isolation and be detrimental to mental health.
It can be easy to internalise these horrific comments and suffer in silence, but it’s important to be able to acknowledge these comments as hate and call out this behaviour.
5 ways to cope with online hate
1. Decide where to put your energy
It can help to call out this hateful behaviour online if you have the capacity and support to do so at the time. But, psychologist and Black Mental Wellness Dana L. Cunningham says it’s always worth deciding if it can bring closure, if it will cause more pain with an argument and deciding how much energy you have to invest in it.
2. Open up about the negative comments
To avoid letting the comments get under your skin, rather than suppressing them or hiding them, talk to someone else about it. If you don't wish to share, journal about your feelings and try to diffuse the potency of these words, then let them go.
3. Understand that the hate isn’t about you, but them
Hateful comments often stem from the person’s feelings of jealousy, insecurity and sadness, which isn’t their own problems to work through.
4. Spend time with people who make you feel good
Try not to isolate yourself when hateful comments crop up. Instead, reach out to people you trust and who make you feel safe and loved to combat some of these feelings of loneliness and sadness.
5. Don’t read the comments
If you feel triggered by seeing unpleasant comments and tend to focus on those ones as opposed to the negatives, it's likely worth taking a break from reading them all together for a while.
6. Seek help
Do seek professional help if you have been affected by online hate. Stop Hate UK is one resource available.
Read more about mental health:
Carol Vorderman’s switching her phone off to avoid burnout. Should we do the same? (Yahoo Life UK, 3-min read)
Five vitamin D-rich foods to help keep SAD at bay (Yahoo Life UK, 3-min read)
How to deal with a panic attack as Kerry Katona says she's been left feeling like she 'can't breathe' (Yahoo Life UK, 5-min read)
