I’m pleased to hear you’ve (both!) found this helpful. The issue with your father is indeed something to work on in isolation – it’s very sad to hear about what’s happened, but I’m glad you’ve noticed the importance of moving on now, and that’s a really significant and insightful thing for you to realize, because it forms your direction in the future.

I deleted my Facebook account quite a few months ago now because I realized although it was just about helping me connect when I wasn’t around people in real life, I actually felt scared, stressed etc most of the time when using it. I must admit, I feel so better now having been off it quite a few months. It was very hard to come off it and my friends thought I was mad but it really has helped. The thing is, I still spend a fair amount of time alone, but there’s a different energy to it and I don’t feel like I’m being influenced by images of what I could be doing.

Remember some quotes that will probably be familiar to you: Never compare the inside of you with the outside of somebody else.

Facebook is a glistened-up, polished, carefully selected and narrated version of events. When it comes to these friends who want their lives to look great online, well, they don’t upload it when things go badly. They don’t upload their unhappiness. But those things do exist, you can bet. And actually they probably spend more of their life thinking about getting things on FB and spending time on that, than they do really enjoying what they’re doing.

Just don’t be fooled, Facebook is a trick if you like, its users players of a game. When you step outside of that game, you almost begin to develop sympathy for them. Because a lot of people only upload stuff for approval and hoping other people think they look cool. How eye opening is that?