5 Ways to Respond to Trolls on Your Twitter Feed
Who are trolls? They are not people who disagree with you. They are people who disagree with you in a nasty way. They look like the picture above, though usually camouflaged in their profile images on Twitter.
What to do about them?
- Ignore them totally.
- If you find #1 impossible, perhaps because you are a sensitive person or a pretty nice person and the jibes, even though unwarranted, still hurt, do this: Read over the message the troll has left — remember, this only applies to nasty messages — and tap your finger on the message three times, and then flick it away with your thumb and forefinger. Imagine it dissolving into the air. Add glittering fairy dust if desired. Seriously. Try this if you don’t believe it can work. You will never see the message with the same degree of hurt again.
- Never answer a troll. They are incredibly voracious for attention. That is their desperate need. Sometimes bottomless pits of need. Deny them that perk. Answering them also engages you in a way that harms the health of your physical body— you always will receive their negative vibrations at a cellular level, dimming the positive electrical charge your cells constantly emit (something physiologically proven, incidentally).
- REMEMBER THAT ALL MESSAGES FROM TROLLS ARE UNWARRANTED — no exceptions.
- The fifth way is the hardest to accept. Let go of the need to prove yourself to the troll in any way whatsoever. In a modern version of the ancient Hawaiian wisdom tradition of Ho’oponopono there is a wonderful question often cited by its proponent, Dr. Hew Len. The answer to the first option brings us only temporary satisfaction. The answer to the second option gives us back to ourselves:
Would you rather be right, or free?
Whenever we allow someone else to define or control our emotional state — for any reason — we are giving away our personal power, and this is never good for us, and never brings us peace of mind.
Trolls feed on manipulating what you feel by their words, and are driven to make you engage with them. They love that.
But what real power do they have?
None. None whatsoever.
You control how you feel, and what you want to feel. Honor yourself in that way. Allow any emotions you feel when the trolls show up to exist briefly, sure — that is only human. We are feeling creatures. But do not hold on to the negative emotions the trolls emit in their random search for attention, a sad and misdirected attempt to find their own validity.
No one has the right to grab at the inner power that is your own, that belongs to you.
Something to keep in mind.
