How To Respond When Your Reputation is Ruined Online

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Most times when we get private insults from people it does not bother us. Yeah, the person was rude but what’s the opinion of just one person to us?

We add the person to our list of Negative people we have to ignore and move on, and if needed pray for the person. But when it comes to public offence rumours, gossip, false accusations — they hurt the thing that is most valuable to us our reputation.

Personally, I don’t think there’s anything I protect more than my reputation. That is one of the reasons I love Steemit, everything is open down to our comments and replies, no one can falsely accuse another for anything.

The experience of public shame on the Internet is like spilling red wine on your white shirt at a prestigious event: everyone sees it, and it’s devastating for the one who endures it.
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How do you Respond

When there is no way to fix the effects of the false news or rumour, anger is often the first instinct.

Normally everyone wants to be seen as cool, confident, assured. Never to be questioned. Always to be loved. Until public shame comes along.

There are some things that you need to do at that moment when our flesh starts to take over, when our hearts start beating out of our chests in rage, that will allow us to use public shame as an opportunity to drop the dead weight dragging down our souls.

Definately there is more to our pain than our guilt. Surely there are some traces of righteousness in our anger. That’s definitely possible. But the moment of rage is not the moment to consider the rightness of the anger. It’s the exact opposite. Remember, rage is always a disposition toward sin. “One given to anger causes much transgression” (Proverbs 29:22).

In that moment of rage you have to search for a way to repent. You may have to search hard against the self-defending attitude of our own hearts. But know that it’s not about defending ourselves, because our moment of rage is not about the person who has shamed us.

Instead it is about whether we will allow ourselves to stoop to shameful levels in order to defend shame.

Repentance is about getting a handle on your soul. If you fail to do this, then you will stumble headlong into shame in ways your accusers or offenders will be happy to exploit.

Moment like this is when you have to look towards God in prayer

The smashing of our reputation into little bits before our eyes is never easy. Having it smashed by others is even harder. There are so many complex emotions that our bodies and minds were not built to contain on our own. If we try to fix our shame ourselves, we will only add to the problem

Apparently It turns out that all the time we’ve spent fantasizing about being admired ends up undercutting us when we fail.

We’re grieved over the shattered self-concepts we were never meant to have. James is not done speaking about the Judge: “Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing at the door” (James 5:9).

The truth is when we have found a way internally and authentically to recognize that “there is only one lawgiver and judge” (James 4:12), our barriers dissolve. Maybe we don’t trust the one who betrayed us.

We may not be able to trust ourselves as much anymore.

We may also find out that our lives doesn't have to be so perfect that the smallest flaw is elevated to the experience of “public shame” and moves us to rage.

We may also start repenting over and over again in small situations so that when anger takes us by the neck, we have a fighting instinct of humility against it. Maybe that humility allows us to even laugh at the futility of trying to maintain a perfect reputation.

Cultivating a humility like that will save us from the bear traps of shame our perfectionistic culture lays everywhere we look.

Special thanks to @christian-trail and @positive-trail for the work they are doing on Steemit

Thanks for reading

@ogochukwu
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