I shouldn't admit this, but sometimes I unfollow people because they share too many experiences that give me painful memories. Ex. Excessive sharing of how you're privileged in ways I feel esp. not, or complaining about the problems of specific situations I wish I could be in.

I guess I'm tweeting about this topic because I wonder how many others end up feeling that way from Twitter.

I realize I may have unfollowed some people who meant well because I didn't have strong enough compartmentalization skills, and ideally I need to develop those. I hope those people haven't wondered if it was due to some kind of more direct and justifiable non-existent grievance.

(I guess a lot of these issues are really what muting is for, and I do plenty of that too.)

I guess another way of saying all this is that I've unfollowed and/or decided to not initially follow some people whom I'd still potentially be open to connecting with, in other ways or maybe even by following/re-following at some point in the future.

I think it's probably relatively healthy to start trying to have open conversations about these kinds of feelings and impulses, since a lot of times the experience of being unfollowed involves trying to interpret a mysterious and arbitrary sign.

I'd add that the conditions for the kinds of memories I'm thinking of are narrow & specific. I don't like how this thread implies I'm some kind of overly-sensitive person; I would argue I'm discussing emotions which occur among many people who assume they're above having them.