Hailey Baldwin is sharing how she’s handled the relentless and vicious internet bullying ever since she married Justin Bieber, and how he helped her cope.
Hailey Baldwin is using her new YouTube channel to shine a light on mental health, when dealing with the pressures of haters on social media. The 24-year-old model has been relentlessly bullied since marrying pop superstar Justin Bieber, 26, and shared how he helped her cope with the pressures of internet hate. Hailey discussed the situation with psychiatrist Dr. Jessica Clemons in the latest A Conversation With episode that dropped on Mar. 31.
Hailey detailed how she quit Twitter and rarely uses Instagram. “My husband has helped me so much with it. I really give him credit because he’s been doing this so much longer at this really massive level,” she explained. “I think I’ve gone through a phase where I’m like ‘I get it. I don’t want to hear it,’” about going on social media, “and then I do it and he’s like, ‘I told you. Life is way better this way.’ And he was so entirely right.”
The Ivy Park model explained that, “I think over the last 2 and half years for myself it — after getting married especially — it really opened me up to this new kind of level of attention. I think one of the biggest things I struggled with for sure was the comparison aspect of body comparison and looks comparison and behavior comparison,” Hailey revealed about how her profile was raised into the stratosphere after becoming Mrs. Justin Bieber on Sept. 13, 2018.
While she didn’t bring up Justin’s ex Selena Gomez by name, Hailey seemed to touch on some of the intense bullying she received after tying the knot with Justin. “I think when you’re going through a situation where you just have so many people hounding you with the same thing over and over and over again, it starts to mess with your mind and you start to question everything and you’re like, ‘Is there something that I’m not seeing that they see – maybe they are right?’” She added, “It was such a low point for me that I was like honestly maybe I am delusional. Its like separating two realities essentially.”
Hailey then revealed how she’s weaned herself off of social media for the sake of her mental health. She revealed that she no longer goes on Instagram Monday through Friday, and now it is a place she only hits up on weekends. “I was getting to the point where I was going to open my Instagram for no reason. It was like a reflex,” she explained, then added a helpful way she’s made her IG page a safer space for her mentally.
“Another thing I did that I think was really helpful was that I turned off the comments on my page except for people who I follow. When I look at my comments now when I put up a photo or video, I know it’s only going to be people who I know are only going to be positive, and only going to be encouraging and uplifting,” she shared.
The model then explained that she got rid of her Twitter altogether because it gave her terrible “anxiety.” “I don’t even have a Twitter anymore because there was never really a time where I would go on there and it didn’t feel like it was a very toxic environment,” Hailey explained. “The thought of even opening the app gives me such bad anxiety that I feel like I’m gonna throw up. So I got rid of that because I was like ‘it just needs to go, it no longer needs to be part of my life.’”
Hailey then pointed out how “People can say whatever they want on the internet. And then this stuff goes viral because people believe anything that they see on social, media.” She then revealed that because of her kind and sensitive nature, “I want everyone to like me, it’s like my downfall at times and I’m working through it.”
“I think one thing I’ve had to come to the conclusion of is trying not to feel like I owe everybody an explanation or owe anybody anything, and really just try to correct what I need to correct personally, and behind closed doors, and do the work personally and behind closed doors. I’m still figuring out the fact that I don’t have to explain myself,” she told Dr. Jess.
Justin shared just how bad things had become for his wife in a Dec. 3 IG story about how a Selena fan made a video encouraging other “Jelena” shippers to flood Hailey’s comments in an upcoming Instagram live session with messages about the “Wolves” singer. “This sad excuse of a human just encouraged people on video to literally go after my wife telling people to say that my previous relationship was better so on and so forth. I just wanted to share this so that people get an idea of what we face day to day,” Justin told fans.
Hailey then responded with her own post that read, “I would never in a million years wish for someone to be treated this way and I will never condone this kind of hateful behavior. I want only to support, uplift, and encourage other women in this industry and wish them nothing but love and success and I wish for all of my followers and supporters to the same. Wishing the young woman in that video all the best. I hope she finds love, peace and happiness in this life!”