In 2015, weight loss Instagrammer Stephanie Seabrook went viral for writing on her stomach the cruel comments she used to hear about her weight. She then had skin removal surgery and initially got thousands of comments of support, but a few weeks later, people starting accusing her of photoshopping her pictures.
“At first I tried to just shrug it off, and not think about it, but it started to get progressively worse and more frequent,” Seabrook, 30, tells PEOPLE of the cyberbullying.
She discovered that a girl she met through Instagram was actually photoshopping her pictures and posting them all over to drive the hateful comments.
“I got death threats, and people said I should go kill myself because I’m pathetic,” Seabrook says. “They thought that I was a liar and a fraud when I was just trying to be loved and accepted like anyone else.”
Stuck in “this emotional state of not being able to deal with” their comments, Seabrook started regaining the 150 lbs. she had lost.
“I was getting really depressed, and I couldn’t admit to everyone that I was gaining weight because I felt that I had a duty to be there for these people who said they could relate to me,” she says. “I didn’t want to disappoint them.”