I overthink emails, messages, texts (and don't send them). Help me stop!

March 5, 2023 9:51 AM

It feels like I'm always avoiding some communication and behind on something that I need to reply to. I'm stressed and guilty about this, and the guilt tends to increase the avoidance. How can I understand this behavior and change it?

I'm someone with a lot of anxiety and avoidance problems that I have mostly "solved" (managed the symptoms of) in my life. In serious situations—at work, a friend going through a breakup who needs extra care and encouraging communication—I don't avoid anything. I respond to messages on time and I am present and there.

It's everything else that is a mess! I don't know why I do this—but I see texts come in from a friend about making plans soon, and I think "now is not the time to respond, I need to wait until after work" and then I don't respond for a few days. I see an email with someone offering an exciting opportunity, I'm so thrilled, and yet I still think "now is not the time to respond, I need to wait until tonight so I can send a thoughtful response", and then I take a few…days…or even a week.

There is something going on here that I want to understand and change, because it feels mildly self-sabotaging. Especially since I am very stressed, all the time, about being behind on something. Today, for example, I am sitting down to answer messages that have accumulated over the past week, and I hate how much guilt and anxiety and despair I feel because I couldn't take 5 minutes out of my day, each day, to respond to some texts!

Here's what I think is going on:

• I stress over writing the perfect response and the perfect wording. What if one specific turn of phrase offends someone or comes off as pointlessly antagonistic? I can be very cautious and fearful about fucking up, even when the potential for fucking up is small.
• I feel a strong sense of obligation. If a stranger emails me asking for advice on something, or a friend tries to connect me to their friend, I feel compelled to be as thoughtful as possible.
• I set excessively high standards for my response, and don't write the "good enough" response that, by virtue of being timely, will be better than the one I agonize over and don't send.
• Perhaps I'm subconsciously afraid of rejection and trying to postpone communicating with someone who might reject me? This has happened a lot with new potential friends who I like but am deeply intimidated by. Or maybe I don't feel good enough for the good opportunities I sometimes receive? On a conscious level I am secure in my relationships and the joy I bring into other people's lives. But I have spent years feeling uncool, uninteresting, and undeserving of friendships. It's slow moving past that. About once a year or so I "fuck up" and don't respond to someone's message who I desperately want to befriend; I don't know why I do this, but then I carry the guilt around for the next few years. Usually the response is so easy to do but I somehow can't do it at all.
• Specifically for email: I love hoarding information and subscribe to too many newsletters. I also love online window shopping and subscribe to too many marketing emails. I think part of the avoidance is purely from being overwhelmed by all the THINGS in my INBOX that I feel I "should" click on, mixed in with the really important emails I actually want to reply to.

During ordinary weeks, I'm just the friend who's slightly unresponsive when you try to make plans, but eventually does make the plan and show up on time. But when I have major stressors in life, I seem to fall apart. I'll avoid or ghost friends/collaborators in ways that are really not OK: it's hurtful to them and it makes me worry that I've weakened a relationship I do want to maintain.

I am open to tactical suggestions as well as emotional/introspective ones. I'm also open to tactics that work well for ADHD/neurodivergent people, but please note that I am not ADHD myself. I don't think this is an attention issue, but rather an emotional issue.

I am in the process of finding a therapist and would likely talk to them about this too, but it has been hard finding someone compatible.

posted by w-w-w to Human Relations (6 answers total)

Best answer: I think everyone struggles with this to some extent, and I wish you didn't feel so stressed out about it. Most of the stuff you describe is pretty normal behavior and if people are continuing to try to be your friend and collaborator, it's because they understand that you do this and don't hold it against you. As long as you're approaching this from the vantage point of "I have to change my basic pattern of behavior completely," it's going to feel extremely daunting and you will find it difficult to give yourself credit for small changes.

That said, I want to suggest a criterion to you that will maybe help you triage a bit. If you receive a message that stresses you out even slightly, the first question you should ask yourself is: if I don't respond, will this person be harmed in some way? So if someone is sending you a funny meme or wants to hang out, no biggie, it can wait a few days. But if someone is depending on you for something--or even is asking you if they can depend on you for something, like a letter of recommendation--you should prioritize answering ASAP. The trick is that (depending on the nature of the request) it's usually perfectly fine to say "hey, I will get back to you on Friday!," as long as you haven't left the person hanging (and do follow through eventually).

I know this type of behavior very well because I am in academia which is absolutely FULL of avoidants who never face any professional consequences for going radio silent in ways that harm people who might be dependent on them. The difference between one of those avoidant people (who are widely loathed, usually behind their back) and someone who is maybe a bit slow to respond but is generally known as kind and helpful is that the the latter know which requests need to be prioritized and act accordingly.

Finally, I want to share a strategy. It's a form of inbox zero I've been doing for about a decade and I will keep doing for the rest of my life. Every Sunday (very occasionally I will do Monday but maybe 1-2x a year), I go through all of my email, skim through things like advertising bulletins and newsletters, snooze things that are relevant to ongoing projects but don't need to be addressed immediately (or things like flight confirmations), and respond to any emails I've left hanging, usually with a rote apology for the late reply. Once I have dealt with something I archive it. The trick is that by the time I get through with this, which usually takes 1-2 hours, I have to have a completely empty inbox. This does wonders for my anxiety because at the end of the process I know for a fact that I have looked at and addressed every loose thread, that nothing is piling up somewhere outside my field of vision. It also means that no email sits in my inbox for longer than a week before being responded to. And it means I feel safe letting the endless (e.g.) Adam Tooze newsletters pile up--I'll just get to them on Sunday.
posted by derrinyet at 11:12 AM on March 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Oh hey, I do this! I am GRADUALLY getting better.

What has helped me improve:

* I write down the "bad version" of what I want to say. The "If I weren't worried about accidentally choosing the wrong word or accidentally coming off like an asshole, what would I say?" version. Then... usually I can just send that version! Sometimes I just have to massage a little extra business politeness into it.

* I remind myself that my friends will give me the benefit of the doubt when it comes to accidentally putting my foot in my mouth. And if it's something accidental, then... I am unlikely to be able to avoid it by overthinking it! Like, there are some of my friends who have odd pet peeves or triggers, but either you know those odd pet peeves and triggers or you don't, you're not going to psychically intuit them just by worrying. And if they're not my friend? If they're somebody I would like to become my friend in the future? Honestly, the same applies: if they are weird and judgmental about something I said accidentally, we were never destined to be friends.

* If I catch myself thinking "Oh, I will definitely respond to that email tonight," and then later that night catch myself thinking "Oh, I will definitely respond to that email tomorrow," then I try to make some time to very deliberately talk to myself: "Hey, this is an anxiety response, and I'm not going to beat myself up about being anxious, but I'm going to take some deep breaths, I'm going to remind myself that my friends don't hate me and aren't going to start hating me because I accidentally suggested that we go to their ex-boyfriend's favorite restaurant, and then I'm going to write the response." The book "The Happiness Trap" has some good techniques for anxiety diffusion, but honestly, just acknowledging that I'm having an anxiety response makes it easier to deal with.

* This is a higher degree of difficulty, but... even if it's been a while, you can tell someone, "Hey, I'm so sorry that I never replied to your message. I had some anxiety going on. I really care about your friendship and I don't want to be that person." And it defangs it a little bit, for me to feel like it's something I'm trying to hide, and to give my friends a chance to repair that friendship if that's something they want.
posted by Jeanne at 11:17 AM on March 5, 2023 [6 favorites]

Have you tried scheduling messages (via email or text) to send later?

I often write a "good enough" version of a message and then schedule it to send at a particular time in the future. If I have time before it is automatically sent to review and improve the message, great! If not, I know they'll receive something from me in a timely manner.

Pressing "send" feels finite in a way pressing "schedule" doesn't.
posted by abry0 at 1:30 PM on March 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

Similar to abry0 - If I am really stressing out about sending an email, I will sometimes send it with a short ~15 min delay using the "Delay Delivery" function in Outlook. Then I go to lunch or to the coffee machine or whatever. It's a silly psychological trick, but it seems to work.
posted by Mid at 3:08 PM on March 5, 2023

Response by poster: Wanted to thank everyone for the responses—I wrote this question in a burst of activating shame and guilt, and it was good to have that feeling of shame challenged a bit. This resonated especially, from derrinyet:

As long as you're approaching this from the vantage point of "I have to change my basic pattern of behavior completely," it's going to feel extremely daunting and you will find it difficult to give yourself credit for small changes.

Here is what I have been trying in the last week:

• Reframing this as normal, OK, and undeserving of overwhelming shame
• Carving out "responding to people" time on Saturday afternoon or during my morning train commute. I will often try to put this off until the evening, but have realised I am completely tapped by the evening most days and the temptation to push things to the next day is strong.
• Writing quickly and sending in a rush before I overthink (works well for social communication)

It is going a little better. We'll see as the weeks progress. Thanks again.
posted by w-w-w at 4:53 PM on March 11, 2023

I have a similar problem, and still struggle with the shame spiral problem: the longer I don't reply, the more ridiculous it feels to reply, and now there is an added task of apologizing for the delay, and so I don't respond longer, and feel more shame, etc., etc. But I run my own business, and I have to reply to customers. Have to.

Things that over time helped me to make this less of a struggle:

1. I got rid of the answering machine. This was my enemy number 1. No matter how I tried to trick myself or offer myself rewards for answering messages, I usually took forever to return my calls. After a week or so I would tell myself "No need to respond now, these people are no longer expecting a response," I would delete all messages, unanswered, and vow to do better going forward. But I just never could. If someone called me back and told me I haven't returned their call, I'd tell them that the machine must have eaten their message. It was awful, and went on for years, and finally I had to accept that I'm just not a person who can operate by listening to the answering machine messages and returning them. And that's ok. Now, when I see I have a missed call, I call back, usually within a reasonable time frame. I'm not exactly sure why it's easier, but this was my way of solving this.

2. When it comes to e-mails, I pick a time of day when I feel productive (late morning for me). I sit down at my computer with a cup of coffee and a nice pastry, and knock out all the yesterday's e-mails. I fail at this some days, but most of the time it works. When done with e-mails, I pet myself on the back, and feel a huge relief that the task that can get daunting if put off for too long is done. Over time, answering e-mails stopped being such a chore, because I had many instances of completing this successfully, and the anxiety around it diminished with time and positive experiences.
posted by LakeDream at 8:43 AM on March 15, 2023