What Happens to My Anxiety and Depression When I Send a Text That Gets No Reply

These days, I’ve heard a lot of my friends talk about how they have trouble responding to messages because of anxiety and/or depression. I get that. I have anxiety and depression too, and some days it’s hard to read a message — much less reply to one. But in my case, replying isn’t the hardest part. The hardest part is dealing with all the messages that don’t get replied to.

One reason why it’s hard for me to initiate messages is because my depression and anxiety convince me that people hate me, see me as a burden or are annoyed with me. All the time. Sometimes it’s true. And I know that, but I have a very hard time discerning when it is true and when it is not. I am not good at reading people or picking up social cues.

I have often sent messages that were completely misinterpreted, or been accused of having an attitude that I was shocked to realize was even in the running to be interpreted as an attitude. So when I have to write a message, particularly if it involves asking for something, I really struggle. Sometimes for days.

I think about it obsessively. How should I phrase it? Should I include any emojis? What about punctuation? If I’m asking for something, do I need to include, “It’s totally OK if you can’t!” Or would that be manipulative? If I don’t include that, am I being too pushy? Will they be upset with me for asking? Will they think I am expecting too much? Have I asked them for too many things recently?

If the message involves another person, even in passing, I agonize over whether I am being fair to that person. Is there anything that could possibly be turned against me or them? Am I complaining or bad-mouthing or gossiping? Am I burdening someone with something they don’t want to hear? Will the recipient be offended I even brought up the other person?

I often write out a text, delete it, write something else, delete it and then never send anything. I’ve missed many doctor’s appointments because I couldn’t get up the guts to even ask anyone for a ride. Sometimes I will write someone something honest and heartfelt just to chicken out and delete it. Even sending a casual message like, “Hey, what’s up?” can be really hard for me.

It can take me so long to build up courage that sometimes when I finally open a message box, I realize I have no idea what to say. I worry that starting with a generic opener will be lame and they’ll be annoyed, or the conversation will go nowhere and they’ll think I’m stupid. Or it’ll just be an awkward interaction that burdens both of us.

So when I finally make myself send a message, I can get really stressed out until I get a reply.

I don’t expect a reply immediately, especially understanding that most of my peers are very busy, have other people higher on their priority list and may be struggling with anxiety and/or depression themselves. Occasionally, if it’s a message concerning someone going through a tough time, I’ll even include, “You don’t even have to reply to this if you don’t want to.” This helps take the burden off them and the expectation off of me. But more frequently, I’ll send it and then be on edge for hours, or even days.

I will check my phone obsessively, opening the chat window even though I know I didn’t get a notification of a new message. I will scroll through our earlier conversations, trying to reassure myself that what I said fit in okay with the dialogue we had going before. I will be tempted to send a rescinding message if possible. I will regret, rethink and regret some more.

Now comes the part where people tell me it’s just my anxiety and depression talking, that people are just busy. But the thing is, historically, that hasn’t always been the case.

I’ve had people tell me they didn’t reply for long periods of time because they were so upset with me for reasons I was unaware of. Sometimes it directly involved a message I’d sent. I’ve had people say they’ve ignored me on purpose so I would get out of the habit of contacting them. I’ve had people tell me my messages were too frequent, too pushy or too heavy. I’ve tried so hard to correct all those errors so I am not any of those things.

But when you don’t reply, I have no idea what’s going on. I don’t know if our relationship is OK. I don’t know if I did something wrong. I don’t know if you’re having a hard time. And I can accept that.

I had an ex who would get very angry at me for not replying to him immediately. That’s not what I want. But I can’t handle always being the one to text first and also not getting a reply. When that happens, I usually stop messaging that person. Not because I don’t like them but because I don’t want to put myself through the stress of messaging them and remaining unanswered. If I see them in person or online, I’ll be fine — but I can’t keep putting myself out there in a way that is psychologically difficult if I don’t see any real indication I should continue. So I pull back.

I understand it’s hard to reach out. I understand it’s hard to keep up with an inbox full of messages you’ve been putting off. But I also need you to understand I am struggling too. If we’re both struggling with this, there has to be a better way to support each other than a chain of anxiety-inducing messages.

With a lot of people, I only contact them to make specific plans to see each other in person — which is a lot easier for me socially. But it’s much harder for me logistically. And since I live in a different state than most of my friends, that means no contact at all until one of us can come visit, which is rare. So maybe we’ll see each other on Facebook. More than likely, we won’t see each other at all. And if we both still want to be friends, that’s a really disappointing and unproductive outcome.

I know as well as anyone that you can’t just force yourself out of depression and anxiety. I know these habits are deeply ingrained and are often connected to past traumas, present sufferings and future repercussions. I know I need to keep working on this and not expect others to cater to me. I just want you to know how my depression and anxiety come into play with this too and that I would love to find a way where we can support each other and stay friends, even when we’re both dealing with these issues.

And sometimes, that means I could use your help. A little reply goes a long way. For example, perhaps you can have a reply ready to copy and paste. Something like, “I’m sorry, I’m not able to respond right now, but I’ll get back to you later.”

Or, “Please message me again if I haven’t replied in X amount of days.”

Or, “Let’s talk about it this weekend.”

Then you don’t have to stress about what to say or how to answer your messages individually.

Or if you don’t feel up to replying but you might feel up to communicating some other way, you could initiate or ask me to initiate another form of communication. If you don’t reply at all, when you do get to the point where you can message me, sending a message like, “Sorry I’ve been out of commission for the past few days” or “Hey, I saw I missed your text last week, what are you up to now?” would show that you’re still interested in communicating with me.

If you want me to know you’re not interested in further communication, ghosting me certainly gets that point across. But I have no way of knowing for sure whether or not that’s your intention without at least a hint from you at what’s going on. I can’t put words in your mouth and I can’t force you to change your communication patterns, but I want you to know not communicating is a form of communication. Sometimes (as I’m learning over and over, usually the hard way), your communication can send signals you don’t want to send, hurting everyone involved — including yourself.

Mood Disorders

What Happens to My Anxiety and Depression When I Send a Text That Gets No Reply

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