A couple of months ago I wrote a post about texting with anxiety. It felt really good to get it out there, to give some insight into what goes on in the depths of my anxious mind and maybe reach some people, perhaps even people who have experienced text anxiety themselves. If it went over well, I was even going to submit it to The Mighty; maybe I can help heal the world, one post at a time!
It got 4 views.
Eh, better than nothing, right? Nevertheless, here I am, writing another post about my anxiety and texting. Because reaching 4 people is still something.
The last post was largely about sending and receiving texts, which is obviously step one. By no means does the anxiety stop there, though. There's the anxiety of crafting a good message. And the anxiety of waiting for a response. And, for me, the effects of anxiety on my interpretation of a response. This post is going to be about the latter.
As an empath, I'm usually pretty good at reading people in person. There are times when I struggle; if my own emotions are particularly strong in a given moment, they can sometimes taint the 'signal' I'm getting from someone else. For example, if I'm feeling particularly low/sad, and someone I'm with delivers a dry, sarcastic remark (which I'm usually all about), I might mistake their tone as hostile or annoyed instead of joking. Many times, all it takes is a moment to look at them, to absorb facial cues and body language, as well as remind myself that most people are not inherently mean and my mind loves to play tricks on me, and I can usually reassess and figure out that they're kidding. Phew!
The issue with texting then, as you likely already guessed, is that I'm missing all of those clues: tone, expression, body language... all out the window. Imagine an entire conversation in which the person you're speaking to has a blank face, doesn't move, and remains monotone throughout. Would you have any idea what they were feeling? Probably not. So what do you do?
If you're like me, you project. I think of it like watching black and white TV. At a certain point, my brain just kind of fills the color in for me. Not in a conscious way necessarily. I mean, I don't literally start seeing colors in place of grayscale. But my imagination makes suggestions, and if push came to shove, I could tell you what I think the colors are or should be.
Reading texts can be similar - without being able to hear the actual tone intended for a statement, my brain comes up with a tone in order to assign additional context and meaning. And often, I imagine it's dead wrong, but short of asking things like "How did you mean that?" or "That was a joke, right?" after every text, there has to be at least a little bit of guesswork on behalf of the recipient.
Likewise, I fear that whoever is reading a text from me is going through the same struggle. What if I don't properly convey my emotional response in this brief interaction? What if they think I'm being a raging bitch-monster when I'm just trying to be my lovable, snarky AF self?! It legitimately makes me anxious just thinking about it.
And I know I'm not alone here. Think about the 'evolution' of LOL. Remember what that actually stands for? Laughing OUT LOUD. Unless we're all a bunch of hysterical hyenas, we are NOT reserving it for just those times. These days its use is, more or less, intended to convey some kind of tone. Sometimes it suggests, "I'm gonna say this thing, but I don't want you to take it too seriously." Or maybe, "I'm just responding positively to your humorous statement/gif/whatever; I don't actually have anything to say but I don't want you to feel ignored." Or my personal favorite, "I don't want shit to get awkward if we're not on the same page here, so I'm using these three letters as my own personal safety net."
It doesn't stop at LOL either; I, personally, have several ways of trying to inject tone or emotion into messages. Punctuation and capitalization are probably the most obvious (which is why I overuse the hell out of exclamation marks), but there are others. Extra letters, for example. If someone tells/shows me something and I like it or am impressed, 'nice' becomes 'niiiiiiiiice.' The more disappointed or displeased I am, the more Os get added to the word 'boo' or 'no.' And when I'm excited, the number of Ss that get tagged onto the end of a 'yes' or an occasional 'yas' can vary from a few extra to "Did her finger get stuck?"
The most polarizing way to establish mood/tone/whatever, though, has to be emojis (or emoticons; yes, I know there's a difference, but shut up). As we all know, some people love the little dudes to the point of overuse. Some people aren't fans of using them at all, except in extreme circumstances. Others find them downright obnoxious. Personally, I think they're pretty helpful, not to mention kind of fun to use.I'm 99% sure that my friends think I'm just an emoji whore, but it's more than just a cute little image to me. Emojis help me express the sentiment of a statement, and they REALLY help me interpret the tone of someone else's, especially when the text is a one-word response. 'Okay' is not a particularly warm word. We know it represents an affirmative response, but that doesn't mean it's always a POSITIVE response. The same goes for words like 'sure' and 'fine' (which many argue almost always means the exact opposite). Check it out.
Person 1: Hey, you wanna catch a movie tonight?
Person 2: Sure
Obviously, the response is affirmative, but the individual doesn't sound super excited. As Person 1, I'd be reading into that WAY too much (because it's what I do). Do they REALLY want to go to the movie, or are they just saying yes for the sake of saying yes? Am I bugging them by asking? Should I back out of it to let them off the hook? The mind races, and inevitably I'm assuming the absolute worst when all they really meant was 'sure.' BUT, add a smile in there, and...
Person 1: Hey, you wanna catch a movie tonight?
Person 2: Sure 😀
As stupid as it might sound, that little yellow dude grinning like an idiot makes me feel immeasurably better about Person 2's response. Like, aha! They're happy to be asked and happy to say yes. This is good and fills me with much happiness of my own. Huzzah!
I'm working on trying NOT to read so much into simple messages, but it can be pretty rough sometimes. If I just used a plethora of smiley faces and exclamation marks but your response ends in a period (dun dun DUN!!), it's hard to redirect my brain from immediately thinking you clearly hate my guts and never want to talk to me again. Or, at the very least, that you're obviously not as jazzed about the topic at hand as I am and probably think I'm kind of a goober.
So, if you don't worry about this kind of stuff, you've probably determined that I am all kinds of certifiable. I'm not saying you're wrong. Maybe I am crazy. But maybe you like me anyway. And maybe you know OTHER people who think/feel similarly (perish the thought!) and want some insight to help you communicate better. On the other hand, if you DO worry about this kind of stuff, now you can cue up 'You Are Not Alone' and bask in the knowledge that someone else is your brand of crazy! 😊
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