No, because I reply right away even if my reply is "No can do, sorry- busy with thing. Can we follow up next week?"

It is not guilt. You just have better things to do.

Hahahaha I cannot 😕

SEND HELP

This is actually awesome

Someone told me about a thing a bush pilot supposedly said: If you are a few hours late, they curse you, but if you are a few days late they are very happy to see you. So, uh, pretend you are are bush pilot??

Nah.

I can relate deeply. Eventually with old friends I do power through, but IDK how

The only way I can break the cycle is by diving in and clearing backlog periodically. Then realizing it wasn't half as difficult to tackle them as I'd imagined. Then the cycle begins again. With it, the sense of guilt and dread.

Unfortunately, the only way I've found to avoid this is to be on top of my responsibilities

I used to feel bad about this in the age of email. I would try to stay on top of my comms but at some point I realised I was dedicating a vast amount of time to a job that was never finished. I stopped using email entirely about ten years ago and I never think twice about it. I reasoned if it can be done for email it can be done for any type of message. I rarely open letters or text messages or watch adverts. I don't want to clutter my mind by living in a world of concepts that are defined by other people and I feel better for it.

Once I got a girl's number, didn't call her, then got her number again and then didn't call her again. She was super hot.

I'm going for like a "this person is a rockstar, too busy to notice every email" angle. Sorry, I just made $X for the company by doing [part I actually like].

It's just advice about how to answer old emails, I'm not tryna cure executive dysfunction lmao

they'd have emailed again.

Right, but if I'm avoiding even opening my email software, then I don't need to see either email lol

"Hey sorry, looks like this fell through the cracks..."

Oh yeah. And the anxiety too. I have bills I can pay and I keep forgetting because of anxiety. It's not that I can't pay them. I hate looking at how much money I have or don't have. It's not healthy to my wellbeing.

I'm blessed I make good money that I don't have to look at my bank account.

It actually has a name it’s called task activation avoidance. We want to ignore it as long as possible because the minute we open it it becomes another responsibility we have to remember and complete. I struggle with this a lot but what helps is if I tackle them one at a time. I block off time out of my day to open them one at a time and try to complete it 100% whether that’s simply responding back or getting the person an answer. I definitely don’t always get them all but I do get a bit of dopamine from the feeling of completing one of them so there’s that.

I definitely used to feel that way but dealing with that at work has forced me to overcome it I think. I will still respond to an ancient personal message but with apologies.

Yeah it sucks i dont like this masking part neither. Usually if i overthink about these things, it means that these people are not comfy for me and I just let them go. You absolutely dont have to meet all their emotional needs if you don't have energy or interest for this. I cleared a lot of people from my cirle recently and Im sooo relieved now because I can ignore them freely for days and then respond just with random shitpost meme and its so liberaring because noone gets upset (and they do the same bc they have adhd too lol)

You can try to start to ignore your friends on purpose (if you have enough confidence). You can even talk to them about it like look i have a problem with reading messages and responding to them so I want to try to separate these two phases so please dont be angry with me if i won't respond you in the same very instant. If they are true friends they will understand.

Also usually when I choose to ignore someone it's not really that important and it means that it's okay to forget about it - at the end of the day what stimulates us is urgency and if it's urgent there is no way we will ignore it. So if I,can afford to ignore it its highly likely that you can give a fuck about it for some time.

Also, you will be notified by the chat visually some time after when you open the app, or the person will write you again themselves, or you will want to write something to this person yourself, or you can even set the message to "unread" as a reminder to yourself, so be chill

It seems to be the writing part that's the hirdle for me because you have to do so much empathising, remembering, imagining, phrasing things acceptably, deciding what you actually want and working out how you actually feel (this can be a hard one), etc etc.

Ah I see. For me once I've read a message I feel obliged to start writing a response there and then because 1. I need to capture my authentic reaction otherwise I might forget later on what I actually wanted to reply, and 2. If I don't reply now then I'll forget later, or keep putting off the chore

Oh, I usually end up doijg the comolete opposite -- wait for weeks until the other side firgets they sent the kessage and accepts they won't be getting an answer, and only then read it and pretend I only just noticed it then. By that point all their potential anger over me not having replied will have passed, so there is less guilt for me to have to overcome.

Oh yeah, that would work for me too. This is akin to running up the the wall the ADHD put up and barging through it. But using the brute force approach to any ADHD thing is quite tiring so I'm curious to see if anyone has managed to trick their brain somehow