How to be less neurotic about getting back to people

pointers

I’ve destroyed a few friendships and professional opportunities simply by not sending an email, or replying to a text. I’m now significantly better at this than I used to be. Now, everyone knows, in essence, how to get better at communication: get in the habit of sending brisk responses immediately. However, in my case, doing that required getting over some hangups. The words below do a passable job of explaining how I got over myself.

Remember that your primary job is being responsive

When you get an email from someone, you are, on the surface, being asked to accomplish some task, like schedule a meeting, or provide advice. But, fundamentally , you are being recruited to mitigate the nightmarish loneliness that plagues us all. Thankfully, any halfway coherent response accomplishes this job. You have acknowledged their existence: excellent! It can be extremely clarifying to look at this as the primary goal of communication, rather than, say, imposing your wit, or nullifying the possibility of conflict. Moreover, if this is seen as the goal, it might imply that you should put in less effort—a long, studied reply might be seen more as an attempt to impress, rather than a reciprocated connection.

Remember that, from an outside perspective, your actions are much more similar than different

For much of my life, it seemed like I had to maintain the Sasha performance, by executing the behaviors that people would expect from me. Every time I was about to express something, I would, if only for a fleeting moment, wonder: “is this good dialogue for my character?” This made it hard to get back to people, because I assumed that I’d have to put in the time to maintain self-continuity. But, gradually, I realized that the Sasha performance is something I am doomed to, not something that I have to maintain. I’m never going to shrug off the bundle of habits and neuroses that form my personality. Everything I communicate will come out of that flawed nozzle, whether I want it to or not. So this was never a real problem. 

Immediately, or never

Like the counting systems of certain hunter-gatherer societies that go “one, two, many,” for communication, you need a non-standard way of measuring time, in which there is only “immediately,” “after a long spell of unnecessary vacillation,” and “never.” It’s tempting to avoid dashing off a brisk response when you imagine that the counterfactual is a beautifully woven communication sent later on. But that is a lie. In reality, you will likely be less willing to respond tomorrow.

Notice that you are avoiding anxiety by creating anxiety

It’s scary to communicate with people! You might alienate them or offend them, or accidentally take on unwanted obligations, which you will later shirk. It’s understandable that you’d want to avoid this anxiety. However, by not responding, you are trying to avoid your anxiety by creating more anxiety. Now you have to worry about the response you will eventually write, which has to be weighty enough to assuage your guilt. When that inevitably doesn’t happen, you will worry about what they think of you for being so neurotic. This is one way to exist, and it can provide an endless supply of minor fear, which can be a handy barrier to place in front of major fears. But you can also just learn to confront the original anxiety.

If you don’t have the right words, you don’t have to use words

If you’re having trouble expressing something through text, you can get on the phone, or leave a voice memo. If that doesn’t get your meaning across, you can send a picture of a happy cat, or a destroyed car. You can always send a crisp heart emoji or a smily face—this is a wonderful way to say “I have nothing in particular for you right now but not because I am secretly plotting your demise.” 

You can get someone else to help you with your email

Try this: “Hey, I can’t decide how to respond to this email—what would you do?” Or: “this is an email I’ve drafted, does this sound okay to you?” Remember that collaboration isn’t cheating.

Decide that you’re going to respond, or not

Not everyone deserves your response, and it’s perfectly reasonable to ignore people. You have no obligation to continue a fight someone brings you, or muster up a polite refusal for an outlandish request. The important thing is to make a clean decision—having something in your inbox that you might respond to is extremely taxing. Make peace with the fact that, once you’ve decided not to talk to someone, you have relinquished the opportunity to influence what they think of you. They are free, thereafter, to believe that you’re the biggest piece of shit who has ever lived, a totally obvious fraud, another mediocre con. You can learn to find this inexpressibly delicious. 

Photo credit goes to Robert Frank.