Your Anxiety Is Wrong: Your Friends Don’t Hate You, Even When You Don’t Answer Their Texts
Recently, it’s been a lot harder for me to respond to text messages and calls from friends or loved ones.
I can’t pinpoint a specific reason for this—whether I’m just busy or actively avoiding meaningful conversations and isolating myself—but the result is the same; a tremendous feeling of guilt.
As a person with ADHD, I thrive when I make to-do lists; I hoard sticky notes and post them along the route of my daily routine, hoping that I’ll remember to complete my tasks for the day. I even made a sticky note list with the names of friends I need to call/text back, plus the dates when we last talked.
But each time I see the list stuck to my computer screen, I don’t feel motivated to reach out. Instead, I feel an undeniable sense of dread.
Why, though? I love my friends and family, and I want to know what’s going on in their lives. I also have the emotional resources to support them if they’re struggling and plenty of days when I have extra time for catchup calls.
Maybe it’s the time difference; I’m out east, and all my friends are on the west coast. But I could plan for that, calling them at night or later in the day on the weekends.
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What I’ve realized is that I don’t want to talk about my life. I’m busy trying to get schoolwork done, be on time for my job, and have spare time to write.
Even if I do have an evening free, I want to spend it recovering, catching up on TV shows, or luxuriating in self-care. Does this mean I’m a terrible friend? Or that I’m depressed and don’t want anyone to know?
I find myself needing to remember that spending time and energy on yourself—your everyday, in-the-moment life and responsibilities—isn’t an indicator of poor mental health or underdeveloped social skills. It just means you’re trying to compartmentalize.
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For example, if I spend all day thinking about how much I miss my college friends or coworkers at my last job, I’ll start resenting the life I’m living now for keeping me from them—both geographically and by limiting our time to connect.
Avoiding the cliche of “living in the past” doesn’t mean I don’t think about these friends daily or wish that I could be more involved in their lives.
Instead, it means I’m giving myself the chance to appreciate my life as it is, to open myself up to new connections and experiences.
The true, unshakable friends understand all of this—they, too, sometimes let weeks or months go by without calling or texting, either because they’re busy establishing a new routine or just focused on staying afloat.
It doesn’t mean they hate me or we’ve grown apart. And every time we see each other, things always fall back into place.
I hope we can maintain a sense of perspective on our friends’ lives as well as our own, giving our time and energy when we’re able to and giving ourselves grace when we aren’t. Because we know our friends would do the same for us.
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