Considering no one can truly be available 24/7, if you rely on your friendsâ responses to manage your feelings of anxiety, you are both validating and perpetuating your irrational thoughts (âif my friends didnât hate me, theyâd respond immediatelyâ) and also setting yourself up for inevitable failure and future emotional crisis (because eventually there will be a time they do not respond immediately). This also doesnât help you grow and progress to a healthier place along the path to recovery, because at best youâre just maintaining the status quo by temporarily relieving symptoms, not learning or practicing techniques to handle those symptoms before they take over your entire mood.
There are of course several more productive ways to deal with anxiety instead of expecting your friends to constantly prove they donât hate you. Iâd always recommend a good therapist as the best idea (and have written at length before about how to find a great one) but barring that option, anxiety is a disorder particularly well-suited to self management.
Most major chain bookstores have a psychology section; Iâd think books on cognitive behavioral therapy/CBT would be a great place to start, because CBT is all about identifying the negative thoughts in your mind (âif my friends donât respond immediately they hate meâ) and replacing them with more accurate, healthier statements (âjust because my friends have their own lives, it doesnât mean Iâm not important to themâ). Alternatively, everyone here probably knows Iâm a huge fan of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy/DBT. It was created for (and by!) Borderline people, but seeing as how itâs essentially an upgraded form of CBT plus some other bells and whistles (self-management of suicidal thoughts, that sort of thing) it should work well too. And I know Barnes & Nobles stocks CBT and DBT workbooks specifically modified to be used by people with Anxiety.
Visiting the bookstore is also a good time to pick up some books about Anxiety Disorder. Obviously you know you have it, but understanding what sets it off, what it looks like, and how it works will be really useful for the next bit, and if nothing else is VERY important for any sort of self-advocacy on your own behalf toward doctors, teachers, employers, or parents.
But my FAVORITE trick? My go to technique I always seem to resort to in the moment to handle symptoms of any of my disorders but especially my anxiety? I psychoanalyze myself out of them.
I have researched anxiety as a disorder very thoroughly. Iâm fortunate enough to have access to a good therapist (which, I wonât deny, helps a lot) with whom Iâve discussed what anxiety looks like. Iâve put a lot of work into identifying what MY anxiety looks like (for instance, I tend to worst-case-scenario and it sounds like you do too: âI donât want to call my boss, what if thereâs an issue I donât know about, and by calling him I remind him, and he fires me, and I lose all my money and wind up homeless, andââ) and just as importantly, what the WARNING SIGNS of my anxiety looks like. Through experience and hard work I know exactly when Iâm starting to pull my thoughts from the anxiety part of my brain, not the part that lives in the real world.
And I take a step back, and I go somewhere private, and I talk through the false logic to point out the flaw. Often, in front of the bathroom mirror; looking myself in the eye seems to distract me out of obsessive hysteria.
For example (note again, UNDERSTANDING ANXIETY DISORDER HELPS HERE):
âI texted Janet that I was upset, and she didnât text me back, and itâs been like an hour, and I know she was using the phone earlier, she must be ignoring me!â
âOk, so what specifically am I feeling right now, and why?â (I always start with this)
âWell, Iâm upset! I thought we were friends and friends are supposed to care! So, I guess Iâm mad at Janet too! But like, idk at the same time Iâm mad at myself for being like this! No wonder she hates me!â
âOkay so Iâm in a rough place and I reached out and she didnât answer right away, and Iâm feeling rejected, and Iâm also frustrated with myself because Iâm feeling hurt over it. Has Janet TOLD me she hates me?â
âWell, no, but maybe she doesnât care enough, or she thinks Iâm needy!â
âThat doesnât make sense, I know Janet well, we had a great time yesterday, and sheâs a nice person. Sheâd tell me if I was doing something that annoyed her. Could there be other reasons she didnât respond?â
âI meanâŠI guessâŠher phone could have diedâŠor she forgot to unmute itâŠ.or maybe she was driving, or she saw it and meant to respond and got distractedâŠ.â
âOkay, so which is more likely: that my friend of 5 years secretly hates me and has been hiding it all this time even though that would be a really mean thing to do and sheâs not mean? Or literally any one of those things, say, her battery died because she uses her phone so much?â
âI guessâŠthe battery thingâŠâ
âSo itâs way more likely than not that she DOESNâT hate me. Now, I know a few facts. I know I have anxiety. I know that anxietyâs symptoms include going into panic mode over minor setbacks, and also having trouble understanding social relationships and feeling insecure in them. And I know when *I* get anxious I start secondguessing all my friendships and getting really selfcritical and thinking nobody likes me. Doesnât that sound a lot like this? So really, if you think about it, thinking their friends hate them is exactly the sort of textbook symptom youâd expect to see in someone who has an anxiety disorder, right? And the whole thing about anxiety is itâs my brain misinterpreting things and jumping to irrational conclusions because anxiety likes to think everything is a catastrophe. So if this is almost definitely my brain being anxious, then itâs not based on my actual real relationship, and Janet doesnât really hate me.â
Usually by then Iâve either A, convinced myself what Iâm freaking out about is irrational, or B, so thoroughly distracted myself by my self-dialogue that the overemotional moment has passed and I can think more clearly. And at this point, itâs become so habitual and easy to recognize my anxiety through practice that it usually winds up being âooh, Janet didnât respond, she must hateâshut the fuck up anxiety no one likes you.â
What I find really helps wrap it up is by thinking of one productive step I can take to deal with the situation. Sometimes thatâs making an immediate plan, like âIâm going to wash my face, pour an iced tea, and go watch that show I wanted to see.â Sometimes thatâs âok so tomorrow when I see Janet Iâll just tell her that I tend to really secondguess myself sometimes, and if I ever do something to genuinely piss her off, could she make sure to tell me? That way if I get like this in the future I can trust that Janet isnât mad at me, because if she was, sheâd have said so.â
Iâve been doing this for years and my anxiety, while still present, isnât medicated and hasnât severely fucked me up in ages, because I understand what it looks like and I make a conscious effort to strip it of its power over me. I promise you, thatâs a way more productive use of time and emotion, and youâll get way more benefit out of it than youâll get out of checking your phone 18 times an hour in panic because nobodyâs answered you yet. And as a bonus, itâs not forcing your friends to play caregiver to your negative symptoms, which is unfair to them.
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