Fear of text notifications (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by HandOfDoom@lemmy.world to c/mentalhealth@lemmy.world

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Hello!

I'm a 30 year old male living with my wife on a 3rd world country. We have no help from our families and we've been through some very difficult times, but we managed to get by. My wife had a severe case of depression and even tried to take her own life at a point.

Now things got a little better, even though we are in a tight financial situation. We both feel a lot better and we even managed to get off our meds (it's nice to be able to save the money and get rid of the side-effects).

But, there is something weird that came as a consequence of all those bad times. Whenever I receive a text message from my wife, my heart races and my anxiety goes through the roof. It's an irrational fear that the message will be bad news.

I don't really know if there is such a thing as "text phobia", but that's how it feels (english is not my main language, so it's kinda hard to explain). I alread mentioned this to my wife and I think it made her feel bad because she thinks it's her fault. Of course I said it's not her fault, but now I'm kinda afraid to bring this up again with her. We both are trying so hard to be strong for each other.

I wonder if anyone else had a similar problem and I would be very grateful if someone could give me some tips on how to work on this problem.

Thanks a lot and I hope you have a great day.

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[-] HandOfDoom@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

That's great! Thanks a lot for sharing this. I'm having a rough day and reading your reply made me smile. I'm happy my post could help you =)

[-] SomeoneElse@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I’m glad it raised a smile, but I’m sorry you’re having a rough day. Is your wife ok?

I was thinking a bit more about the steps I take with my mum so I can answer her calls, and if that could help you. We have a “code” for any phone calls that aren’t scheduled. She assumes I won’t answer so one missed call means she just wants to chat. Two missed calls means she was calling for a specific reason, she needs to speak with me about something but it’s not urgent urgent. Three missed calls means it’s an emergency - she absolutely needs to talk to me asap. She’s very good at not abusing the system so I answer the second call when I see it (my phone still doesn’t ring, even for her). Thankfully there’s only been a handful of true emergencies in 15 years.

I wondered if you and your wife could come up with a similar system - maybe using different messaging apps? Say normal, everyday messages go through WhatsApp but “I’m feeling bad” or “I need help” messages go through SMS. She wouldn’t even need to ask for help, using SMS would be enough to convey the message. Meanwhile you know that any message through WhatsApp is a nice normal (or even boring!) message.

I don’t know how practical that would be or if your wife would be willing to do it, or whether it’d even help, but I thought I’d mention it on the off chance. I’m wishing both of you the best.

[-] HandOfDoom@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Hey, we are feeling better now, thanks for asking :)

We'll try different messaging apps if I can't get better with some more time, that's a good idea. Thanks again and I wish you the best too!

this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023

15 points (100.0% liked)

Mental Health

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