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.
Hello :) I think the phrase you are looking for is “notification anxiety”. If you Google that you’ll find a lot of information, experiences, and advice.
Thanks, I found some interesting stuff already. It’s good to see that I’m not alone dealing with this issue.
This one thing stands out to me:
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 with her again.
Yikes! That sounds like a very difficult communication pattern to deal with. Either you’re presenting it in a way that signals you do blame her, or she’s got some inability to hear problem discussion without hearing blame. Either way this sounds like a key component of any anxiety you experience around communication.
As for the text messages, you can use classical conditioning to alter that response.
Basically you’d just get a text message, experience your fear response, and then dedicate a few minutes to breathing as slowly as you possibly can. Specifically, you need to extend the exhalation as long as possible. Exhale longer than inhale will calm your body down. It can take a few minutes of that breathing.
The more times you follow that fear response with that breathing exercise, the more your body will learn to associate receiving a text message with being calm a few minutes later.
Generally speaking, it probably wouldn’t hurt to do that breathing exercise daily anyway.
Just inhale normally, hold a couple seconds, then exhale as long and as slowly as you can. And repeat.
You might get some relief from changing your notification sound/vibration pattern to something that wasn’t used during those times, or even use a separate messaging app for day to day communication to tone down those triggers.
If your wife is up to it, you could even reserve actual phone calls for critical things to reassure yourself the regular notifications are “safe”.
To maker her not feel at fault it might be possible to spin it as her supporting you, so she’s doing a positive thing instead of trying to avoid it.
Unless of course the fact you’re getting contacted while away at all is a problem, I hope that would be something you can work through with time and practice.
I am glad you’re doing better and hope that trend continues upwards!
Thanks for the advice. I think the support tip is actually already helping. I’ll try to change the notifications to see if it hels as well.