Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of The Self-Confidence Project. Today, we’re diving into why so many men experience texting anxiety and review some common scenarios that lead to anxiety-induced thoughts. Then, I share some strategies to reduce it. Learn how to enjoy your dating experiences and improve your communication with women by unpacking the sources of your anxiety and adjusting your expectations.
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Kimberly
Here’s the transcript:
Hey guys. Welcome back to another episode of the self-confidence project. I’m your host, Kimberly. I’m a men’s life dating and relationship coach. And today we’re going to be talking about. Why you experienced so much? Texting anxiety and some ways that you can actually begin reducing this, that you can really enjoy your dating experiences and enjoy communication with women.
Because this seems to be one of the most. Frustrating and triggering parts of dating. Is once you’ve actually got her number from matching online, or you finally built up the courage and vulnerability to approach her in public and you get her number now. It seems like. There’s this burden of responsibility on man to be funny and witty and keep the conversation going and say all the right things at the right time and act almost. Perfectly so that you can continue to win this woman’s affection and go on a date and fall madly in love.
Well, firstly, that is way too much pressure to be putting on yourself. So today we’re going to unpack. What might [00:01:00] be the source of some of your texting anxiety and a few things to consider that can just help you reduce that anxiety so that you can enjoy your interactions with women. You can communicate with women and have fun and really understand yourself better when it comes to this.
Now I put out a podcast episode, I think a couple years ago on how to reduce your texting and anxiety. And it was a really popular episode. So I did want to reapproach it today with some kind of fresh perspectives and fresh thoughts that I have since the. The first publication of the episode that was around the same subject.
Now, before we dive in, if you guys don’t know, I am a coach for single men and guys in relationships, I’ll talk about that in a second, but. For single men who are wanting to navigate dating have a lot more fun do so with a lot more clarity gain self-awareness develop skills. When it comes to communicating with women, approaching women, having fun with women, building intimacy and men that are really. You know, wanting to find the right person for them and [00:02:00] have deeply loving relationships.
So maybe you’ve come out of a long-term relationship you’re separated, divorced, or maybe even dating for the first time, but you really just want to have a better experience. You want to navigate this part of life as if you’re playing a good round of golf versus. You know, your first swing, ruining the rest of the 18 holes.
So guys that are actually wanting to. You know, be the best versions of themselves attract the right types of women into their lives. And then go on feeling confident about how to have deeply loving relationships. Those are the type of men I work with. And I’m proud to say that I’ve been doing this for many years now, really successfully.
I also work with men that are in relationships that have lost that intimacy and lost that communication with their partner. And they just want to find a way back into that relationship. So if either of those situations sound like you, then I’d love to start off with a complimentary conversation. where we get to know each other and make sure that we are the right fit, that coaching’s the right modality for you.
Um, and then go on to [00:03:00] discuss what that relationship might look like. But for those of you that are here, Stay tuned. So we’re going to talk all about texting anxiety and some of the ways that you can reduce this now.
What causes texting anxiety? Well, a lot of it has to do with self-worth and our expectations. And also I will be the first to say that communication through this little intoxicating device is a great way to miscommunicate. What you mean and misinterpret what someone else is saying. It is not the best mode of communication because we are lacking. 80% of body language, which is facial expression and tone of voice and gestures and body movements and all of that.
So if you are using. Your phone. As the only way, or the more preferred way of getting to know somebody that you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage, because body language, tone of voice and all those things are going to be really helpful. In really. [00:04:00] Perceiving what the reality is and the truth is okay.
So I just wanted to put that out there first because texting should not be. Your most favorite method of communication, but it is for most people because it’s very passive. You can do it without having to brush your hair and you can do it without having to brush your teeth. And so people choose this over in-person interactions.
And the more you choose this over in-person reactions, the more you put pressure on this going the right way. And it’s really not intended for that. So I just wanted to put that out there first. Now, when it comes to. Texting or the woman that you’ve gotten the number of from online dating apps, or maybe you’ve built up the courage to approach her in public.
And now you have her number. There seems to be a lot of pressure on guys to now behave perfectly at this point in time through tax so that you. Keep her attracted to you. Keep her engaged, get her out on the next date. And immediately you’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself to do [00:05:00] something perfectly on an imperfect tool.
So. I want you guys to firstly, just readjust what you do with this, because one of the best ways to reduce your texting anxiety is to probably text less. And to have a more healthy relationship with your phone or to pick up the phone and call people more often, or to meet people in person more often. And if that makes you feel really anxious and that’s a good sign and that’s an area you really do want to work on, but. When it comes to anxiety on text messaging. Where does this even come from? Most of the time we are making things like the response speed on text. I mean something. We are perceiving that if somebody responds. Longer versus shorter on texts.
That, that means something. We perceive that when someone uses a lot of emojis or not, that means something. We are perceiving tone and making [00:06:00] that mean something. And we’re also making judgements around the questions and content that we’re talking about on text slot for us to be thinking about. Now, I want to share a couple examples of. How. Anxiety is often a by-product of the stories that we make up about texting behavior. Based on those clues that I talked about.
So here’s some really common examples. You’re probably gonna listen to me saying, go. Shoot. I’m guilty of that. And this is good because we’re creating awareness around. What’s actually triggering you. And when you understand what’s causing your stress and anxiety and what those triggers are. You can do something about it.
And that’s really important thing. So for example, If you send something to a woman and she responds on text. Okay. Just writes the letters. O K.
What does that mean to you? Right. Oftentimes guys [00:07:00] go. She must be upset with me, or she must be losing interest. ’cause she just wrote. Okay. I have now told myself a story that she’s upset with me, or she’s losing interest in me.
Reality, her brevity on text message might actually mean she’s just busy or in a Ross, or saw the tax and wanted to respond really quickly.
But she’s actually. Uh, busy with something else. Not that she’s angry or disinterested. Because it has, you know, texts often lacks tone. And if you’re trying to interpret these things too deeply, it’s going to lead to your anxiety because of unnecessary assumptions. Now, if you heard her say, okay, Maybe you’d be thinking differently, but because tax lacks that tone, you might jump to the conclusion. As she’s upset with you, annoyed with you losing interest.
That is one example of where anxiety can come from incorrect assumptions. [00:08:00] Now. What if you send her a really long text message. And then she just replies with a couple of sentences.
What story are you telling yourself about this? Are you saying because of that, she must not care about me as much as I care about her. Is that what you’re telling yourself?
Maybe the reality is that this woman is a little more succinct in her texting style. Maybe the way she texts is different from you.
Maybe your shorter reply, doesn’t actually reflect a lack of interest, but really it’s just more her style or maybe it’s that she has some time constraints and she can’t spend the next 25 minutes responding to you, but she wants to get back to you right away. So she’s a little more succinct about it. Right.
Or maybe it has to do with the mood that she’s in when she reads the message. Maybe there’s times when she’s in a really happy, joyful mood, and she wants to write long messages to you and open [00:09:00] up a big back and forth dialogue. And maybe there’s times where she’s pissed off about something else that’s gone on in her day.
Then you send this big message and she’s not mad at you, but she’s mad at something else. And so she responds to you and you pick up. That energy, even though it’s not really directed at you, somehow it comes through in the text message. So what you want to be really mindful of guys, if you experience a lot of texting anxiety is to question the assumptions that you were making right away because of text behavior. Now, what about when. You noticed that the woman you’re texting tends to send a lot of emojis in her text message. And then for some reason today, when she sends you a good morning tax, she didn’t put that darn little heart emoji. So now, what are you making this mean? Is the automatic assumption and anxiety, you feel like, Ooh, maybe I upset her last [00:10:00] night and the conversation we had before bed. Or maybe she’s just losing interest in me and this conversation.
Isn’t really fun for her anymore.
All of that is thoughts that you might be thinking or assumptions you might be making because a heart emoji didn’t exist in your text this morning. Right. It seems a little absurd, but it’s so common. We make stories and make assumptions based on what we see or don’t see, or what we perceive or don’t perceive. Not everybody uses emojis constantly.
Sometimes the absence of emojis. It is because someone’s in a more serious mood. But oftentimes it’s just more about the texting habits that we have. There’s times where I’ve like tried to find an emoji and it takes me too long. So I just don’t send it. And that was really the only story that existed.
It had nothing to do with me lacking interest in someone or could be because I was also in a little bit of a rush. So. It’s really important that [00:11:00] when you start to recognize that you’re making really unhelpful assumptions, that that might be the source of most of your anxiety. Now, what about the common one?
Where. I send a woman a text to asking her out. And it took you quite a bit of time to build up a courage to send that message. In fact, you re edited that message many times, just so it was succinct and clear and came across as you were intending and now it has been hours and she has not responded to you. And you in those hours have told yourself over and over and over again that she must have just lost interest.
She no longer wants to pursue a relationship with you. She doesn’t want to get to know you anymore. And you think that for hours and hours and hours on end, and then all of a sudden she comes back and says, sure, that would be great. And you go, you’re kicking yourself because you [00:12:00] stressed for hours unnecessarily. Right.
Sometimes life just gets busy and delay. Re delayed replies. Can sometimes be more about someone’s schedule or they’re considering whether they want to say yes or no, could be that they’re actually spending time to really think about the interactions they’ve had with you. Or many people might just be balancing work and personal life and other priorities, maybe when you sent that message, she was getting a massage and had her phone on silent.
Maybe she puts her phone on silent when she’s at work. The thing is, is that you want to be questioning the assumptions that you are making. Making which is leading to your anxiety. Because there is negative assumptions that you can make about everybody’s behavior in life, or you can get used to making more realistic, positive assumptions that are going to support you more.
Now, what about the famous. Texts. Uh, [00:13:00] response coming and you can see in the little text bubble, you see the typing bubbles. And then they disappear. And you’re like, oh my God, they were thinking about what to say to me and then shows their mind. And now they’re not responding at all. And you, again, the story you tell yourself, the assumptions you’re making is that. Ooh, she was going to respond, but now she’s just not interested or I’m making this mean that she has second thoughts.
When in reality, when I do that, sometimes I’m in the middle of texting somebody and then my dog wants to go outside.
So my phone gets put down and I prioritize taking my dog for a pee. Instead of responding to whoever I’m talking to, because I know that they can wait my dog cat. Right. Sometimes people get distracted. Sometimes they want to rethink how they’re going to respond to you. Just like you might really think about how to ask her out, but maybe you just wrote your drafts and the notes on your phone instead of into the text bubble. Right. [00:14:00]
Or maybe, sometimes people think about responding and then they recognize that maybe they’re not in the best emotional state. So they put their phone down and think I’ll come back to it later. Sometimes people do that too. It’s really easy to misinterpret. What is going on when someone attempts to respond to you and then does it, it doesn’t always mean something negative.
So these are the stories that anxious texters will tell themselves. And it stems from. Insecurity. It stems from having a repeated pattern of negative thinking. It stems from a fear of being rejected. It stems from at where it causes this over analysis of minor, minor details. Right. So ask yourself as I was going through some of those common examples, where you going?
Wow. Every single one of those situations. I think the worst, I think the most negative thing, [00:15:00] and it always reflects on this person has just lost interest in me. I’m not worthwhile. I don’t have, I don’t have enough to keep this woman interesting. I’m too boring. I’m too unattractive. I don’t have enough money.
I didn’t say the right things. Do you endlessly go through this cycle of negative perceptions about yourself based on these little tiny behaviors that you scrutinize. Right. Really, really common. So, firstly, I want to highlight in this podcast. Uh, you need to acknowledge what is causing your anxiety. And what is triggering you? Is it the slow response that really triggers you? Then dig deep to start asking yourself questions as to why is this the case? If you’re perceiving these behaviors as negative all this time. Right then maybe you’re starting to recognize that. Okay.
I need to actually work on my mindset and my self worth and my belief structure. [00:16:00] More importantly, at this point in my life. Right. Maybe this is highlighting an area that you have been ignoring, and it’s really easy to blame texting. Versus actually own the fact that it’s the way you are perceiving things now. I don’t want to say that your intuition isn’t important here because it is sometimes we pick up signals from people over time. Or we get really inconsistent behavior from someone or, you know, someone just really, really gets slower and slower and slower at it, responding to us.
Yes. There are also times when our intuition is saying something feels off here, something doesn’t feel right here and we need to tune in and listen to that. But there is a big difference between a deep intuition and deep knowing and surface level anxiety. There’s a difference between a slow response.
And then when you get it, you know, you realize you spent three hours feeling very [00:17:00] anxious versus over time, you start to get a very. Um, S a deep kind of feeling or sense in your God that someone’s not right for you. That’s your intuition speaking to you, but the. The hectic hair, raising goosebumps, forming. Ups and downs tends to be your anxiety. So ask yourself what is really triggering you. And then you need to be understanding what really are the expectations that you have around text communication. Why do so many of us feel like people should be able to have access instant access to us 24 7 hours, 24 7. Right. Do you remember when we used to leave the house? And nobody could get ahold of us. When we come home, we check our phone for messages, or we had to memorize our, our friends and family’s phone numbers.
Today is nothing like that. Today we carry our devices around every single place we [00:18:00] go. And you can’t even have a thought without someone bombarding you. And if your expectation is that because the girl you’re getting to know has a phone, that she should be responding to all the time. Um, it’s incorrect and it’s, it’s unhealthy to have those expectations.
Now, what about when a girl texts you, do you expect that you should be able to respond to her immediately? Otherwise she’s going to think you’re not interested. What kind of expectations have you developed around texting and the ways you communicate and what you make that mean? There’s a lot of people think, oh, well, I’m going to spend some time. Before I respond to her because I’m assuming that she’s assuming that if I send a message to her right away, that I lead a boring life. This is so many assumptions that we are making.
If somebody sends you a text message and your phone is there and you have the time and capacity to respond, go ahead and respond. But sometimes guys, you need to have better boundaries around your phone. [00:19:00] So let’s actually talk about some practical ways that you can reduce this anxiety other than recognizing where it comes from, because that’s a really big first step. So I want to share some actionable strategies to reduce this texting anxiety, such as considering what kind of boundaries you need to have with your phone.
So, if you are getting to know a girl or you’re on an online dating app, Do not allow yourself to get addicted to notifications, do not tie yourself to seem, and self-worth into how many dings you get in a day. So many people do that and is incredibly common. And you do not want your self worth attached to this device.
This is the. Worst device to attach your self-worth to. So, if you were noticing that when you’re dating online, for example, and you get those notifications that you just feel is rush of excitement and positivity, then you might be a little bit addicted to notifications and maybe you need to have your phone on, do [00:20:00] not disturb for a good portion of the day. Or maybe you need to go into those dating apps and turn off those damn notifications. Okay.
You need to understand what healthy boundaries you might want to. Put in place with your phone. Do you get into bed late at night and then kind of have this expectation that in order to feel good before you go to sleep, you want to text that pretty girl that you’re dating. Maybe when you get into bed, that’s when you stop using your phone. Right.
Instead of relying on someone else to make you feel good late at night before you go to sleep. So really consider what kind of healthy boundaries you want to have with your phone. Maybe there’s times when you decide to go out for a walk and you leave your phone at home. And you’re not worried and you’re not checking it because how often do you just look to see if there’s a notification on your phone?
Even when there isn’t one. We’re so programmed to look at these damn devices. They’re addicting. They’re unhealthy for us in so many ways. So really consider your boundaries guys, [00:21:00] because that is going to help you reduce that anxiety by having you not searching for that danger validation or text message all the time. Also consider reframing your negative thoughts.
So that’s a big thing that we talked about this, ultimately, the biggest lesson from listening to this show is if you’re making a lot of. Negative automatic assumptions. Then you really want to begin to reframe those negative assumptions.
So, if you understand, what’s triggering you, you need to have a dialogue with yourself.
Hey, I noticed that this woman hasn’t responded for a while. I’m making this mean something, and I’m recognizing that I’m going to name it to tame it. I’m feeling anxiety, but I’m going to choose to believe that I’m worth talking to. And I’m going to put my phone down. I’m going to go do something positive for myself. And that’s when you begin to practice mindfully living. Right. So these are some things to start thinking about, [00:22:00] including. Time limits on our phone. Right.
Focusing on other activities instead of kind of just like. Half doing something, waiting for her to respond to you because that is just going to make everything feel so much longer. And the thing is, is that when we have all this anxiety in our body, It influences how we respond to people. It influences the tone of voice that comes through in your text message or how quickly you respond or what you say.
If you’re negatively perceiving everything. Um, that you’re you’re, if you’re having negative perceptions about your conversations with women all the time, then it’s going to start to come through and your future messages to her. Maybe you start to resent it a little bit. Right. Cause maybe she’s not living up to these Maydoff expectations you have.
So now you’re a little more short with her or you’re less forgiving or less compassionate. So it also. Perpetuates the self fulfilling prophecy, because when we [00:23:00] think negatively, we start to behave in ways that are born from that negative thinking. And that means we start to get more of the same shitty results that we don’t want in our lives.
So. I really urge you guys. If you have a lot of texting anxiety to first and foremost, think about what’s causing that anxiety. What’s triggering you and maybe some more healthy ways to begin practically dealing with that. This is stuff I dive into more deeply with my clients. We can formulate actual specific plans to help you reduce that anxiety as well as boost your confidence in how you send messages and how. You respond and, and what you make things mean when a woman texts you and, uh, I hope this has been really helpful.
I hope this is, I actually got you to think about, well, the firstly that you’re not alone and that texting is a big source of anxiety for a lot of people. But to really challenge your own thoughts and assumptions here, because that usually is the biggest source of that anxiety. So I hope this has [00:24:00] been a helpful episode for you guys.
Hope you’re taking away something really valuable from today’s show. Please share it with someone that also experiences a lot of anxiety using this damn old phone and a. Be proud of proud of me. Cause I put this on. I do not disturb desperate. 10 days call so that I also didn’t experience anxiety from my phone because it’s a very common thing.
Hopefully this has been helpful for you guys. Uh, leave your comments below and I look forward to bringing you all another episode next week. Ciao.
