MESSAGING MISERY

Let guidance, not guilt, determine when you reach out or respond

Photo of a person from the shoulders down, holding a phone & messaging from Chad Madden on Unsplash

​Let’s clear up the heaviness, distress, guilt, obligation, anxiety, energy leaks, bad feelings & bad vibes, self-loathing—whatever way you feel rotten about texts, WhatsApp messages, Instagram (or any social-media) messages, emails, cards & letters, little notes left, messages in bottles, WHATEVER WHATEVER WHATEVER.

We have so many ingenious ways to be in touch, create connection, and send love. You can use these to make you feel GOOD or you can use these to make you feel all manner of BAD.

Please use communication tools consciously. Use them ONLY to support you to feel how you want to feel. (Use NOTHING in your life to foster feeling how you don’t want to feel!) (Use NOTHING in your life to foster feeling how you don’t want to feel!) (Use NOTHING in your life to foster feeling how you don’t want to feel!)

You do not owe anybody messages. Unless you’ve made some clear, contractual agreement with someone, YOU DO NOT OWE THEM

• reaching out to them for any reason at any time
• getting back to them at certain times
• responding within a certain timing
• messaging at any particular frequency
• sustaining a frequency of messaging from one era or event in the next era or event

(Hey, integrity side note: it really helps NOT to tell people you’ll get back to them at any certain time because then you’ve said that so, sure, you’ll feel guilty & bad if you don’t do what you said you’d do. Just DO get back to them when it’s right, and leave out the promises. Or keep track of and follow through with what you say you’ll do.)

You are not a bad person if you have unanswered messages from others sitting anywhere in your world. These others wrote you because they wanted to, when they wanted to. They were following their timing, not yours. You do not owe them lining up with that.

They wrote you when they felt like it for their reasons and with their thoughts & feelings going. Some of those thoughts & feelings are ego-based—that is, related to their personality structure and what they have & haven’t worked out yet, and what they want from you, and what their beliefs are about what’s what and what they owe others and what others owe them.

Please know (um, KNOW that you know) that all of the above varies tremendously from one person to the next. There’s no standard, no one-size-fits-all.

It is not your job to track all of those things for others.

It is not your job to work yourself around other people’s stuff.

In fact, if you make it your job, you will fail. You will also feel all manner of BAD: obligation & guilt & sadness for disappointing them [and whatever else or other you go to]. And if you don’t get right back to them, you will feel things like this:

• pressure
• frustration
• not-good-enough-ness
• guilt & obligation
• annoyance that people are writing you
• defensiveness
• resentment
• a desire to push others away
• a desire to make contact (when you do) with all kinds of apologies

(I recently wrote about how resentment can be a very useful messenger. Check that out if and only if you feel drawn to do so. You also don’t owe anyone clicking on the links they send you.)

You might consider disconnecting any false equal sign you’ve got going between someone messaging you and you owing them anything.

They messaged me = I owe them a certain response in a certain timing

Set yourself free. Then you can just give everyone on the planet permission to reach out to you when it’s right for them, for their reasons, and you can give yourself permission to reach out to them when it’s right for you, for your reasons.

Let’s talk about leading with apologies when you get around to reaching out to someone.

Don’t.

Seriously, stop it.

No love agenda is served by beginning a communication with how sorry you are that you haven’t been in touch or you didn’t respond sooner. You have & had reasons for your timing. (You’ll have fewer & simpler reasons when you don’t carry around a bunch of baggage related to messaging.)
​

Photo of a message in a dirty clear bottle, washed up on a beach, from Scott Van Hoy on Unsplash

​It actually gets worse if you’re telling all your reasons for why you are & aren’t communicating at what frequency or in what timing. (When you relax around this whole topic you won’t feel the need, or you’ll simply see a reason to tell if that’s kind & appropriate—and it likely won’t be apologetic.)

If someone has a problem with how you’re communicating, it’s their problem. Let them bring it up with you if they want to, then you can listen to them lovingly (or however you want to) and just tell them the truth about how you prefer to manage communication, which may not coincide with how they manage it.

If someone wants to make you wrong for how, when, and how often you communicate, let them. Leave them to it. But don’t join them in making yourself wrong. Don’t give a false apology.

In other words: do not join someone in agreeing that you’re wrong or bad because of how you communicate following your actual life, timing, work load, emotional reality, chosen focus, preferences, and so on.

If someone lets you know that you’re bothering them by the way you communicate and their feelings are hurt and it means this or that to them and they want X or Y from you—you can take that in kindly. But that doesn’t then mean you owe them any of it, or that it would serve either of you for you to deliver that.

(If you’re someone who needs the reminder to check in with yourself about your own actual current capacity: please check in with yourself OFTEN about your own actual current capacity.)

CRAY-CRAY ALERT: It serves nothing and no one for you to keep communicating at your pace & frequency while simultaneously continuing to feel bad & guilty & wrong because of what that means to someone else. How about making a clear change instead?

Um, this means that if you just keep feeling all manner of BAD about messaging, and aren’t changing anything (perhaps because you don’t really want to or at capacity or aren’t wired that way or …), you will be stuck feeling bad. You’re doing that to yourself. It’s not someone else or their expectations or desires doing that to you. DO NOT DO THAT TO YOURSELF.

Set yourself free of what it means to them, and just communicate how you want to. And, META-BONUS: communicate clearly, when it comes up, about your communication.

If you find you have reasons or feel guided to communicate differently with someone in a way that would feel better for all concerned, by all means, do that. (Or experiment with it for a bit and course-correct as you get new data.)

Changing how you communicate with someone would ideally be based on your intentions for the relationship and your sense of what would feel better TO YOU. (If you’re basing it on guilt & obligation, or placating & people-pleasing, it won’t feel any better.)

I wish you freedom to be your most authentic self, unburdened by what others are up to. You get to be you. The more self-permission you have to live (and communicate) authentically, the more you’ll just follow your beautiful guidance system to be in touch with others in right timing. It can be simple & easeful. It can feel good. It can be a simple matter of following the impulses as they arise.

Love & blessings, Jaya