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174

Does anyone else feel worried when you see a big number in the Lemmy notification inbox? (futurology.today)

submitted 4 days ago by chaosCruiser@futurology.today to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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Every time I see that little red number in my inbox, my first thought is: Did I mess up? My brain jumps to the worst-case scenario—maybe I said something controversial, and now everyone’s correcting me and downvoting my stupid comments. Even though, most of the time, the messages are actually helpful and fun, that number still triggers some sort of insecurity and anxiety. The bigger it gets, the louder my worries grow.

Logically, I know I don’t screw up that often, and most feedback is neutral or even positive. But deep down, my insecure monkey brain panics at the thought of being wrong—or worse, publicly called out. Even when I’m right, the number still makes my stress levels spike up. What if people disagree with me? What if they don’t like what I wrote?

And yes, I see the irony in posting this. Writing about it is basically asking for it and feeding the very anxiety I’m trying to ignore. Maybe it’s my version of exposure therapy.

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[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago

This is a good point, there are definitely plenty of times I've gotten a response and ended up embarrassed and rethinking a bit how I approach things, and I'm certainly not advocating to avoid that. And maybe "disable inbox replies" is more something with niche uses and not a general solution here. I guess the main reason I mention it is, most of the time I have felt a similar kind of anxiety about responses has been over some specific comment I believed really should be said but knew was likely to get a hostile reaction, and being able to rule out worries over those specific comments helped a lot on Reddit.

The larger point I want to make though is that the anxiety you are describing in the OP post should be overcome, and shouldn't be a struggle people face alone without help. I want to hear from more perspectives, and it's not great to think it's likely many are deterred entirely by this sort of fear of social disapproval. IMO learning from mistakes is harder if it's considered as and feels like a punishment or enforcement of some external will.