On a recent Wednesday night, I sent a last-minute text to three close friends who I knew were meeting for dinner in my neighborhood. I’d initially declined the invite, citing work. But after a long day, my brain felt broken, and the thought of them clinking wine glasses in my vicinity had triggered FOMO. “Where are you guys?” I wrote. “Maybe I can meet for a drink after all!” No one replied.
Ten minutes turned to 30, then 40, and no one—not one of these usually swift responders—texted back. There could be only one logical conclusion: They were all—every last one of them—mad at me. My imagination launched into overdrive: They were at dinner, splitting a bottle of rosé, definitely seeing my text, probably reading it aloud over the bread basket, and intentionally ignoring it. Clearly, I deduced, they were conspiring to conceal their location.
I breathed a sigh of sweet relief. No one was mad at me! Not this time, anyway. But the plague had struck again: the pesky, perpetual, often irrational worry that friends, family members, and colleagues are seething with resentment about something I said or didn’t say—an RSVP I declined, a plan I rescheduled. “I think I started worrying about this in middle school and haven’t stopped since,” Justine Harman, the special projects director atpodcast, told me.
At the risk of making a sweeping generalization based on gender, cowering in fear that the world is pissed at you seems to be more common among women, who are raised to be “good girls” and can grow up to be people-pleasers. “We are socialized to spend more time thinking about what other people are thinking about us,” says Joy Harden Bradford, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in Atlanta and creator ofLina Perl, Psy.D.
nothing, nothing...nothinggg
Ring my bell, ring my bells
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: Reuters - 🏆 2. / 97 Read more »
Source: ELLE Magazine (US) - 🏆 472. / 51 Read more »
Source: Forbes - 🏆 394. / 53 Read more »
Source: YahooNews - 🏆 380. / 59 Read more »
Source: Cosmopolitan - 🏆 725. / 51 Read more »
Source: Yahoo Lifestyle - 🏆 365. / 59 Read more »