Lists and Voicemails and Emails, OH MY!
This picture isn’t me. I take cream in my coffee and I have yet to attempt making croissants. I’ll have to add that to my baking list. ;)
I once commented on a friend’s Facebook post about how much I dislike lists. She asked why I don’t like them and how I make my life work without them. My displeasure doesn’t stop at lists though. I also dislike voicemails and emails for mostly of the same reason: OCD makes me feel anxious about expectations.
It may seem irrational, but lists are a reminder of all the ways I could fail throughout the day. I do not get a sense of satisfaction from crossing off the tasks I’ve completed but instead specific to-do lists in all areas of life feel daunting and overwhelming to me because they remind me of all the jobs that lie ahead for the day, jobs that I could do poorly and thus disappoint or hurt people. I don’t like disappointing people and I will obsess over the ways I’ve upset people by not doing what’s expected of me, (though I’m much improved now).
Voicemails, are particularly hard for me to push through. (Face it: voicemails are nothing more than to do lists of phone calls.) The dread I feel has little to do with who the message is from, but more of what is expected of me after I’ve finished listening. Usually a call back or some other task is requested, which adds to the list of expectations to my day, and expectations are opportunities for disappointment.
In college, before the magical invention of text messaging, calls from friends would cause me to panic. They’d call to ask me to go do something and even if it was a fun social event, I still felt heaviness in my chest at the thought of following through on whatever they were asking.
Email also used to be anxiety-inducing, but that has become less severe as the years go by. Yet, I still find it frustrating. I currently have thousands of unopened emails because deleting and reading all of them is a mountain I don’t want to climb. Since I don’t need to read every single email I receive, I often will delete my unread messages all at once and start from scratch.
Counseling has been instrumental in helping me overcome my anxiety about lists, emails, voicemails, and expectations. I’ve learned to modify how I use those tools so I feel less anxiety. For example, instead of making no lists at all, I save using lists for when I absolutely need them and for things I most enjoy, like my Christmas lists or a book list. The lists I make now are short and specific. When it comes to grocery lists, I have discovered the wonderful world of online grocery shopping. I can create an order in advance and work on it for a multitude of days before submitting it. I don’t feel locked in or afraid that I’ll forget things, so the anxiety stays away. I now manage voicemails by reading the transcription of the message instead of listening to the actual message. Somehow reading what the person expects of me is easier than listening to it.
For me, OCD makes it harder for me to let anxieties go and causes me irrational obsessions about some aspects of life, in this case lists and voicemails. Everyone has unique and special wiring that causes anxiety to occur for a multitude of reasons. The truth is that we all have quirks and habits that help tame our anxieties, but counseling can help rewire and rework those kinks so anxiety can find its way out the door. Counseling also helped me with letting go the obsessive thoughts that can linger when I feel overwhelmed by lists, emails, and voicemails. Without it, I would still be struggling to fit uncomfortably in a list making world without any real understanding for why they make me anxious in the first place. Figuring out which strategies work and which don’t can be the key to living a life with less anxiety with or without a mental health diagnosis.
This is my Thanksgiving Day baking list telling me what I need to bake when. It’s a mess. It’s not organized, but it worked!
