Overcoming email anxiety: An incredibly comprehensive guide for neurodivergent folks
Email anxiety is a challenge that many people face, especially those who are neurodivergent. Based on what I've observed in my business and while working in a corporate setting, all types of people tend to struggle with this, both neurotypical and neurodivergent.
So, if you've ever opened your email to be greeted by a mountain of unread messages or had an email you’ve been putting off responding to for months, you know the dread that can come with it. But here’s the good news: you can conquer this anxiety. How do I know this? I am an AuDHD-er who conquered my own debilitating email anxiety.
With guidance and some practical strategies, you can feel less stress about answering emails, even the difficult ones. Keep reading to learn about why you’re feeling the way you feel about email and how you can address that to kick email’s ass.
My Journey with Email Anxiety
Emails never used to make me nervous at all. That was until I started a full-time job.
In that job, I had to answer lots of emails. It was part of the daily duties. Slowly, I became anxious about answering them. Opening them? Didn't want to do it. Responding to them? Terrified. Sending them? The hardest part.
There were a lot of times when I would spend way too long crafting an email. Writing it, editing it over and over, reading it like five times before sending it. And all of these actions were done to help me feel comfortable with what I was sending. Ultimately, it didn't help me in the long term. It was just an in-the-moment coping method. And that carried on to the entire two and a half years I had a full-time job.
But, when I quit that job and I transitioned into working for myself as a virtual assistant for neurodivergent business owners, I knew that I could not keep doing that song-and-dance. Especially, because any extra time that I had spent on those emails was time I could be spending on something different, something more worth my time as a freelancer.
Then, when it came to answering emails on behalf of my clients and answering emails that my clients had sent me, I knew that I couldn't take 45 minutes to write what I truly knew in my heart was a very simple email to respond to.
Now granted, some emails take a while to respond to—something that needs a lot of thought put into it before responding, or when you need to go find the answer to a question. There are times when it can take a while to craft an email. It's a spectrum. But I knew my email anxiety was holding me back versus the content of the email being the reason the process took so long.
Because I needed to charge my clients for that time spent emailing back and forth, and for sending emails on their behalf, I needed to figure out how to deal with this email anxiety, this email phobia. I wanted to do right by myself and for my clients. I thought, "I don’t know how I’m going to deal with this, but I’m going to figure it out."
The article you’re reading details all the things I’ve learned in the process of overcoming my email anxiety. Nowadays, I respond to most of my emails same-day. If you want to overcome your email phobia, just know it’s possible.
Understanding reasons behind email anxiety
This is an integral step to overcoming email anxiety in any capacity. You must figure out what’s lurking beneath the surface.
Perception and emotions
Upon reflection, the first thing I realized was that I was scared of saying the wrong thing. I was worried that if I didn’t word my email correctly, I was going to sound stupid, accidentally offend somebody, or just overall cause someone to have a negative emotion or perception of me that I did not intend with my email.
At its core, this anxiety stems from a fear of being misunderstood and, in turn, judged. Emails, unlike face-to-face communication, lack the tone of voice or body language that helps convey meaning, making it easier to second-guess whether our words are being interpreted the way we want them to be. There is a pressure we unintentionally place on ourselves to not only communicate effectively but also protect our sense of self-worth in the eyes of others.
Fear
Second, I didn’t like opening high-stakes emails. And by high-stakes emails, I mean when I got a new lead, when I was responding to someone about a big important project. With high-stakes emails, I could have all the templates I needed, but they didn’t help me deal with the underlying dread of answering the email.
It’s not just the content of the email that makes it high-stakes, but the weight of the responsibility it carries.
Volume
Now, those previous two reasons were the problems that I had personally. After working with so many neurodivergent people—so many neurodivergent business owners—I’ve noticed that others struggle with email anxiety in another way, too. That comes in the form of large volumes or emails, so large that you become overwhelm and may even give up altogether answering them.
For example, I have a client who receives lots and lots of emails, sometimes up to 50 or more a day. Obviously, that's going to make someone anxious because that’s a lot to respond to.
In these cases, it’s not just the fear of responding incorrectly or the pressure of high-stakes messages; it’s the sense that you’re constantly behind, unable to catch up, and that the task is growing bigger with every new message that lands in your inbox. It creates a cycle of avoidance and anxiety, where even opening the inbox can feel paralyzing because of the backlog and the pressure it brings. And often, the longer you wait, the more the emails pile up, and the more daunting the task becomes.
Uncertainty
On the surface, you don’t know which emails are actually going to need your response and which emails won’t need a response. One of the biggest contributors to this type of email phobia is that you don’t know what that email is going to need from you.
You don’t know what the person who’s sending it is going to need from you. You don’t know how long it’s going to take you to give them what they need, whether it's information or something else. It’s the mental and emotional load that each one carries. Each email represents a decision that needs to be made, a task that needs to be done, or a conversation that needs to be managed.
Having a large amount of emails in your inbox can be very debilitating and the unknown contents of those emails can exacerbate the problem.
What to do about your email anxiety
Now that we’ve identified the sneaky, underlying reasons you’re struggling to handle your emails, I'm going to offer you some strategies for dealing with inbox anxiety.
Start here (especially if you have a large volume of emails)
Now, if you go online, a lot of poorly written articles will probably tell you to unsubscribe from stuff. And yeah, you can do that; that will totally help. Unsubscribing from things you don’t need, like newsletters you’re not really reading, can be useful.
But not everyone is getting a large influx of emails due to things that can be unsubscribed from. A lot of emails are actual people emailing you about possibly important things. Whether it’s clients, team members, or other important emails, you can’t just delete them. So what do you do in that case when you have all these emails?
Step 1: Clear the clutter
The first thing you’re going to do is open them to check the contents and delete things you don’t need. Just open it, make sure there’s nothing important, and delete it. If it’s something you do need to respond to, click the ‘mark as unread’ button and move on to the next one. We aren’t here to answer anything yet; the goal is simply to clear out the clutter and get rid of the noise.
Also, if you have loads of "read" emails in your inbox, archive those. Most email services have an archive feature that won’t delete the messages but will remove them from your inbox view. You can still search for them later if needed, but you won’t have hundreds or thousands of messages staring you down every time you open your inbox. Clearing out the visual clutter can make your inbox feel less intimidating and more manageable.
Step 2: Start a manageable email-answering routine
Now, onto the real work: answering those emails.
You’re going to set aside a specific time in the day dedicated to answering some emails. This step is all about building your email-answering confidence and stamina. I know it sounds like a small thing, but treating it like a workout where you build up strength over time is key.
Start with just 30 minutes—literally, don’t do more than 30 minutes because you may start hating it. Give yourself a small but manageable window of time to answer these emails. Pick which ones you want to answer, or start from the top, or the oldest; it doesn’t matter. The key is to just start somewhere that feels low stakes. Don’t overthink it, don’t spend the entire 30 minutes deciding which email to respond to. Just give it your best shot.
Important note: Don’t worry about that unread email from two months ago that you really need to answer. If starting there makes you anxious, don’t start there—start somewhere else, and that’s fine. The point is to spend 30 minutes answering some emails to the best of your abilities. When the 30 minutes are up, stop and do something else.
At the end of the 30 minutes, stop. Whether you answered five emails or 15, you’ve made progress. Celebrate that. Don’t push yourself to keep going if you’re not up for it. There’s always another day for the emails you didn’t get to.
Step 3: Prioritize and batch your responses
Now that you’ve cleared some clutter and started responding, it’s time to get strategic with how you handle the rest of your inbox. Strategic is an overused word, so, what I mean by this, is we’re going to figure out how to work smarter, no harder.
Not all emails require the same level of urgency or energy. So, prioritize your responses based on deadlines, importance, and the emotional or mental load they carry. You can use simple labels like “urgent,” “important but not urgent,” or “can wait,” depending on what makes sense for you.
Once you’ve prioritized, batch similar types of emails together. For example, group all client-related emails and tackle them in one session. This will help you get into a flow state instead of switching between different contexts, which can be draining and inefficient. Batching emails based on type (e.g., client inquiries, team communication, admin tasks) can make the process feel smoother and reduce decision fatigue.
Pro tip: If you’re someone who dreads high-stakes emails (like we talked about earlier), consider mixing in a few low-stakes emails to keep momentum going and give yourself a mental breather.
Step 4: Automate and delegate
Once you’ve got a handle on the process, it’s time to lighten your load even further by looking for ways to automate or delegate certain tasks. You don’t have to handle every email manually.
Set up filters: Most email services allow you to create filters that automatically sort incoming emails into folders. For example, you could filter all newsletters or automated emails, like subscription renewals and receipts, into a specific folder you check weekly instead of daily.
Use templates: For common responses, create email templates. This will save time and reduce the mental energy needed to compose new messages for repetitive requests. You’ll also feel more confident responding when you have a pre-made framework to start from. I talk about this in more detail later in the article.
Delegate: If email management is becoming a serious time drain, consider hiring a virtual assistant or using inbox management services. Again, I talk more about this later in this article. Delegating has been a game-changer for my clients.
A final note/rant
Just remember, when you open your email, you don’t have to do them all at once. You don’t have to respond to everybody on the same day—it’s okay. Everyone (aside from a few shitty bosses/clients) understand the massive weight that email is, especially if you’ve worked in a job where there is a high volume of emails being sent daily.
Not many people really expect you to answer them the same day, or even the next day. Use your best judgment to figure out when you need to answer them. And when you’re ready to tackle that email you haven’t responded to and it’s been three months, hell yeah—good on you, you can do it. Most people aren’t going to be like, “Fuck you, what took you so long?” Shit happens. We have life to do. There are things to do other than just be at the beck and call of our computers and responding to other people’s questions and requests.
Allow yourself some grace. Don’t let negativity bias convince you something bad will happen. Also,most people are not going to be upset with you for taking a very long time to respond to an email, okay? And if they are, they'll get over it. Okay? They will get over it. That is something that they have to do and learn to do as being a human is get the fuck over it. Especially something that is so non-consequential.
You don’t need to be embarrassed about your response times
Those who struggle with answering emails may feel embarrassed that they haven’t replied to something yet, and it keeps them from answering that email or any email, pushing the response time out even further.
If an email is already late, a few more days won’t hurt. And let me tell you something—it feels like the person you haven’t responded to is going to be really upset. It feels embarrassing that you haven’t responded, but honestly, that person probably isn’t thinking about it. I don’t say this to be mean; I say it to release some of the anxiety you’re feeling.
Think about your day-to-day life—how often do you dwell on an email you sent, waiting for a response? Maybe for a few minutes if it’s something important, but then you move on. Most other people operate like that too. The world doesn’t revolve around you in that sense. That’s not to say you think the world revolves around you, but it sometimes feels like others are waiting on us 24/7. It only feels that way because we’re thinking about it and because we’re worried about it.
So, try not to mull over all the old emails that need responses. Start with 30 minutes a day and respond to what you can in that time. If it takes a while and you only get one email done, that’s okay—just start somewhere. Starting and trying is the first step to succeeding.
You can handle high-stakes emails by confronting the fear caused by them
Now, moving on to the problem I personally struggled with regarding email anxiety: high-stakes emails. These are the emails that carry significant weight—things like onboarding new clients, job-related updates, health-related matters, or anything that feels important and difficult to face. They’re the emails that sit unopened because just thinking about the content triggers anxiety, dread, or avoidance.
But here’s the truth: avoiding these emails doesn’t make the issue go away—it only makes it worse. The longer you avoid them, the more anxiety builds up around them. So, what do you do? You confront it. Easier said than done, I know, but breaking it down can help.
Step 1: Identify what’s holding you back
The first thing you need to do is identify the specific emotions that are tied to that email. Ask yourself, “What is it about this email that I’m afraid of?” Are you afraid of bad news? Of making a mistake? Of not knowing how to respond? Or maybe it’s the pressure of high expectations, like closing a deal or managing a sensitive situation. Take a moment to name the fear. Naming the fear and emotion attached to it gives you power over it because now you’re not just feeling overwhelmed by a vague sense of dread—you know exactly what’s causing it.
Once you identify the fear, ask yourself if it's based on fact or assumption. For instance, are you assuming that a client might be unhappy with your work, or is there evidence of that? Sometimes the fear is more about the unknown than the actual content of the email itself.
Step 2: Break down the email into manageable steps
Once you’ve identified what’s causing the fear, it’s time to make the email feel less overwhelming. Instead of viewing it as one big, scary thing, break it down into smaller tasks. For example:
Open the email and scan it to get a general sense of what it’s about. You don’t have to respond right away—just familiarize yourself with the content.
Identify what kind of response is needed: Is it a quick acknowledgment, or does it require a detailed reply? Will you need to gather additional information to respond?
If the response is complex, break it into steps: gather information, draft a very “draft-like”reply, polish it up, review it one more time, and send.
By breaking the process into smaller steps, you’re reducing the emotional weight tied to the task. You’re not responding to the email all at once—you’re simply taking the first step. Remember, you don’t have to do all these steps in one sitting. You can work on a response to high-stakes emails over the course of multiple days if that’s what you need.
Step 3: Center yourself before responding
Before you sit down to respond, take a moment to ground yourself, basically find a way to keep your nervous system from going haywire. This can be as simple as taking a few deep breaths, groaning with anger into the void, stepping away from your desk to pet your cat, or listening to a song you like. The goal is to calm your nervous system so you can approach the email with a clearer, less reactive mind.
If you're feeling stuck, give yourself permission to draft a reply that you don’t intend to send yet. A very informal, “caveman-style” response. This allows you to express your thoughts without the pressure of hitting "send" immediately. You can review it later with fresh eyes and make adjustments before finalizing it.
Step 4: Reframe the stakes
Part of what makes high-stakes emails so anxiety-inducing is the way we frame them in our minds. Try to reframe the situation. Ask yourself:
What’s the worst thing that could realistically happen if I don’t get this email perfect?
What’s the most likely outcome of this email interaction?
Am I putting unnecessary pressure on myself to respond perfectly?
Is this email too hard to respond to, or does it just feel that way because I haven’t started it yet?
What are the benefits of responding to this email, for myself?
By putting things into perspective, you can reduce some of the emotional intensity.
Step 5: Celebrate the win, no matter how small
Even opening a high-stakes email is a step forward, so celebrate each step you take. Whether you’ve just opened it, drafted a response, or hit send, give yourself credit for confronting the fear head-on. It’s easy to get caught up in perfectionism or an “I should” feeling, but please remember that progress—no matter how small—is still progress.
Deal with difficult emotions by talking yourself through the situation
Many people experience email anxiety because of the emotions surrounding the content of the email or the act of sending it itself.
Here’s my experience with this: Whenever I quit my full-time job, I cried because I didn’t want people to be disappointed in me, namely the people that I worked with. The ‘I am quitting’ email was a very hard email for me to send. I had to talk myself through it because I knew, in the end, it was going to be what was best for me. No one else could make me send that email, only I could.
Now, when you’re in that kind of situation, here’s how you can handle emotionally difficult emails, step by step:
Step 1: Acknowledge your emotions
The first step is to acknowledge the emotions you're feeling. These emotions are messengers, trying to inform you about what's happening in your life and in your body. Whether you're feeling fear, embarrassment, guilt, or frustration, recognize that it’s natural to feel this way. For me, I had to admit that I was scared of letting people down and feeling like a failure. It’s crucial to name the emotion so you know what you’re working with.
Step 2: Talk yourself through it
Just like you would with a close friend, talk yourself through the process with kindness and perspective. Remind yourself that while it may feel terrible right now, these emotions won’t last forever. When I sent that resignation email, I told myself, "Right now, this sucks. In a few days, you might feel embarrassed, but in a month, this feeling will fade. You won’t always feel this way."
Put the situation into perspective. Remind yourself of the bigger picture—why this email is important and how your life will be better for having sent it. That reassurance helps ground you, even when emotions are running high.
Step 3: Trust yourself and your judgment
One of the most valuable things you learn from handling difficult emails is that you are capable of making the best decisions for yourself. You don't need outside validation to make the right move or say the right thing. When you walk yourself through these hard moments, you start building trust in your own judgment and abilities.
For example, sending that "I am quitting" email helped me realize that I didn’t need anyone else’s approval. I was making a decision that was right for me, and I was enough to make that call. This self-reliance builds resilience for future challenges. When you have more resilience, small setbacks don’t hit nearly as hard.
Step 4: Remember that emotions are temporary
When it comes to tough emails, it’s important to remind yourself that emotions are temporary. No matter how intense the feelings may be right now, they will pass. In a few minutes, days, or weeks, the discomfort you feel around that email will eventually fade. You won’t always be haunted by this one moment.
When I was afraid of sending that resignation email, I kept reminding myself that the emotions I felt—fear of disappointment, anxiety—wouldn’t last forever. And they didn’t. Time moved on, and so did I. This too shall pass.
Step 5: Let go of fear (or curb-stomp it, if that’s more your style)
Many people, myself included, struggle with the fear of sounding stupid or making a mistake in emails. This fear often stems from past experiences where someone made you feel inadequate. Maybe you were criticized for the way you said something, or maybe you were made to feel small for asking a question. That past hurt now shows up when you need to respond to emails.
But here's the thing: communication is nuanced, and no one gets it 100% right all the time. There’s already a good chance that you’re capable of conveying your message competently. You’ve done it before, and you can continue to do it. If you make a mistake, the worst thing that can happen is someone will ask for clarification, and that’s not the end of the world. You just explain what you meant, correct yourself if needed, and move on.
If someone misinterprets your message and doesn’t communicate that back to you? That’s not on you. It’s part of having an open dialogue. You can only do your best to communicate clearly, but the rest is out of your hands.
Just remember, you can work through these hard emotions that arise with difficult emails and learn to trust your ability to handle them. The heavy, intense emotions won’t last forever, and each experience builds your resilience for the next, making subsequent emails easier to handle.
Draft your emails like actual drafts! No more of this “first draft is the final draft” stuff!
You don’t have to write the final version of the email right away.
It helps the writing process if you start with something informal, even if it feels unprofessional like you just rolled out of bed and haven’t had coffee. It’s a place to start. Your brain might not be ready to give you the polished version, but it can get the message out in whatever form it’s able to at the time.
For instance, if a new client reaches out, and you need to ask for more information or you need to offer to book a call, you can start with something simple like, "Hey, thanks for responding. I need XYZ from you. I think we could be a good match to work together. Let’s schedule a call to talk about it."
Then, later, you can go back and refine it to sound more polished. You don’t need the final version to also be the first draft.
I worked with a client who spent a lot of time perfecting emails, especially high-stakes ones. They were doing the final draft first, without allowing room for rough drafts. This is something many neurodivergent people tend to do—write the final version first without outlining or drafting.
Bonus fun observation: If, in school, you were the type of person to write your essays by skipping the outline and draft stages, and going straight to writing the final essay, this is where that tactic is coming back to haunt you.
But this “final draft first” approach can backfire. Writing drafts allows your brain to relax and produce better results. Try this:
Start with a caveman-style draft.
Edit that draft into something a human can read and understand.
If you don’t have the energy to edit it yourself, throw it into Goblin Tools or ChatGPT to help clean it up. That’s your second draft now.
Then, review it again. Tweak it to ensure it sounds like you and has all the necessary links and attachments.
Now your final draft is done and you can send the email.
TL;DR - Breaking up the writing process will help you answer emails, especially the tough ones. No more “first draft is the final draft”.
Schedule your emails! All of them!
Scheduling emails has also helped me manage anxiety immensely. It may help you too.
I schedule most of my emails now, especially high-stakes ones because hitting "send" and not being able to take it back freaks me out. Scheduling emails to send 15 or 30 minutes later gives me a buffer to review or change them if necessary. That buffer gives me the confidence to send emails without panicking.
Now, for most of the emails I schedule, I don’t even look at them after scheduling them anymore. The option to revisit them if needed makes a difference in actually being able to send them confidently, though.
Saying no is an important skill (and I will teach you how to feel okay doing it)
One thing I also see people struggle with is saying no.
Sometimes, I’ve had people reach out to inquire about working together, and when I respond to them, I never hear back from them. I’m not offended by that. What I know is happening is the other person is saying no, but because saying no is hard, they’re just going ghost me instead. But we want to be kind to people, and we want to tell them no so they’re not waiting around, and so we can keep a good relationship with them in case that relationship may be helpful in the future.
Something important to remember is that even if you say no to somebody, you can keep a good relationship with them. You’ll keep a much better relationship by telling them no upfront than by just not saying anything.
Also, you’ll keep a keep relationship with yourself by saying no when you want to say no. Saying yes when you don’t want to do something is going to make you really not enjoy life and also hate doing the thing you said yes to.
Don’t be afraid to tell people no. If you’ve received an inquiry of some kind and it’s not right, you can say no politely, kindly—it’s okay. Sometimes people may be disappointed, but they will move through that disappointment, life goes on. It’s not your job to keep everyone else from being disappointed, especially at your own expense.
Here are a few ways you can say no, depending on the context obviously:
“I don’t have the capacity to take this on right now. I appreciate you thinking of me, though, and we should definitely keep in touch for when I have more energy/time/capacity in the future.”
“I don’t feel comfortable doing that. We could do it XYZ way, otherwise I’m sure there is someone else who can do that for you in the way you’ve requested.”
“That’s out of my area of expertise. I want to make sure you get the best possible outcome, so you should check in with others who are experts in that area.”
“I know I agreed to help you with XYZ, but I’ve realized that I won’t be able to fulfill that request because XYZ.. I’m very sorry for not being able to help as agreed, however, here’s how we can move forward from here…”
“I have another obligation that day and can’t do the thing you’ve asked me to do. Let’s plan for a different day. Thank you for understanding.”
Or a simple, “No thank you, but I appreciate you asking me!”
Again, you can always ask ole ChatGPT to help you find a way to say no that feels comfortable for you.
Utilize email templates to save time and brain power
By the way, if you’re not using email templates, you’re missing out on some serious time-saving stuff. And I’m not just talking about templates for onboarding clients or answering inquiries. I mean any language you find yourself saying often. You really just need some simple verbiage or templates to get you started.
Even if it’s just something like, "Hey, I’ve seen your email, and I’ll get back to you when I can." Having a template, something to copy and paste, on hand keeps you from needing to think of a response from scratch every time you need to respond to that kind of email.
Some practical tips:
You can start a draft email to house your templates in, so they’re right there in your email.
Anytime you write something, consider whether it would be worth saving what you’ve said for a future message.
You can also use any of the various AI apps to help you create templates. Just submit your “caveman” style draft and have the app polish it up for you.
You can also find templates online that others have written and use those as a starting point.
Ask for help from others
When it comes to answering emails and cleaning up your inbox, you can have somebody else do it, if it feels like too much to do, if it feels too heavy to do it yourself.
There are a shit ton of virtual assistants out there. Pick one who has experience, someone who’s not new to the role so that you get a quality outcome. Pick someone who is neurodivergent, if you are neurodivergent, that will really help. You’ll know that they understand your brain. You won’t feel so much shame around your inbox (because we’ve been there already, we understand how it goes).
A general inbox cleaning
It won’t take more than a couple of days for someone else to go through those things and figure out what needs to be archived, what can be deleted, and what needs to be filed away for later use.
You can hire somebody to clean up your inbox? It’s true! One of my clients had thousands of emails in their inbox, and I went through and archived most of them. I didn't delete them — just archived them so they weren't sitting in the inbox, but they were still in their mail system, so they could search for them if they needed them. And now, with less emails in the inbo, the mere presence of new emails made the inbox feel less daunting.
Ongoing help with email replies
If you’re someone who gets lots and lots of emails daily, maybe you’re just a really popular person, you’ve got a lot of work going on, see if you can hire someone to help you with that. Seriously.
One of my clients hired me specifically for that. They receive lots of emails. They don’t like responding to all these emails. They don’t have time to respond to all these emails. Seriously, that’s the point where you’re like, "I really probably should hire somebody to answer these because I’m going to make more money by spending my time on things that are higher level, like spending time with my clients or doing XYZ service."
Sometimes you’ll get emails from clients with questions that only you can answer, but at least 50% of the time, the emails that you’re going to get can be answered by somebody else. Rescheduling things and responding to new inquiries, you can have templates for those things that someone else can send on your behalf.
Collaborating on email replies
Sometimes, with emails that I can’t respond to based on my knowledge, I’ll bring them to a meeting with my client, and say, "Listen, we need to respond to these emails. Can you tell me what you want me to say? And I’ll respond to these for you.” And that’s a really great way to take care of an influx of emails. For us to just collaborate on the response over a meeting, not write them in the moment, but for them to verbally tell me, "This is what I want to say.” Then I’ll take that and run with it.
Basically, like what I said earlier about doing the three different email drafts: that’s your first one, just getting all of the base information out in whatever form it comes out in. Then I go in and finish it out.
So, if you have the ability to do so, consider hiring someone to answer your emails for you, to keep tabs on your inbox and keep the clutter down. That way, you’re not having to open your inbox to 200 unread messages every day. It will help you along this journey of email anxiety if you have a companion to help you through it.
Be kind to yourself, damn it!
During this process, be kind to yourself. And I'm serious about this. So serious.
If you are putting yourself down and shaming yourself about not being able to answer these emails, you need to stop. You're telling yourself, "I should be able to answer this." Please stop doing that, okay? You're doing the best you can. Be kind to yourself. When you're kind to yourself, it will make it a lot easier to get stuff done.
It works. I’ll prove it to you!
I want you to think about this scenario: Imagine you're at the grocery store and a little old lady came up to you and she was like, "Hey, get that thing up on the top shelf for me!"
And you're like, "What?”
And she angrily points at you, narrows her eyebrows and says, “You should get that down. You're way taller than me! You have to do it."
Basically, this old lady is having an attitude about it or being sassy or shaming you for it. Would you want to help them? Of course not! You'd just walk away (or give them some sass back and then walk away).
Whether you realize it or not, your unconscious self does not cooperate if your conscious thoughts are being mean, like the fictional old lady in this scenario.
So, treat yourself kindly. If someone comes to you and asks you for something kindly, you're more apt to do it, right? And that works the same way with your own brain.
Be kind to yourself when you're dealing with these email-related challenges, and you will find that things go more smoothly. Talk to yourself like a loving parent or best friend. If you’ve never experienced that and have nothing to base it on, imagine how kindly you speak to your pet cat or whatever loving creature you care for. Use that as a basis for the empathy and love you will have for yourself during this process.
Overcoming email anxiety will propel your growth further than you imagined
You'll find that when you start digging into this problem of email anxiety, you uncover the source of the problem and that source contributes to other aspects of your life—much bigger than email.
A great benefit to tackling your email anxiety is that you're tackling those inner, deeper problems, too. It's going to make other parts of your life improve. You will feel more comfortable talking to people in other capacities as well, like asking for help, saying no, standing up for yourself, holding your boundaries—all those wonderful, beautiful things that we may not learn how to do early on in our lives, but we're having to teach ourselves now. You can learn how to improve these skills while overcoming your email anxiety, or at least confronting it, and it can literally change your life.
A related personal anecdote
I'll leave you with one more personal anecdote. When I started working my full-time job, I was very quiet, shy, and timid, and had a lot of trouble asking for things. I made some strides when I was in my full-time job, but things didn't really start getting better for me in that capacity until I started my own business and had to confront this email anxiety head-on so that I could succeed in my business in the way that I felt I wanted to succeed.
I never would have thought I would be able to write articles and put them up on the internet, offering people advice on challenges we face as humans. I didn't think I had good advice to offer. But confronting that email anxiety has opened up so many doors for me and helped me learn to communicate confidently.
Talking to other people, asking to collaborate with them, asking them for something—oh, who am I to ask someone for something, I used to think. But now I don't have a problem with that! You’ll find some of your deeper issues start to fizzle away as you face your email anxiety.
In conclusion…
You can do this, I promise you.
You are more capable than you think you are.
Again, the first step is going to be sitting down for 30 minutes a day. You can do more than that if you feel up to it. But don't force yourself to do it. 30 minutes. See what you can answer, just put some time in that way you're taking a step towards getting some stuff answered. That will help you feel confident in the fact that you can do this. If you're answering some emails, it will make you feel confident that you can answer other ones.
I dare you to do this (bet you won’t!)
Now, I want you to save this article in some capacity, bookmark it, text it to yourself, or whatever, so you can come back to it later. When you go and answer an email that feels tough or that you've been putting off, I want you to come back here and tell me. Send me a message and tell me what you did. So that way, I can tell you good job because sometimes it's really hard to tell yourself that you're doing a good job and you need someone else to tell you. And I will do that for you. I will tell you you’re doing a good job because you deserve it.
Email phobia is hard; it is hard to deal with, but it is not impossible to deal with. So save this article, come back to it later after you've answered something that's hard that you've been putting off, and let's celebrate it together. Let's talk about it. So that way, you can take your first step to confronting this and truly feel like you’ve made progress.
Well, that's all I've got for today. My name is Sly. I'm just a human being like you. I've been through things, I've learned things, and I hope to use those experiences to help you grow and have a human experience you’re excited about.
My offer to you
If you need more hands-on help with your email, reach out to me.
(I'm not gonna do it for free because, frankly, I want to pet my cats and I want to read books way more than I want to answer emails.) But we can work together in a professional capacity, and I can help you with your email anxiety and managing your inbox.
That could come in the form of answering emails for you on a regular basis, a general inbox cleanup, answering an email for you because it's really big email and you just need help getting through that specific one.
Or if you need someone to guide you through this process of retraining, repatterning, reparenting your brain to feel more comfortable communicating with people. I would be honored to help you through this journey in whatever way you need help. Helping others is rad and feels good and I’m a sucker for feeling good. Just shoot me a message when you’re ready.
