Group Chat Anxiety (Part 2): What To Actually Do About It

This is the second installment in a two-part series about group chat anxiety.

If having a massive group chat text chain stresses you out, then I’m going to let you in on a secret: it’s because you CARE about your friendships. But with these chains, we’re also sometimes pouring this caring into the wrong place.

In this episode, I talk about auditing these group chats and determining what’s working and what’s draining. How can we use them, not as a primary source of connection, but as a tool to move toward connection that feels fulfilling?

With a little effort, hopefully this extra thought will mean we’re texting a little less with the intention of connecting a little more.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

• Looking at how your group chats are functioning: is it to update a large group of friends? Is it a smaller group? What’s the purpose of the group chat?
• Having conversations with your friends about what the group chats are for; for example, are side conversations okay? Is it okay to add new people to the chat? Etc.
• Giving yourself permission to set boundaries: you don’t have to be in every chat, you can mute or leave, and you can set response windows
• In my opinion, the wrong kind of group chat work (constantly checking, crafting perfect replies) vs. the right work (auditing chats, investing energy where it matters)

Resources & Links

Listen to Episode 161 about managing friendship overload and relationship burnout.

Like what you hear? Visit my website, leave me a voicemail, and follow me on Instagram and TikTok!

Want to take this conversation a step further? Send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting and use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out!

This episode is sponsored by Slowly, a digital pen pal app used by over 10 million people worldwide. If you’ve been looking for a low-pressure way to connect with someone completely outside your normal friendship circle, this is it. Exchange letters at your own pace, no small talk panic required.

Download Slowly free and get 30% off Slowly Plus using my link: https://open.slowly.app/miXL/l8ei5iw6

WANT MORE?

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Transcript

Podcast Intro/Outro: 1:28

All right, gang. Here's to nights that turn into mornings and friends that turn into family. Cheers. Hello, hello, and welcome to the Friendship IRL podcast. I'm your host, Alex Alexander. Each week we talk about what is working(and what is not) in our friendships, community and connections. Have you ever wished you could sit down and have a conversation about what is really going on in your friendships? Well, you found your people. Join us as we dive into real life stories and explore new ways to approach these connections. Together, we're reimagining the rules of friendship

Alex Alexander: 2:24

If you currently have, I don't know, 20, 3050, 100 unread text messages, and the thought of going in there and responding to them makes your stomach feel like it's on the floor, because you feel behind and now maybe some of them, it feels like weird to respond. This episode is for you. If you've been added to a group chat before, and you never asked to be in there and you feel like it would be weird to leave, this episode is for you. If you have ever been part of a group chat for a while, whatever a while is to you, you know, couple months, couple years, I don't know, and you're kind of over it. You want to mute that group chat, but you feel guilty about muting it. This episode is for you. And if you are any of those people, or any other situation where a group chat gives you anxiety, then I want to tell you a little secret. The reason that you have all that anxiety is probably because you care about your friendships. You care that's why this is hard. And today's episode, we're going to talk about how to take this caring feeling, analyze it, and redirect our energy. To be quite honest, I often think that maybe we are pouring all of this caring into the wrong place, and that's why it feels like we are just spinning our wheels over and over and over and over again when it comes to group text message chats. Now today's episode is a part two, if you didn't notice, in the episode right before this, I talked about group chat anxiety, and I really dove into what actually is it right? What are the fears we have? Where is the overwhelm? Why do notifications feel like emotional homework that no one is grading us on, and therefore we just keep pushing off? And if you listen to episode one, then the core idea here is that you're not broken. There's nothing wrong with you, that you are really maxed out on group chats, but you care about your relationships, your friendship, your community, being an active and engaged member, and that's why you keep showing up. But group chats in and of themselves, if you think about it, it's kind of like we're operating with one arm tied behind our back, like we don't have the full picture. When you're in a group chat with a bunch of people, you are missing so many non verbal cues that if you were in a room, if you were in a party, would make connection feel like connection. But we're in this like flat 2d surface. We're stuck in the text message chain where the most reaction we're getting is, you know, the exclamation mark, or maybe that one where they make the text bounce around the screen to really show their excitement. I don't know that is not the same as the non verbal cues you would be getting if you were in person. So if I had a thesis for today's episode, it's that group chats aren't inherently bad, it's just that they're a tool, and the problem is that we are using them as a primary source of connection, instead of a tool to get to the connection I want. You to think about your group chat kind of like a highway. Maybe that's a good analogy for you. Your group chat is like a highway, and the idea was at some point you would exit, maybe you get back on the highway, but you would exit every once in a while, and if the group chat just feels like you have been driving on the highway forever and ever and ever, and you are exhausted and you really want to pull off and take a nap, that's probably why. So in today's episode, we're going to walk through four things. We're going to talk about a reframe on the work and what it actually is. Second, we're going to talk about how to look at your own group chats with a new set of eyes and analyze what's there. Third, we're going to talk about specific patterns that you might recognize in yourself. And finally, how to talk to your people about it, how to actually have a conversation about the conversations that are happening so that they don't feel so overwhelming. So with that, let's dive into our first topic today, which is this reframe idea, what is the wrong work versus the right work? Now the wrong work, in my opinion, is what a lot of us are currently doing, myself sometimes included, it is that we are constantly checking the group message. We're wondering if anything's new, or wondering if anybody responded the last thing that we sent. We're wondering if we're behind. We are spending a lot of time crafting perfect responses, because not only is one person seeing this, but you could be posting this message to 510, 20, 3040, people. You want to make sure you get it right. And maybe there's some panic there. The other wrong work is managing FOMO. Maybe it is lurking, and lurking is not necessarily bad, but it's feeling guilty about your lurking. That's what we don't want. Here is the extra emotional labor of feeling guilty about how you've chosen to show up. Maybe the wrong work is pretending to deeply care about 100 messages of trivial information, when in fact, you feel like your life is just honestly a little bit too much to handle right now, and yet you're expected for your friendships to really, really care about somebody's, I don't know, journey of buying new socks. And finally, the wrong work that we're all doing, so many of us, is trying to survive off of this type of connection. Because here's what I think, I think that group chats, if you go listen to part one, they're kind of this like illusion of closeness. Group chats make you feel like you're staying in touch. But are you actually connecting? Or does it just feel like surface level maintenance that is burning you out? Now maybe you really do feel like some chats are truly connecting you. I love that. Let's talk more about that. Tell me what those chats look like. I have some of those. I'm not saying those don't exist, but I'm saying that a lot of us are staying in these surface level like maintenance task cycles that just never end because we keep getting new notifications. It can feel kind of similar to this idea of having too many friends. I've talked about this before in, gosh, a recent episode (Episode 161). We'll link it in the show notes. But similar to this idea of having too many friends and being burnt out because you are trying to maintain all of these relationships at a very similar level, right? If somebody is your friend at all in any way, shape or form, then you have to show up in a certain way. And that's not necessarily true, right? You have some friendships where you show up deeper and with more intensity, and some that are a little more surface level, but you enjoy them. Your group chats can be like that too. So then, if we're talking about what is maybe the right work, I think that is, for the most part, using our group chats as a tool. It's taking the time and the energy to think about what is happening in our group chats that is making us feel close and spending a little more time in those chats. It's also spending time thinking about the chats that are not making us feel close. Why aren't they making us feel that way? Do we want to put the effort and the energy into shifting them, or do we want to let them go? You know, like if we're using our group chats as a tool? Sometimes that might mean that the point is to get off the exit right. The point is to find 10 minutes for a weekly phone call that might replace a million messages. Maybe it's to actually meet up in person for 30 minutes and knock out the planning of that trip that you said you're going to take. Maybe it's prioritizing a walk once a month where you do all this catch up. Maybe it's switching to voice memos. At the bare minimum, Voice Memos give us that voice inflection that really can make us feel more connected to each other. Another positive would be to use a video messaging app of your choice to add in that visual so you can see somebody you know when they get excited about the news that you told them. Like, I'm over here standing you can't see me right now, right this? You can hear me. You can hear my excitement. But if you could see me, I'm like, shaking my hands up and down. I'm kind of bouncing on my feet because I'm so excited for you. Do you see how that's different than if I just type, I'm so excited for you with like, 10 exclamation marks in a group chat. The goal here is to use the group chat to actually exit the highway, use the group chat to get to something that actually fills you up, and that might exist in the group chat, like, maybe it is voice memos, maybe it is daily. You know, I've seen things on social media about people who send like a photo of their day every day, at noon or on Wednesdays, they do a dump of photos and videos, everybody doing a voice message check in once a week where they drop like a five minute message about how their week is going. There are ways to use the group chat to stay connected, to feel like you are filled up from it, but are you doing that? So the first thing you need to do is audit your chats. And I would love to be able to just give you, like, one overarching set of rules that are going to tell you if a group chat is good or if it's bad? But I actually don't think that's the right question, and I don't think that's possible, because the right question here is, what components, what factors, what patterns of one particular group chat make it work for you or not work for you. And I think it really depends on the individual group chat. I think group chats are what we make them. I think you can also shift the energy, and, you know, kind of the the culture, the rules of a group chat. So with that, let's walk through how you might evaluate some of your group chats. What to look at? What about big group chats versus small group chats? And it may not be like only big, only small, like you might be okay being in a big group chat, that's more of just like an announcement chat. I'll talk a little bit about this in a second. Actually, why wait? I'll just go into it now, right? I have a group chat with a group of friends of mine. There's probably like 30 plus of us in there. Now we used to all live in the same place, and it used to be kind of how we coordinated what we were doing this weekend, but now we're not all in each other's day to day lives, but this group chat has lived on because it's kind of become this, like updates chat, like, when big life updates happen. We're moving someone passed away. People are in a certain town. It's a pretty low volume chat, but it's kind of high signal, like, it tells a lot of people what is happening at one time, and it has a at this point, like a clear purpose, nobody specifically said this, but this is really what this group chat has ended up being. Now that group chat might work for you, you might be like, yeah, I could do a big group chat like that. That's nice. But if this was a message chain where people were just sending really mundane updates all day long and it was like 30 people, or maybe it was 30 people trying to coordinate logistics for something you may be like, that's a no for me. So it's not necessarily that it's all big or all small, but just think through like, how does the size of this group chat impact how I show up in it? The next one is close friends versus acquaintances. How do you show up differently based on how close you feel to people in the group? An example of this might be, you know, maybe you are part of a neighborhood group chat. You don't really know a lot of the people on this group chat. It's a lot of acquaintance. Says, and I don't know, pick a size, whatever size... you might be, fine being in that group chat, as long as people kind of stick to a purpose, right? Messaging updates. But again, if, if acquaintances, if really random people are just shooting random things like, Oh, I bought this thing for my backyard. Other people might want it. You might be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, but you might be okay with that in a close friends chat. Next is, is this chat full of really deep conversations, or is it just easy logistics? Personally, I find that my limit for like, deep conversation group chats, like there is a limit. I don't know exactly what that number is, but sometimes I kind of feel myself getting anxious, and it's mainly because at a certain point those responses just require a lot more time, energy, emotional labor, to pull them together, and I just feel like I'm running low on time to be responding that way. But if people are just asking me, like, quick, easy questions, are they? What's the link for that? Are you going to be there next week? Yes or no. Like, that's fine, sure. But sometimes the deep combos, for me personally, like those add up another thing to look at. Are you okay? If people in a group chat have side combos, or do you feel like you have group chats where that's not okay? The reason I ask that is because, let's say you had maybe this bigger friend group chat, and it's got 10 people in it, and you find yourself like constantly annoyed that two people are always kind of having a chat in there. It might be that the reason they're having the chat in that group chat is because they don't feel like it's permissible to start their own side chat. They feel like if somebody found out, they would get in trouble, or people would be mad at them. And you might be thinking, honestly, that would be great. You know, you go have your side chat about buying socks over there, and maybe it will come up in the bigger group chat, but I don't need to see the 50 messages you have going on. Another thing to evaluate would be whether this group chat kind of has a stable list, stable membership, or are people constantly being added and removed? Does that give you anxiety? Are there like, numbers popping up in this message that you don't know who they are, who added them? How do you find out who they are? Now you're like, worried about what you're sending in the message, because you don't know who these people are. And finally, the other thing to look at is, does this group chat have a clear purpose, or is it kind of a group chat that's trying to be everything? Now, I've thrown a lot of things out at you, but this final piece, this like clear purpose piece. I actually think that this is one, one of the biggest ones to consider, and it kind of links into my Roots framework, which, if you've never heard that is in Episode 12. But basically sometimes I feel like even in your friend chats, even in like chats I have where it's just three of us, it's almost like I have certain things I send to that specific group of people. So for example, I have a group chat with a couple girlfriends of mine. We're like, good friends, but a lot of what we talk about there is honestly a lot of like, Taylor Swift, random updates, new sparkling water flavors will will always send to each other when we are in the store, if we see one that we've never seen before, like snap a photo. You know, I have a another small group chat, and we talk about a little bit like life updates things like that in there. But honestly, we send a lot of like Facebook marketplace finds. If I'm going to share that with certain people, it's probably them. I have some other group chats where it's, you know, like multiple couples in there, and a lot of it is kind of like funny photos of people's kids. We're all updating each other while they're all updating each other. And me, I don't update anybody on my kids, because I don't have any kids, but it's a lot of updates on kids. And like, joking around about how kids are wild, raising kids is crazy. And I think when you think about like, what are the purposes, what are the shared interests of this chat. It can help you know when to send something to the chat, when to engage. But also it can help you know, like, if people are sending a bunch of stuff in there that you just don't care about, maybe that's a clear indicator that this is a chat that you need to discuss with them, like exiting or. Discuss how it's okay to have a side chat about this thing, like you don't really care. You don't want the sparkling water updates. You can just send those directly to each other. Because I think when a chat has a clear specific purpose, it's easier for us to know what belongs there. And I say that because then we're more likely to engage, right? If you have an idea of, oh, I always send these friends my Facebook marketplace finds, and I have one that I find interesting, like, I can drop it in there, and I am keeping the flow and the energy and the engagement in that chat going. I'm not being a lurker, because I know what I'm sending there. You know, there are so many types of chats that I think struggle, but I tried to think of a few examples, and I'm going to try and maybe not pinpoint, but like discuss why I think they might struggle. So an example would be, if you have a kid in school and you get thrown into a random group chat about logistics. And this may not be like an organized classroom chat. Maybe suddenly you're just added to a chat by one parent with like, five numbers you don't know. It's like, Hey, I know you all said you were interested in this fundraiser. Okay, okay, that one can be a struggle, because suddenly you are mixed in with a bunch of people you don't know who they are. I think that leads to a lot of lurkers, a lot of people who want to mute the group chat, a lot of people who wish there had been a better introduction, things like that. I think another one that struggles are when you have friend groups, big groups of acquaintances, where everyone is trying to be everything to everyone. Like we are swinging from sending really random updates to life updates to like looking for emotional support, to sending really random photos and memes where people like are. I mean, you just want to mute the tracks. You don't know what's going on here. I think another time where chats tend to struggle is when the dynamics have shifted outside the chat. So like, maybe this was a group of three or four friends and something has happened and one person isn't as close anymore, like somebody has moved away, and they're still a part of this chat, but everyone's talking about what they're going to do this weekend together, and one person can't be there, but everyone keeps talking around it. Maybe they acknowledge like, oh, we wish you could be here, but at a certain point, one person is just getting a ton of logistical text messages and updates about something they don't they're not gonna be able to be there. So again, I think that one of the most actionable things you can do when you are reviewing your group chats go through all those other factors you know, the size, the level of closeness, whether it's more deep combos, easy logistics, if it's permissible to have side conversations, if it's A stable list of people, or people keep getting added and removed. But I think that the most actionable thing you can do is really think about the purpose of the chat. And it's not like you need to get everyone to agree necessarily, but even for you, if nothing else, like for you, what is the purpose of this chat? Because it'll give you a sense of when to participate in it. When do you send something so that you are pinging your signal? If you listen to part one of this episode about the echo location, when are you pinging your signal? And hopefully, it'll let go of some of the anxiety of being there and like giving a ton of updates or participating in a bunch of ways that you don't really want to, because you can trust that when you have an update that fits that purpose, you will send it, and also over time, hopefully, if some sort of pattern develops, people will start to understand maybe what this chat is For, and there will be less confusion about it. This doesn't have to be some big formal thing. It doesn't have to be a big conversation. If nothing else, I think determining the purpose for you will help you. That's my take. Now, I think a really powerful thing we can do after we've done this reflection is to talk to our people. And you may you may not be having a conversation with like every acquaintance chat you get added to, but some of your closer people, maybe it's time for a conversation about group chats, if they're giving you a lot of anxiety. Now, before you have this conversation, I think it's important that you have some permission to do certain things. Okay? The first one is you don't have to be in every group chat. You don't if you feel like you just don't know the purpose, and you have nothing to contribute to the purpose. It's okay to leave a chat that doesn't serve you. It's okay to mute it. It's. Okay to tell people hey, you know, I'm not offended if you want to talk about this on your own. It's okay to respond when you have capacity. It's okay to set boundaries. Now, if you are somebody and you want to leave a group chat, I know this gives people a lot of anxiety, especially when you can see that little notification that's like, So and so left. Okay, yes, that announcement is kind of awkward. I get it all right, but here's where I come back to I always think about the equivalent to an in person interaction. And in my mind, if you leave a group chat, it's kind of like Irish goodbyeing at a party, right? If you are at a party with a bunch of people and you are ready to go home, sometimes people just say goodbye to one or two people, and then they leave. Sometimes they say goodbye to everyone. Sometimes they stand up and they're like, This was so fun. Thanks for having me here. I'm gonna head home. In real life, it is normal for people to leave, for people to leave early, for people to cancel, this is all very common in person, but digitally, we have amplified the meaning, because we can't see people's reactions in person when we go to leave, if somebody looks upset, we can be like, Oh, I'm so sorry. I really loved it. I just feel tired, right? We can't respond to the nonverbal cues, and that's, I think, why it feels so amplified digitally. But we do it in person all the time, and therefore we can do it digitally, and we can deal with whatever reactions people have, because we do it in person. Now about the side chats, I have plenty of friends who have separate side chats that I am not in, with other overlapping friends with other couples that I'm friends with. I regularly hear from a friend about how they were texting another friend or another group or being in another group chat that I'm not in that's okay. There's probably, I assume, a reason or a purpose. They are talking to those people and not me. They share an interest. They are coordinating something I'm not going to they just want some separate connection from those people that has nothing to do with my friendship with them. And my suggestion to you would be to make this Okay, to start talking to your friends about how this is permissible, because what happens is, if it's not okay, and someone finds out that there are smaller chats, they might be upset because you've never talked about this. You've never talked about how you want to normalize this, we've never created a space for everyone to have conversation about it. But again, if we compare this to real life, to like standing in a party together, it is very normal to be at a party and two people are standing off to the side talking about a topic that no one else is really interested in. Maybe they're really big Formula One fans, and they're over there just chatting it up about the most recent races. Now I get that maybe you can hear what they're talking about. We got to trust people. Okay, we can't hear everything, but we do need to let people have those conversations. Otherwise we are stuck in group chats, where we are having to watch 100 message conversation about f1 races that we do not care about happen, and then it is giving us anxiety, because we have all these messages that feel trivial to us. So maybe this is a time to really think about your friend group culture and the fact that if the idea is like everyone has to be included in everything that might be causing you some problems, and instead, you're trying to have a shift in what I call your friend group culture, right? Like what is acceptable, what is permissible. Make it acceptable that not everyone has to be in every group chat. Make it acceptable to leave a group chat. Make it acceptable to tell people that you have boundaries about when you respond or what your capacity is right now and when you're like, Okay, Alex, how do I actually have these conversations? Just ask sit down with people and be like, hey. Group chats are giving me a lot of anxiety. Here's some things I'm thinking. I feel like if it was okay to have side chats, I wouldn't come back to 150 messages about things that I don't really care about. Do you think it would be okay to have side chats? How would that make you feel? Tell people you've been analyzing what's happening. Have really, really simple conversations. Maybe ask someone like, hey, you know, do you have other friends who have side chats? How does that make you feel? Maybe they're like, Yeah, I do. It's fine. And you're like, Wait, why aren't we doing that? Then ask them if they have expectations, you know, be like, I'm really thinking, I need everyone to understand that right now, in this season of life, I'm probably not. Responding to for at least 48 hours. How would that make you feel? Because I think that's what I have to do. One of my favorite ways to try and shift friend group culture is just to throw out hypotheticals and see how people react and then talk through what it would look like so people have a visual often. I think the biggest struggle around change is just that it's sudden. And so if we can kind of have these hypothetical conversations, it prepares people for what it might look like, and then when you say, like, Hey, this is my boundary, they're not confused about what the new limitations are, because you've been having hypothetical conversations about this for a while. And finally, anytime you shift friend group culture, there might be some hurt, and you might have to do a little repair, and that is normal. So where do you go from here? I think you reframe. I hope this was a reframe that group chats aren't the enemy, but they're also not a replacement for the connection that you're actually craving. They're a tool, and ideally it is a tool to get you to some type of connection that actually feels fulfilling to you. And so with that, the goal is that you audit your group chats and get really granular, which ones are working, which ones are draining. You why? What things about group chats that are very similar on the surface are actually different and making one feel good and another feel like it's a suck, like it's just like an endless drain that is dragging you down with it. Name the purposes of group chats, even in your own head, so that you understand when you should feel called to show up there, notice if you are carrying extra emotional labor in certain group chats, like if you are the only one that responds to the big life updates, start having simple conversations with your people about expectations and group chat culture. Give yourself permission to leave the group chat, to set boundaries, to not be in every chat, to silence or mute things for a little while. Stop trying to survive off this type of connection. Find something anything, something small 10 minutes. Find something that uses your energy to move you towards a type of connection that actually feels fulfilling, right. Find that exit ramp, because at the end of the day, I really do think that we care about our friendships and our connections and our community, and that's why this feels so hard, is because we are just inundated with notifications, with messages, with things we feel like you need to respond to without the verbal cues as not only guard rails, but also as feedback, right when you tell somebody something and they react in a positive way that makes you keep want to sharing you're not getting that in a group chat, so be gentle with yourself, and maybe, just maybe, try texting a little bit less With the intention of connecting a little bit more. How do you get to the connection that's fulfilling? And with that, I'll see you next week.

Podcast Intro/Outro: 36:11

Thank you for listening to this episode of Friendship IRL. I am so honored to have these conversations with you. But don't let the chat die here. Send me a voice message. I created a special website just to chat with you. You can find it at alexalex.chat. You can also find me on Instagram. My handle, @itsalexalexander. Or go ahead and leave a review wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts. Now if you want to take this conversation a step further, send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting. And use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out. No need for a teary goodbye. I'll be back with a new episode next week.