I’m in a group chat with a bunch of friends I’ve known for years. One day I see a message pop up asking if anybody has seen or heard from me. I hadn’t messaged or spoke to any of them in over 6 months.
It was nice to know I was thought of but trying to explain why I often don’t reply or join in was difficult.

Yes-ish. But for the record, I don’t regard that as making me a horrible friend, as I do tend to go all out when I have the energy for it. Plus, I might not respond in a timely fashion to a picture of a plate of food from the dinner at Chez Broulez, but if my friends know if their car broke down in the middle of nowhere or they need someone to feed their dog b/c they had an emergency come up, that I’d be right over as soon as possible to help.
Can’t say it’s never happened. It was a lot worse in my 20’s. Social anxiety was bad.
Responding to a text you don’t feel like responding to is just a chore that needs to be done. You respond, set a mental limit on back-and-forth banter, then hard stop it with an excuse when you’re done. If you get into it and it’s not taxing, go with it, if it’s killing you, throw out i’ll have to talk to you later and then be the bad friend :)
Not anymore. My friends know that life sometimes gets busy and things sometimes fall in between the cracks. If they are truly friends, they know I’ll come back eventually and if they are in a rush, they can msg again. To people who think they are entitled to an answer i apply the following principle: “I have no obligation to lower my car window for bums begging for money. Even if I know them personally.”
Marketologists be like: let’s put another notification so that’s the end user would be incencitized to open our site/app again
Me, not opening it again: The crack is sealed, and my order of monks would keep it that way for generations to come
That’s not introversion.
Then what is it?
Executive dysfunction
Very interesting. I didn’t know about this and after reading a bit about it, it makes sense. I didn’t know there was a name for this. Thanks for putting this on my radar.
Wait, do you not?
Welcome to my adhd world
The longer you don’t respond the more daunting it gets
I wish people just came and saw me in person
I appreciate the notification my messages gives me sometimes. I forget the exact verbiage, but it brings it to the top of the list and says something like, “you got this 1 day ago. Did you mean to respond?”
I will use that as a start to my text “hey my phone reminded me i didnt respond to this. So sorry!”
Ah good excuse! :D I’ll save that
Only my ADHD homies understand. Everyone else gets very upset.
Yes, but if the friend is a fellow introvert they understand.
Yeah but only always.
Yeah that happens to me. I call it “getting a text”.
Or:
Let me respond to that text my friend sent me the other day looks at phone and it’s been 3 months
I think you have the order of operations wrong here. You’re excusing bad behavior by claiming introversion. That’s just being shitty.
You’re the type of person to call folks not getting out of bed because of their depression “just being lazy”
Inb4 “no this is different”
Found the entie!
This type of behavior is usually caused by extreme social anxiety coupled with depression, ADHD, or some other mental health issue that causes executive dysfunction.
It’s not “just being shitty”.
You get over the guilt. It’s fine.









