Instant Message Anxiety
For those of us old enough to remember that before email and instant messaging we had ordinary or what is referred to now as snail mail. When I was a kid, we were given the task to write to another person, a pen pal, from a different part of the country. I remember the excitement as after about seven days, a reply would soon be in my mail box. Whilst I waited, I knew that the reply would take a little time and I expected that so the anticipation was fine.
However, now in our instant cyber world, we can connect with people at the speed of a broadband connection. Email and particularly instant messaging has meant that we can have a near instant connection with another person or people. I had a client come in this week who was suffering with severe anxiety about the fact that people were not replying to his instant messages fast enough and that the delay was causing him anxiety.
I told him the story of my childhood pen pal as a way to expenses that waiting may seem a bad thing, but very often it is not and the wait makes things worthwhile. I wonder how many people in the millennial generation are having the same difficulties of this client.
