I feel you.

Haha, thanks :)

Well, I don’t use any social media (besides Lemmy), so that helps :) There are a couple of Whatsapp group chats where I rarely participate, but I muted those, so I don’t get any alerts.

I do, and not only on Lemmy, but also Whatsapp, Teams, email etc. It’s the fear of screwing up and/or missing out, and a wave of anxiety combs over me when I see a number >0. I’ve been talking with my therapist about it, there are reasons and methods to overcome this…

I grew up in a rough communist regime. I was really young when I overheard my parents talking about how the “supreme leader” was bad and things were starting to boil the next town over. There was nothing on TV or radio. Innocent me just asked my dad like, if he’s that bad, why don’t they just arrest the guy? They didn’t realize I actually understood what they were talking about. I can still remember, to this day, 36 years later, how the soul left my parents’ body in an instant, and we had a looong conversation about how I should never say anything like that ever again. People disappear when they talked like that, and “you don’t want your mum and dad to go away, do you”?

A few months later there was a nation wide uprising, people died, the regime fell, and they actually arrested the guy.