Sorry for the slow reply... Are you suffering from messaging guilt?

Katie Rosseinsky frets about her failure to answer friends on time, and discovers it’s much more common than she thought. But do psychologists have an answer to ‘why’?

Guilt trip: failing to reply to our friends on time makes us feel bad, so why do we do it? (Getty )

For weeks now, there has been a message languishing unanswered in the depths of my WhatsApp history. Periodically, I tell myself that today will be the day I finally get my act together and respond. I open up the chat, prepare to type out some variation of “Sorry for the slow reply…” only to immediately shift my attention to some other notification or shiny new piece of digital ephemera. And the part that makes this whole cycle even more ridiculous? The message isn’t some emotionally fraught monologue or bombshell statement. It’s a simple “how are you doing?” garnished with a few quick life updates, sent by a good friend whom I really value (and that only amps up the sense of guilt).

I know that my poor texting etiquette will probably provoke polarised responses. You’ll either shudder in recognition, thinking of all the texts you’ve accidentally ignored, all the messages you’ve responded to a month late – the ones you caveated with “I’ve been rubbish with my phone recently” (despite the fact that the only time said phone has been out of your immediate eye line for more than a few hours has been when you’re asleep). Or you’ll think that leaving people on “read” is the sign of an irredeemably rubbish friend who barely deserves that title. You might even have cut people out of your life for similar infractions or be deeply suspicious of those who (like me) turn their read receipts off on messaging apps, so it’s less easy to clock whether they’re ignoring you or not.

So why are some of us so woeful at something as seemingly simple as answering a message? “Ultimately, many people don’t mean any harm or disrespect by delayed responses – they’re just navigating complex emotional or cognitive barriers,” explains chartered psychologist Dr Ravi Gill; the reasons behind this failure to keep up, she adds, are “often nuanced and rarely intentional”. In other words, no, you’re certainly not a terrible human being: you might just experience certain traits and behaviours that turn the treadmill of constant digital communication into a real struggle. First up, it’s worth noting that neurodivergence can impact your ability to stay on top of communication. “For those with attention difficulties or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), it’s easy to get distracted and forget to respond, especially if the message doesn’t feel urgent,” says Dr Gill. “Once a notification is dismissed, it may completely slip from memory.”

Personality type might also play a part. “For people pleasers, the worry about what everyone else is thinking and feeling can induce a great deal of anxiety when it comes to crafting a reply that won’t be read the wrong way,” says Charlotte Bailey, an accredited CBT therapist and trauma-trained psychotherapist. So, your sluggish response time might in fact stem from caring too much about others. “This can lead to avoidance or putting it off, but then the guilt of not replying intensifies,” she adds, and it might trigger fear of letting others down or not being a “good enough” friend. “The guilt builds over time, making the task of replying feel even heavier. [They] might worry about how their silence is perceived or ruminate over whether they’ve upset someone. The longer the delay, the more shame piles up, creating a vicious cycle of avoidance.” Sound familiar? Part of my reply lag time is definitely spent wondering whether the sender despises my lateness, and whether they’ve retracted their interest in my life as a result.

The word “avoidance” certainly crops up a lot when you delve into the psychological reasons behind this phenomenon. “People with avoidant attachment styles, or those who aren’t very comfortable with intimacy, may subconsciously delay responding to maintain a certain distance, even with loved ones,” Dr Gill says. Again, “this isn’t usually intentional” – rather, it is “more of a defence mechanism”, protecting us from getting mired in messy and potentially unpleasant emotions. “This avoidance is often rooted in our nervous system’s response to stress, a manifestation of the flight or freeze response,” adds Bailey, referring to two of our instinctive reactions to a threat, where we’re either compelled to run away or do absolutely nothing.

These nervous system responses date back to prehistoric times, when our ancestors’ ancestors were trying to hide from sabre-toothed tigers or stalk woolly mammoths (so does the self-explanatory “fight” mechanism). And even though the “threats” we face have changed dramatically, we often still revert to these deeply ingrained reactions. Even a straightforward “how are you?” message from someone we know and love can feel like a threat “if it touches on emotions we’re not ready to deal with”, Bailey adds. “It’s not that we don’t value the relationship: our brain is simply trying to protect us from the discomfort of replying.” I’ve noticed that the WhatsApps and texts I’m reliably unreliable at getting back to aren’t the screenshots of memes and stupid jokes – they’re the more serious and involved ones from friends I live far away from and see infrequently. The stakes feel higher, and I struggle to sum up the natural ups and downs that we’d probably have chatted out in person when we were geographically closer. So I just… do nothing.

Burnt out: many of us feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of digital communication we need to juggle (Getty)

Then there’s the fact that many of us are grappling with some form of digital fatigue or burnout, a result of our “always on” culture in and out of work. We’re more connected to our loved ones than ever – which can be great but may also leave us feeling bombarded. As Bailey puts it, “the very technology meant to keep us connected can start to feel suffocating”. Our smartphones create the expectation that we’re always available to reply, but also draw our attention in myriad different directions, endlessly presenting us with something newer, louder, more obviously attention-grabbing. “Our phones are constant sources of distraction,” says Dr Gill, “which can easily lead to procrastination.” And so our messages “stay there, unaddressed, caught in a cycle of ‘I’ll do it later’, which may not happen”.

By delaying a response, there’s a sense of temporarily escaping the obligation to engage or meet others’ expectation

Charlotte Bailey, CBT therapist and psychotherapist

And we might also unconsciously associate the arrival of “new message” notifications with stress, creating “reluctance or resistance towards replying”, says Dr Madeleine Jago, principal clinical psychologist and co-founder of Seven Lion Yard in south London. If you spend your entire working day fielding an endless stream of texts and Slack notifications, it’s no wonder that you might start to see your personal messages as just another extension of work, another task to be ticked off. Against this backdrop, you could even start to see shirking those messages as “a subconscious way of asserting or regaining control”, says Bailey. “By delaying a response, there’s a sense of temporarily escaping the obligation to engage or meet others’ expectations. It can feel like preserving a sliver of personal time and space, even if it’s counterproductive and leads to guilt later.”

Fundamentally, most of us do want to keep in touch with the people we love (and don’t actively want to p*** those people off). So how can we try to shake off this habit and cut down our unwieldy reply times? Dr Jago recommends setting realistic goals, such as aiming to “reply to one message a day or a few each evening, making it manageable rather than overwhelming”, choosing “low-stress times” when you’re already feeling a bit more relaxed. She also suggests trying to “link responding to texts with daily activities such as during a morning coffee to build a routine”, and notes that it might also be helpful to try to identify “why” you’re avoiding a particular message (like my aversion to open-ended “how are yous”).

It’s worth bearing in mind, too, that most people are more understanding of our lapses in communication than we might give them credit for – they might have fallen into the very same traps before. When I search through my chat history for the phrase “sorry I missed this!”, there are as many similar messages sent by pals as there are ones from me. So next time you find yourself feeling ashamed of how long you’ve procrastinated over an innocuous “how are things?” text, fear not: your friends are probably too busy stressing out over their own long-neglected messages to notice properly.