Every time I see that little red number in my inbox, my first thought is: Did I mess up? My brain jumps to the worst-case scenario—maybe I said something controversial, and now everyone’s correcting me and downvoting my stupid comments. Even though, most of the time, the messages are actually helpful and fun, that number still triggers some sort of insecurity and anxiety. The bigger it gets, the louder my worries grow.
Logically, I know I don’t screw up that often, and most feedback is neutral or even positive. But deep down, my insecure monkey brain panics at the thought of being wrong—or worse, publicly called out. Even when I’m right, the number still makes my stress levels spike up. What if people disagree with me? What if they don’t like what I wrote?
And yes, I see the irony in posting this. Writing about it is basically asking for it and feeding the very anxiety I’m trying to ignore. Maybe it’s my version of exposure therapy.
It’s true that the opinions and comments don’t matter. At the end of the day, they’re just meaningless internet points and text that will be lost when the disk of my instance eventually gets formatted or when bit rot gradually eats them away.
However, that’s not how my social monkey brain feels about it. Some primitive part of me that ignores all logic and reason clings to the notion of social acceptance and shivers at the mere thought of rejection. Can’t disable that sort of thinking. Seems to be a hard-coded part of a function or something.