The Date with Confidence Podcast - How To Quit Obsessing Over Why He Hasn't Messaged

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

EPISODE 39: How To Quit Obsessing Over Why He Hasn't MessagedHave you ever been frozen in an anxious spiral, obsessing over why your latest match on Bumble hasn’t replied to your message yet?Or you���ve been on an amazing second, third, fourth date with someone but now they’re not as texty as they were?This is the episode for you. In this episode of The Date with Confidence Podcast, I tackle the common dating struggle of obsessing over unanswered messages and offer practical solutions to break free from this cycle. Dating-induced anxiety is a real challenge, especially for those new to stable relationships. I share personal experiences and insights into managing anxiety in the dating world, highlighting the importance of building self-confidence.Here’s what we cover:1. The Cycle of Dating Anxiety: Exploring the anxious thoughts and fears that arise while waiting for a message from someone you're dating.2. The Root Cause: Addressing the root cause of dating anxiety – a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem.3. Continuous Self-Improvement: Emphasising the ongoing process of building self-confidence and self-esteem as a solution to long-term anxiety.4. Realistic Expectations: Encouraging realistic reasoning for delayed responses, avoiding irrational assumptions about the other person's intentions.5. The 90/90 Mindset Concept: Introducing the concept of striving for 90% confidence 90% of the time, allowing for occasional moments of anxiety.6. Mindset Exercises: Sharing practical mindset exercises like positive affirmations and reframing thoughts to alleviate anxiety.7. Practical Actions: Offering actionable steps to distract yourself from obsessive thoughts, including mood-boosting playlists and processing with friends.8. Energetic Exercises: Exploring energetic exercises like breathwork, EFT tapping and box breathing to manage physical symptoms of anxiety.By listening to this episode, you'll gain valuable insights into managing dating anxiety, understanding its root causes, and incorporating practical exercises to navigate these challenging moments.The Dating Debrief: How I went from anxious, codependent and unable to speak up in relationships to confidently dating, able to set solid boundaries, and having the time of my (love) life. Get your FREE ticket: https://rebeccalucyh.co/debrief Level Up In Love: A 3 month close-proximity coaching container dedicated to helping you date with confidence, build better boundaries, raise your relationship standards and finally manifest the dream relationship you've always deserved. Early Bird Discount Expires 17th March 2024: Level Up In LoveBox breathing method: https://www.rebeccalucyh.com/blogposts/box-breathing-technique-to-reduce-anxiety-and-relax You can contribute your stories to the Date with Confidence Podcast here.Visit The Date with Confidence website here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome back to the David Confidence podcast. We are late this morning. I am very aware that the episodes normally go out at 8am on Monday but if you listened to last Thursday's episode about red flags you'll know that I couldn't do any recording whilst I was at the guy I'm seeing's house because it was just too noisy so my plan to batch a ton of episodes and get Monday's episode out for you just just didn't happen which in some ways has worked out quite well because today's episode is going to be something that I hadn't actually planned so I'd like to plan out my episodes in advance and this is a topic that wasn't in the plan but one that I think is so important and affects so many of us when it comes

to dating. So in this episode we're going to talk about how to quit obsessing over why he hasn't messaged. How many of you can relate to this? And before we get into the episode I wanted to remind you that next Wednesday the 20th of March I am hosting a brand new free masterclass called the dating debrief where I'll be revealing how I went from anxious codependent and unable to speak up in relationships to confidently dating able to set solid boundaries and having the time of my love life so you can sign up for that for free just go to rebeccalucyh.co slash debrief I'll leave the link in the show notes for you but I would absolutely love to see you there because we're gonna be we're gonna be diving a lot into my past relationships

into my dating experience so far it's not uh let's watch some slides and take a load of notes masterclass it's more of a it'll be like an extended podcast episode I guess so we're just gonna sit and have a chat really and I really want it to be quite an interactive session so come along ask your questions get involved and yeah I will see you there. Welcome to the Date With Confidence podcast a place to come for dating advice support and stories that'll either fill you with hope or relief that your dating experience wasn't as bad as it could have been with practical episodes that'll either fill you with hope or relief that your dating experience wasn't as bad as it could have been. With practical episodes that'll provide you with easy to implement tips to help you feel confident AF on your next date, alongside light-hearted catch-ups where your host

Rebecca, that's me by the way, shares her own experience dating after four years of the single life, you are guaranteed to end each episode feeling less alone in your dating struggles, empowered to never settle again and confident that the best is yet to come. And if it all falls to shit, there's a special first season dedicated to breakups. You are welcome, my friend. Subscribe, review and share with your single friends. Okay, so let's get into how to quit obsessing over why he hasn't messaged dating can really bring out the worst side of anxiety especially if you've never been in a steady or safe relationship before and however much you tell yourself you're not going to overthink the new person you've matched

with or the person that you're dating however much you tell yourself you're not going to spiral into anxious thoughts and you're not going to obsess over every message they send or whether they've responded to a message quickly enough or why they've read your message and not responded immediately it happens we get stuck in that cycle of obsession and of anxiety and of fear and worry and trying to almost second guess what someone is thinking and the only way to truly get rid of that anxiety the only way to prevent anxiety or to manage it so that it's not an ongoing issue is to work on building more confidence and self-esteem so that in those anxious moments you're able to reassure yourself and talk yourself out of the spiral but obviously building self-confidence and working on

your self-esteem takes a while and it's not a case of you just do one exercise and suddenly you're more confident in yourself it's an ongoing process that can take weeks can take months and there are times where you're in the anxious spiral where you're in that state of obsessing and you don't have the time to to build self-confidence you just have to manage the situation you are in at that moment and I really wanted to share a few of the practical exercises you can do in that moment so some of the things that can that you could be doing that will positively impact your day in life and that will help you out of the anxious obsessive spiral when you find yourself in it again because let's be real you will find yourself

in there again I am it's really funny I'm feeling very anxious today and what's really nice is I woke up to a message this morning I didn't wake up to a message this was this was what made me anxious I've got a lot of stuff going on in my personal life with family I've got a lot of stuff going on with work I'm launching level up in love I'm running the date and debrief masterclass I have a lot on my plate at the moment a lot of stressful things that I don't really want to go into and because of that stress I'm naturally finding myself more anxious so when I woke up this morning and there wasn't a message from the guy that I've been seeing on my phone when I woke up at 7 30 my brain started to started to spiral a little bit now I spent the whole of last week with him

I've been spending a lot of time with him we speak regularly like we speak consistently every day even when I was staying with him last week whilst he was out at work we'd be messaging during the day like not non-stop obviously because we've both got things that we're trying to do with our lives but we would still check in regularly throughout the day so waking up this morning because I'd had a really terrible night's sleep I was not feeling good in myself anyway it's been a it's been a really stressful weekend I woke up and was like why hasn't he messaged me like I know that his alarm goes off at quarter six every morning why has he not woken up and messaged me first thing in the morning and then

my logical brain goes he hasn't messaged you that early because he knows that you don't get up until like 8 8 30 and he probably doesn't want to wake you up also he has shit to do before he goes to work and he's been getting himself ready for work driving to work he's probably got to work and had to start immediately because he's got like a busy job so my logical brain can reassure myself in that moment but my anxious brain just goes into one and then of course he messaged me as he always does to say good morning and to say to me I've got a busy day today I've got a lot on so I'm not going to be able to message you as much but I hope you have a good day now he's actively given me the reassurance that my anxious brain needed without me saying to him I need reassurance from you he's actively given me that reassurance but because of the spiral that

my brain was in I struggled to accept it now when I'm in this state of anxiety and I'm overthinking literally everything, what I find, the first thing that I find really helpful is to understand why I might be feeling anxious. If I can put a reason for the trigger or reason for the triggering of the anxiety, if I can attach a reason to the anxiety, it's like my logical brain can go, okay, well, this is why we're feeling anxious. And in that case, we know that it's not going to last forever. We know that it is only temporary. And it is okay to be anxious sometimes. I think it's unrealistic if you are someone that suffers with anxiety, or you are someone that suffers with anxiety or you are someone who has struggled in past relationships or has been through some shitty dating experiences

that have left you hyper anxious around dating. It's unrealistic to expect yourself never to experience anxiety again and it's the same, I apply the same principle of the 90-90 mindset concept to this and the prince the first core principle being you only need to strive for 90 confidence 90 of the time likewise that means that it's okay to be anxious 10 of the time if you can get yourself to a state where 90 of the time you're feeling confident you're self-assured you're securing yourself you're not lacking self-esteem not feeling insecure not suffering with those anxious thoughts then you're winning and then you can allow for that 10% of anxiety 10% of the time so for me my anxiety triggers

are things like the food that I eat I ate ice cream yesterday ice cream doesn't agree with my stomach I've essentially been living off sugar and caffeine for the last week or so and I know how badly my diet affects my anxiety yet I've been in such a stressed out state I haven't made I haven't consciously made the best food choices I've tried to make some nice dinners I've tried to eat a bit more fruit and vegetables I was trying to sleep a bit more last week but food that food that I've been consuming the caffeine I've had some alcohol I haven't had solid sleep I've had quite broken sleep because I was staying with a guy and he gets up so early so then I kind of wake up when his alarm goes off and then go back to sleep so I've had I haven't had a good sleep routine and likewise I haven't had my normal or my typical self-care routine so I

haven't been doing the things for myself that I normally do for myself when I am on my own I haven't done so much meditating I haven't exercised as much I haven't had the bubble baths and the meditations and the breathwork I did do breathwork last week actually but I haven't been taking care of myself in the way that I know that I need to and in the way that I normally would do and because I know that and I can say okay well this is why I'm feeling anxious I can diagnose the anxiety from the I can attach the triggers to the anxiety it helps me to see a bit clearer and it helps me to go okay this isn't about the guy that I'm seeing this isn't about he's done something that's made me feel unsafe this is purely physically the way that I have been treating my body I haven't

been taking care of myself so I know that this anxiety is temporary and I can almost reassure myself and talk myself through the anxiety in that respect and that's what's really important you have to learn to be able to reassure yourself and the majority of the time this is going to come down to the things that you're telling yourself so it's very easy especially if you've got an anxious brain or an ADHD brain like I have it is very easy to cling on to a narrative that's not true and to repeat a narrative in your mind that is made up. So to tell yourself a story and then continue telling yourself a story and expanding on that story, believing it's true when it's not so in those moments it's really important to look at what you're saying to yourself and then choose to tell yourself different things

choose to think the opposite choose to look at it as a story and say to yourself this isn't the story that I want to be telling myself now there are nine things that I'm going to share with you that I do when I am in this anxious obsession, frantic state of why hasn't he messaged me or why hasn't he replied or what does this message mean? So there was a tiny part of my anxious brain this morning that was like, oh he's told you that he's going to be busy all day so he's not going to message you, is this him making excuses because actually he doesn't want to speak to you I know for a fact that that is not true I know how busy his work is like I know that is not the case he's reassured me because he knows that I have a tendency to be anxious and he wanted to say I'm not not messaging you because I

don't want to speak to you I'm not not messaging you because I don't want to speak to you I'm not not messaging you I'm not messaging you as frequently because I'm very busy at work so the nine things that I do are split into three different categories again based on the 90 90 mindset concept and principle three which is that there are three layers of confidence you need to master to become 90% confident 90% of the time and And whilst we're not focusing on confidence in this respect, we're looking more at activities to provide you with some reassurance and to help you stop obsessing and stop being anxious. The three layers are think confident, act confident and feel confident. So I'm going to break the exercises down into mindset exercises, practical exercises and then energetic exercises.

So first of all, the three mindset exercises are the first one is repeat positive affirmations. Now, I am a big believer in positive affirmations and positive mantras. They will help me change my life. So one of the ones that I repeat to myself especially when I'm anxious is I am lovable I am enough I am worthy and deserving of the relationship I desire because I'm also very aware that some of my anxiety comes from this fear of abandonment and this fear of something being taken away from me so when I'm feeling anxious about someone that I'm dating it's because there is this fear of the relationship that I really want

I don't get to have it and that's something that I've been working on for a few years um it's something that I've had to really deal with and really adopt this belief that the relationship that I desire is available to me and I am allowed to have it and I do get to have what I want so that affirmation of I am lovable I am enough I am worthy and deserving of the relationship I desire reminds me to anchor back into that and to anchor back into that belief knowing that what I am looking for and what I'm trying to build and create with someone is possible for me I am deserving of it I am worthy of it I do get to have it and that helps me to release some of the anxiety and specifically around why around the anxiety about why hasn't he

messaged instead of making a delayed response about me i.e he's not that interested he doesn't find me attractive he's got an ulterior motive he's bored of me he's changed his mind. I think about the realistic reasons that he wouldn't reply to me and I think about realistic reasons that I wouldn't reply to someone's message and that could be things like he's busy at work, he's out walking the dog, he's spending time with the kids, he's having a nap, he's doing household chores, he just wants some time to himself. All those realistic reasons that are not about me, him walking the dog has got nothing to do with me, it doesn't mean that he doesn't want to talk to me but it means he's living his life that existed before I came along and that's absolutely fine because I wouldn't expect

someone to expect me to stop living my life just because I was dating them. So try and find those real reasons, the logical reasons, the realistic reasons and stop making somebody else's actions about you and mean something about you. And then the third thing for the mindset exercise is I remind myself that he doesn't owe me an immediate response so we are so addicted to needing an immediate response now whether it's texts from friends or messages on social media or answering people like or people answering our phone calls we expect and we expect things immediately and social media I believe has done this to us and we forget that people have lives outside of their phones nobody owes you

an immediate response just like you don't owe anyone else an immediate response either so I remind myself of this and reassure myself that it's okay for someone to take some time to respond to us. And I think when I think back to the way that people dated, like maybe my parents or my grandparents, where you wouldn't have this constant connection, you wouldn't have this constant communication, you would date someone and you'd maybe have a phone call from them once a week or once a day or you'd see them once a week it wouldn't be this this ongoing communication all day every day and I do think to a certain extent it's really unhealthy I think it's nice if you want to speak to someone regularly and consistently like yes that's nice because

obviously they're thinking of you and you're thinking of them and it's nice to feel connected but back in the day people wouldn't speak like this and when you think about like back in the war times people would go out to war and write letters to each other like and I don't believe I mean obviously I've not lived in those times but I don't believe, I mean obviously I've not lived in those times, but I don't believe there would be this constant anxiety around, oh he hasn't responded to my letter for three days. It would be a case of that acceptance of I'll hear from them when I hear from them. And I think if we could adopt that mentality a little bit more, then it would reduce some of that anxiety that we now experience so onto the practical things I do instead of obsessing over why he hasn't messaged the first thing is press play on my mood boosting playlist and have a little dance around the kitchen so that I distract

myself from any obsessive thoughts so I've got a ton of different playlists on Spotify depending on whatever my mood is it whatever my mood is I will just put on my favorite one listen to some of my favorite songs sing along dance around to make sure that I'm not just sat there obsessing over something because it's really unhealthy and not only that if I am obsessing over messages or what someone said or trying to second guess a tone of a message I'm not doing the things that one I love and two I need to do I have a business I need to run I don't want to spend my time getting sucked into these obsessive thoughts. So by dancing around, listening to some music, it breaks that pattern of obsession and allows me to think about other things like business, like family, like things that I want to do, having some self-care

time. It allows me to get out of that anxious cage that my brain is trying to keep me in. I will also message or voice note a friend to process how I'm feeling instead of bombarding the guy with messages. So sometimes when I'm feeling anxious what I really want to do is message the guy that I'm seeing and be like I'm feeling really really anxious I just need some reassurance from you I haven't heard from you but I don't want I don't want to do that because I don't want him to see me as this clingy person who needs that constant reassurance and I'm very much of the belief that we need to be able to reassure ourselves we shouldn't have to seek reassurance from the

person that we're dating. Yes, it's nice to have that reassurance. And like I said, I got that reassurance this morning without even asking for it. That's wonderful. But we shouldn't, we should be able to reassure ourselves and to get ourselves out of the anxious spiral. So to seek that reassurance as well from an outsider, and to have an outsider's perspective can be really valuable. But also in saying that, you need to have someone who can help you see clearly and be objective, not someone who is trapped in toxic dating patterns, or unhealthy habits, or thinks that all men are trash or immediately wants to jump on the oh well he hasn't messaged you he's such an arsehole. You need

someone who is a bit more objective and who can help you see clearly without jumping to your defense or jumping on the same wavelength of oh yeah well he's definitely changed his mind or he's going to ghost you or anything like that and that's one of the reasons that I'm opening up level up in love because often when we've got friends who are in the same situations as us nobody can see clearly because you're you become an echo chamber of the people that you're surrounded with whereas with level up in love obviously I'll be your coach and I'll be coaching you through things and I can see things objectively and say to you actually have you looked at this or this is an unhealthy pattern or this is an anxious spiral

here are things that we should do here are some suggestions of what you can do instead and in a level up in love as well you can come and get that reassurance from someone. You can receive that support and that help to stop you spiralling, to just help you through things and help you also get to the point where you can reassure yourself and you can feel much more self-assured within yourself

when it comes to dating and relationships. The third thing I do within the actions within the practical actions section is get out of the house so I'll take myself for a walk I'll go out for lunch I'll visit my grandparents I do anything that doesn't involve me sitting and obsessing for hours so removing myself from my everyday environment it just helps me to feel less anxious and sometimes when my anxiety is really bad I don't want to go out in public but I can go to my grandparents because that's my safe space that's my that's my like place of comfort so if I'm feeling really anxious I'll just go to theirs I'll have a cup of tea I might talk things through with them or I'll just sit and chat about

anything really because that just makes me feel much better so removing yourself from your environment can help you can make it easier to help you shift your thinking and it just takes you away from the place where you're being the most anxious. Then the three things that I do within the feel section are I make time for a breathwork session. Breathwork has transformed my life in so many ways and each session really helps me to get out of my head and back into my body so when I'm at my most anxious I will try and attend a live breathwork session or I will go through one of my recorded breathwork sessions that I had when I worked with my coach one-to-one for six months so I've got a couple of recordings where they're

a bit they're shorter breathwork sessions but I can go through those just to get me away from the thoughts and the overthinking and the anxiety that's in my brain and it helps me to really reconnect with my body and it helps me to calm my body so that I can think more clearly and so that I can just feel better in general. I also practice EFT so emotional freedom technique to tap out any negative unhelpful emotions and restore my body to a relaxed calm state this can happen within the space of minutes so eft tapping is where you like tap on certain parts of your body as you repeat phrases like positive phrases to yourself and when you're doing that you're shifting any stagnant energy stuck within your body and for me it it almost brings like this instant sense of calm which is really nice because it can

just take minutes which is nice it's not something that you have to sit and do for hours it's not something that you have to be prepared for I do it in the car if I'm anxious I've done it walking down the street I've done it I actually did it I had to go to the hospital um on Saturday well and yesterday to visit my nan who's just been admitted again and when she was admitted on Saturday she was in in A&E she hadn't been moved to a ward yet and I have a phobia of sick so I hate hospitals because obviously people that are in hospital throw up and I had to walk through A&E and my anxiety from the phobia was through the roof so I practiced EFT tapping as I was walking along I didn't do the whole all over my face but I was just tapping on my hand and just reassuring myself and it made a big difference. So that's another

technique that I love to use. And then lastly I use the box breathing technique to regulate my breathing and reduce the symptoms of anxiety in the quickest way possible. I've got a blog post on box breathing actually, I'll share that in the show notes so you can go and give that a read if you want to learn more about that it's a really simple technique but again it has a massive impact on the physical symptoms of anxiety for me it just helps to relax my body really quickly so I like that so I hope that this has been helpful for you in some ways so that the next time that you want to obsess over why someone hasn't messaged you back if you want to obsess over why he's read your message and not responded within an hour or if you're worrying about

anything really it doesn't even have to just be anxiety around why he hasn't messaged it can be anxiety around everything why he hasn't scheduled your second date yet why he hasn't I don't know anything dating causes a lot of anxiety for a lot of people but remember it's okay to be anxious sometimes and to really manage that anxiety and lessen it building your confidence and self-esteem is the only way to go. So I hope this has been helpful, come along to the dating debrief that's happening next Wednesday, sign up for free via the show notes and you can also check out Level Up In Love, the early bed pricing for that is ending on the 17th of march which is sunday you will get instant access to the confidence course so as well as having ongoing coaching

support throughout for three months you'll also receive access to my signature program the confidence course which will help you to increase your self-confidence and your self-esteem so that you can lessen these feelings of anxiety and so that you can enjoy dating, you can enjoy those early stages of your relationship, you can raise your relationship standards, build better boundaries and just overall manifest the relationship

that you've always deserved, essentially. So you can go check that out. If you'd like to get involved with the Date With Confidence podcast, go to datewithconfidencepodcast.com contribute share your ics your red flags your stories we've got a community episode coming up on Thursday so if you want to be involved in this week's community episode then go fill out that form now we've got some really lovely responses that I can't wait to record and that's it for me I will see you in

the next one thanks so much for listening to the date with confidence podcast I hope you've enjoyed this episode subscribe rate and review and share it with your single friends Thank you. you