The Facebook "Seen" message gives me a lot of anxiety! When I see that the person has "seen" the message, but does not reply, I start thinking about all the possible reasons why they would 'ignore' me... Does anyone else feel this? If so, how do you cope?

I definitely feel the same every time someone leaves me on seen. Like what could I have possibly said wrong to make them just ignore my message?? Of course, I get it if I say "Hey" and they see it too late, which is still personally a bit annoying to me but I let it slide. It's a bit messed up when you let's say approach someone in text and they just leave you on seen. Same for posting in a group and being ignored by the entire group which later just proceeds to talk like nothing happened. If someone seens me, I just try to move on and not think about it. If they don't think replying or talking to you is worth their time, then GUESS WHAT? Neither are they worth yours. Simple as that. It just shows who they are right away :)

Yes, this is a normal reaction to have when it come to this. There can sometimes be a glitch in the system as often times it will say someone has seen your message when they actually haven't. Try not to jump to conclusions right away as there are a lot more legit reasons as to why someone hasn't responded yet. It's not always that you are being ignored. Some will read your message and respond to it at a later time as they may not have enough time to answer you in that moment. Some people may not know what to say so they say nothing at all. etc

As someone who suffers with generalized anxiety disorder and BPD, I often jump to drastic conclusions in pretty common situations like this. I believe it’s important that we remind ourselves that all the technology we have nowadays in our hands, created this expectations and the idealization that people can be available to give us attention at all times, and that we owe that to other people as well. These expectations aren’t realistic nor healthy. It’s important to practice our patience remembering that there’s thousands of possible reasons for someone not answering us right away, or even ignoring us at times. We don’t have to jump to our conclusions of the worst case scenarios. Try to list in your mind all the multiple possible reasons that someone could not respond to you right away or at all, and try to avoid the ones that put the blame on you. Make an effort to change your mindset by focusing on other perspectives, if you can’t change your automatic feelings about the situation. And if you truly believe you did something really bad or wrong, take your time to evaluate how you can improve and redeem yourself with that person. Be kind to yourself, and always priorize people who want you in their life as much as you want them in yours.

It's a pretty regular thing to feel like this. Everyone lives with the fear that maybe another person does not like them and when he/she sees a message but does not answer it, they begin to wonder "are they mad at me?" "do they not like me?" Sometimes the person simply is busy and will answer the message later. The way to cope is to realize two things: 1) if this person messaged you in the first place, they obviously care to an extent, and 2) if they don't answer within a few hours or just not at all, they are either VERY busy for a long period of time OR you just rid yourself of someone who didn't care about you enough anyway and that is a benefit to be rid of fake friendship.

I used to feel bad about this a lot in the past. I started to realise that there's been many times where I see a message, and put it down thinking "oh I'll reply in a moment after I'm done doing something," or I completely forget until later! I feel so bad about it because I totally understand what it's like to be on the other side, and I have to remind myself that sometimes people aren't actively trying to ignore me or be rude, one of the disadvantages of online chatting is that I can't see the persons actions or expression as if we're in real life. I have to remind myself that stuff happens and it doesn't necessarily mean that they don't like me or they're ignoring me.

I try to put myself in the other person's shoes. What are reasons that YOU might leave someone on 'seen'? Maybe you read a message and suddenly were distracted, for any number of reasons: you needed to go to the bathroom, someone started an in-person conversation with you, you were in the middle of class, etc. Whenever your mind starts to consider that they're ignoring you, do your best to look at your thoughts logically. Which scenario is more likely, that they are actively ignoring you, or they got distracted by their pet walking into the room? It can be hard sometimes, but you'll feel a lot better in the long run!

I completely understand! This happens to me all the time and I'm sure we are not the only ones! Sometimes people will read and reply hours later or not even reply at all! You just have to remember that people get busy sometimes and cant always respond! We are only human after all and sometimes people read things in a rush and forget to reply! I definitely do this unintentionally sometimes and I feel so bad about it afterwards! Try not to take it personally, if the person cares - they will reply eventually and if they don't, pop them another message to remind them! :)

Id like to explain with a image example if your reading this answer, just go onto your search engine of choice and look for "yin yang symbol" and you should find a black and white swirly symbol. Look at that as reference as i explain. So to see where you are at in thinking we shall start with that outlook on life. 1. The black is the bad, your simply looking at the black and only seeing the bad. 2. Looking at the white means you are only seeing the good and not seeing whats truely there in the bad. 3. The black dot in the white is the bad inside the good as nothing can ever be completely perfect. 4. The white dot in the black is the good within the bad as no matter how bad it gets theres always good from it somewhere. For your issue of worrying about the seen message your just looking completely at the black and only seeing the bad things that may be true. However there is good in the bad and also a entire other side of good that may have bad in it. Looking at the symbol as its entirety is the way of balance. There is good, there is bad, there good in the bad and there's bad in the good. In the end use this to help your focus your mind with a visual image of that you need to stop focusing on that bad and remember the good possibilities too. Try thinking of a good possibility for every negative one you have.

The scary “seen” button freaks everyone out. I especially get upset about it when I feel like we were having a good conversation and then out of nowhere there’s no response. It gets me thinking, “why don’t they want to reply,” “did I do something wrong,” or it had me feeling insecire about myself. I usually cope with this by excusing the other person. Theres a possibility that something came up and they had to set their phone down, I can relate to the countless of times that I have done that. I can also cope by not going back and rereading the messages to find something wrong. I only say things that I mean and if that person doesn’t agree then there’s no need for me to stress about it. Sometimes when this happens I’ll busy myself with something else like reading a book or playing a game and then I usually forget about the stree that it caused.

I definitely know the feeling, it's something that used to bother me a lot and if I'm being honest it's still something I struggle with sometimes, depending on the person who does it. I cope by getting myself distracted or thinking about all the realistic reasons why they wouldn't respond right away. Is there anything you could have done to upset them, which made them ignore you? In most situations there isn't, which means they probably didn't do it on purpose. They are probably busy or needed to think about it before answering, which they then forgot to do because they got distracted. Think about times where you've accidentally ignored someone, we've all been there. And even if they do ignore you, try not to overthink it, there's nothing you can do about it anyway. Remind yourself that social media is a blessing and a curse at the same time, it's easy to stay in contact but messages can easily be taken out of context. Next time you see them you will notice that there's nothing to worry about, they'll most likely act the same as normal. They might also just reply a couple of hours or days later.