The problem is, we need those of you who aren’t in crisis to show up more often. In my experience, we’re the best about supporting and checking in with each other in a myriad of ways. But what about the not-so-close friends who you haven’t heard from? Worse, who you may have reached out to and not heard back from? Also, those of us in crisis aren’t the ones not checking in with each other. Ok, it might actually be all of your closest friends at the same time. But that’s not ALL of your friends at the same time. I keep seeing posts about how maybe your friends aren’t checking on you because they have their own crisis. Yes, this means I may have expended all of my available energy in a given week with that circle, but that is about the boundaries thing.

I also have about a dozen friends who know they can contact me anytime and that I am in pretty constant contact/check in/vent sessions with. My own rule of thumb is: If someone has crossed my mind and we haven’t interacted in some way very recently, I should check in with them to let them know I’m thinking of them. It’s just saying, in a very general way, check in with your people. It’s not saying you can’t have appropriate boundaries that determine how much you can give, when you can give it, and what you are able to offer. It’s not asking you to ignore your own needs or mental state to offer yourself up to the point of exhaustion. This doesn’t mean that you run down your entire Facebook “friends” list weekly and check in with everyone. But as your mentally ill and otherwise disabled friend who has suicidal thoughts in at least the back of my mind at all times, I’m here to tell you - yes, we are bad friends if we are looking for every excuse under the sun to explain why we don’t even check in with friends on a regular basis. I know… you’ve probably read a bunch of social media posts claiming we shouldn’t assume people are bad friends. Yes, you’re a bad friend if you aren’t checking in on any of your friends regularly. If the message is clearly a scam or an attempt to 'phish' information from you, replying with 'STOP' is not only ineffective, it’s an invitation to be bombarded by lots of junk messages in the future.Checking In On Your Friends: Why & How, Or, Being Better FriendsĬontent Note for discussions of mental health/illness, other disabilities, suicide, etc. If you know you signed up for the service through your pharmacy or bank, for instance, replying with 'STOP' will work. In many cases, the message may include instructions to reply with 'STOP' to stop getting messages from them in the future. This data is encouraging both legitimate companies and scammers to step up their texting activities. To illustrate this difference, check to see how many unopened email messages you have versus your unopened text messages. Question: Does replying with 'STOP' on unwanted text messages really work?Īnswer: If it feels like you’re getting a lot more text messages these days, both legitimate and questionable, it’s not your imagination.Įvery study on text messaging shows that people respond at a significantly higher rate and much quicker to text messages than phone calls or emails.

Just checking up on you text message