u/WaitWestern

Does anyone else avoid checking their phone to the point it’s ruining their life?

I’ve gotten to the point where checking my phone or email gives me genuine anxiety. I avoid texts, calls, voicemails, emails — everything. Even from jobs, doctors, my daughter’s school, important people, etc.

I turned notifications off for basically everything because even seeing the badges or hearing my phone go off started making me feel dread or panic.

The weird part is I’m not avoiding PEOPLE exactly. If I want to talk to someone specific, I’ll go into my contacts, click their name, and message them directly. What I avoid is opening the actual inboxes/messages because it feels overwhelming and like there could be bad news, obligations, conflict, guilt, or something I forgot to deal with.

Sometimes I leave things unopened for days even though I know avoiding it only makes my life worse. It’s honestly affecting my work, parenting, stress levels, and overall functioning at this point.

I feel embarrassed even admitting this because I know it probably sounds irrational from the outside, but I’m wondering if anyone else experiences this level of avoidance/anxiety around their phone.

What actually helped?

My daughter is in an out-of-district placement through our public school district due to behavioral/disability-related issues. Recently I found out that a bus aide had been secretly recording my daughter on her personal phone because she felt my daughter was “antagonizing” her and she wanted to “take matters into her own hands.”

The aide is an adult and my daughter is a minor child with behavioral needs. From what I understand, the district took it seriously and the aide lost her job.

Part of what makes this worse to me is that there were times my 75-year-old mother literally had to get on the bus herself and help get my daughter out of the harness because the aide refused to help her. So to find out that instead of professionally handling things, an aide was secretly recording my child on a personal phone is really upsetting.

I am a psych nurse, so I have been spit on, my hair has been pulled, etc., but I have never denied a patient care. I understand her level of training is less than mine. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt with the way she professionally acts for a while now. i don‘t put my daughter on or off the bus for work conflicts so my mom does and she’s very non confrontational.

the district immediately told me when the aide volunteered the information to them, thinking she was being heroic…they filed an incident report and it’s under investigation.

I’m not trying to sue the district or attack the school system because they did act once this came to light. I’m more trying to understand:

- whether this is potentially illegal or mainly a policy violation,

- whether parents should be notified if recordings of their child exist,

- whether I should request confirmation the videos were deleted,

- and whether this is something worth making a police report over.

The recordings were apparently related to documenting behavior on the bus, but they were done on a personal phone without my knowledge or consent.

Located in New Jersey. Just looking for perspective from people familiar with schools, transportation, special ed, or student privacy issues.

All of my credit cards are currently maxed out, and most of them only have small limits ($300-ish each). My credit score is already so bad because of high utilization…so bad that my future is lacking because of it.

A guy I barely know recently offered to pay off my cards so he could temporarily use them for travel and other expenses because he “doesn’t want certain charges showing up on his own cards.” He says after the trip he’d pay them back off again.

From my perspective, I’m trying to figure out what the actual downside is besides the obvious trust issue. Since the cards are already maxed out, part of me thinks: if he actually pays them down first, my utilization would improve and my score might go up. And if he flakes and maxes them back out, I’d basically just end up where I already am now.

I know this sounds weird, and I’m not saying I’m planning to do it — I’m genuinely trying to understand what risks or scam angles I might not be thinking of here. What am I missing?