Rachel, I think the problem in this case was the complete opposite 🙂 Good advice, nevertheless!

Blue, I have indeed been through such a thing, and I still notice myself occasionally getting nervous about checking e-mails. In my case, it was partly due to getting one too many stressful and angry e-mails that caused me to start to feel overwhelmed and panicky. That said, there were a lot of underlying issues that I had to solve. Perhaps this anxiety is just a symptom of something bigger, feeling overwhelmed about managing life in general? When things are in balance and you don’t have too many worries in your mind, you’ll have more strength to deal with the smaller issues. But if you allow things to pile up, it becomes harder and harder to manage everything, as you know.

If this e-mail thing is bothering you so much, then why not try to solve something else first? Have you tried any meditative practices that would allow you to purge the worries that keep piling up in your mind? When there’s too much stuff there, everything becomes too hard to manage. It’s like having a really cluttered space, where dealing with one thing means dealing with a dozen more just to get to the one that you need to deal with. The more you can purge the clutter, the easier it gets to manage things that are thrown at you.

Then when you are ready, perhaps some kind of e-mail checking schedule would be in order. Once or twice per day, every day, when you bite the bullet. First relax by breathing deeply for a few times (4-5) and then check the e-mails. Make a mental note of the relief that you feel afterwards and associate it with the accomplishment.

Those are just some thoughts that came to mind. I understand that running away from issues is so very tempting, but also I don’t think that the solution to that is to go full speed to the opposite direction and forcefully deal with something that is causing anxiety. Baby steps to better balance! 🙂