This non-response check-in is a practice I follow given my past experiences with mental illness stigma in the dispute resolution field. There have been times when I naively did not realize colleagues were trying to cut contact with me. I’ve also read dispute resolution guidance that explicitly teaches readers to have friendly-seeming briefer communication designed to reduce contact with people regarded as having disabling mental impairments like my bipolar disorder (or to totally avoid engaging in any communication). All of this makes me nervous that a non-response might mean someone may not want to speak to me but I may not realize. Moreover, I get scared that if I follow up I may get demonized like a ‘psycho stalker’ (this is a stereotype trope which people often inappropriately attach to people with mental illnesses like mine, and which I sadly have faced myself as well).
I recognize that people may have my messages inadvertently in spam, they may just be busy, they may be sick, they may have life events like a death in the family, they may mean to respond but need time, they may have forgotten – there may be so many other reasons. As someone who has been hospitalized five times, always unexpectedly, I have deep empathy and compassion for people getting delayed due to pressures in life and have no desire to ever pressure someone or punish them for non-responses. This is why I send one check-in like this rather than just marking down to never contact this person again without telling them about what I’m doing. The door is always open on my end for reconnection, and I just do this because my other experiences with stigma and demonization lead to me wanting to be careful to honor peoples’ potential boundaries – spoken and unspoken.
This is a standard template I send, verbatim, to anyone I am doing a non-response check in with. While there are times that I get more nervous because I’ve seen a person sharing content that appears to show mental illness biases, this specific message’s text is not any reflection of me suggesting you have those biases. This is merely a response I sometimes have to non-responses because of my dread risk of not realizing someone does not want to talk to me, given that I’ve endured a lot of stigma.
I’m not pressuring you to talk with me, but my hope is that you will decide to connect with me again in whatever way is comfortable for you. We could even do a Walk n’ Talk. Please feel free to reach out to me any time and if you would rather end communication with me, you can just not reply. This non-response check-in is a relatively new practice for me so I’m also open to any feedback about how to improve it.