This used to be a major trigger of anxiety for me and still is really although I mainly manage it now by very rarely sending texts.

There have also been a load of occasions where I'd left my phone on silent, was wearing headphones, not checked it etc. and have myself taken many hours to respond to a text someone has sent me (sometimes not until the next day). So it does help sometimes to remember that the first extreme conclusion we jump to - "they hate me", "they think I'm a nuisance" may not be the right one.

For me, dealing with relational anxiety is about trying to imagine all the possible things the other person might be thinking until I reach the point where I accept that I simply don't know. Accepting the not knowing is hard, sometimes it's easier to believe an irrational thought with no evidence. It gets better with practice though and going back to the phone thing, sometimes the best option is to switch it off until the morning. That way you won't have that constant waiting / anticipation which feeds anxiety (although ironically you may end up not responding to someone else's text ).

I do sometimes wish mobile phones had never been invented. Horrible anxiety inducing things