I use a to-do list to remember important tasks. But if I am anxious about a task, just looking at the list triggers my anxiety.
Often I end up closing the list and immediately turning to self-soothing. And because there's no way to know in advance if a task on the list will give me anxiety, this often results in my list being not just unusable but unreadable, preventing me from doing or even remembering the non-anxiety tasks on the same list.
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I had the same problem with my email. It sucks but just keep exposing yourself to it so it becomes less daunting. Maybe have it somewhere constantly visible or in your routine? Either way, I hope you over come it and you can do it!
I went another way with email... I aggressively archive everything that isn't fucking important when I see it - if I'm in a mood to read about the latest factorio dev diary when I see it I'll read it but I don't hang on to emails that I might want later.
Shit like bills and legal stuff is the only thing I let sit around.
I just wrote something similar. One thing that helps is there tends to be emails I can deal with so it sorta helps working you up to the anxious ones by just dealing with spam or emails of little significance.