Phone phobia is real.
I’ve been watching Dimension 20 and in an episode that I recently watched some of the characters are trying to locate another character by convincing some hotel staff to help them. They keep passing the phone around with the hope that the next person will be more persuasive. They hand the phone to Adine who immediately hangs up and states, “Phone phobia is real.”
I have to do the thing I’m afraid of to get better at it!?
I relate on such a deep level with this. Phones have always been items that were fraught with anxiety in my household. My parents used to go to great lengths to get the other one to answer the phone when it rang. I remember my grandfather harrumphing quite a bit working himself up to making a phone call. In my teens my family went to family therapy. While we were asked to do things as a family, we were also given individual assignments. One of the things I was tasked with was working on my phone phobia. However, I don’t exactly remember how I was asked to do that. But I suspect that it was based on a mild form of exposure therapy: making and receiving calls to friends or family, or something like that. I do remember the feelings about it. I wanted to please the therapist, but I really didn’t want to make phone calls!
But I have worked on it over the years. In my twenties I worked several receptionist jobs, which were all about answering the phone. Not my first or even fourth choice, but those were the jobs I could get with a liberal arts degree in the 90s. This was some hard-core exposure therapy. And while I got much better at answering the phone… (my mom says I still sound like the start of a recorded message when she calls)… It took a physical toll on me. I suffered from frequent stomachaches and headaches. But being on the receiving end of business phone calls has helped me with making business type calls. I tell myself that the person on the other end wants to help me. (And this is true most of the time—if it is not, it is not about me.)
Lacking skills creates resistance.
I’ve only deliberately hung up on a person once in my tenure in the phone answering trenches. I was working a temp job at the front desk for the Forest Service of Boulder County. A man called and demanded that a tree in his front yard be cut down immediately. All the “real” people were out of the office doing their forestry jobs so I could only put him through to voice mail. This made him even angrier, and he called back shouting at me. Realizing that there was nothing I could do to help him, and not wanting to be shouted at I hung up. But, decades later, I still remember the experience.
And a customer service person has hung up me before because I was dysregulated and was using inappropriate language. I was completely overwhelmed by a health insurance transfer issue involving a pre-existing condition. I was calling to find out what I needed to do, and the information was basically I needed to have done something two weeks ago—before I knew I needed to do anything. It was incredibly frustrating (and not the fault of the woman I was talking to.) But she set a very clear boundary with me and told me that she would have to end the call if I couldn’t calm down. And when I couldn’t calm down, she hung up. I wish I had had those types of boundary skills when I was answering the irate tree guy’s calls.
Yes, Phone Phobia is real…especially if you are neurodivergent
It turns out that phone phobia is common. A significant portion of people are afraid of phone calls. But I think it might be worse for neurodivergent people. Fear of the phone, or in this day and age, fear of talking on the phone, is classified under social anxiety. Social skills and social interactions can be difficult for neurodivergent people. As a quirky person, who thinks differently sometimes, what I’m saying doesn’t always get interpreted the way I mean it to be. And as someone with slower processing speed (I have to think about things longer) I might not understand something all that well. But I think for me the main reason is the surprise factor. Unless someone set up the call ahead of time, I don’t know when the phone is going to ring! And then it takes some mental gymnastics to get myself prepared to go into the spontaneous and improvisational arena of a phone conversation. The other piece is that I’m a highly visual person and I get a lot of information from non-verbal cues.
And there are ways to cope.
I have also gotten better at talking on phones as someone whose job is talking to people. When the internet cuts out during a telehealth appointment with a client, I am able to move the session to the phone so we can finish up. It is not ideal because I have lost the visual aspect, but I’m also used to listening to my clients and picking up on their non-verbal sound cues as well. I also trained myself to be better at listening and processing sound information by listening to podcasts.
By building skills
But while I have gotten “better,” it is still something I struggle with. Much like my grandfather I have to take some time getting myself ready to make a call. Though frequently the anticipation of the call is much worse than the phone call itself. Sometimes if I just force myself to start dialing and then deal with what comes up I don’t spend as much time feeling uncomfortable about it. I’ve also learned some skills: actively paying attention, asking for clarification when I don’t understand, and slowing down my speech so I can be understood better.
And I prefer email and texting for most of my communication. I tend to go to those first. I like the time I get to think about incoming communication and formulate a response. Phone calls are better when you need a quicker back and forth to answer something complicated. Or need to ask a series of questions.
For more info: