Reblog if you believe phone call anxiety is real and it isn’t childish bad behavior.

Trying to prove a point to this job helper.

Phone calls can be harder on your anxiety bc you cant pick up on the other persons behavioral cues as you talk with them

^^^^

After 10+ years of psychotherapy, almost all of my social anxiety triggers are now at a manageable level—even academic public speaking, which was my #1 worst trigger for most of my life—except for my phone anxiety. It’s literally the one and only thing I’ve never been able to significantly improve.

I have to talk the whole conversation through with my friends beforehand.

I have to get explicit confirmation from my friends that “yes, you really need to ring that person right now”.

I have to write scripts.

I have to take anti-anxiety meds, or get drunk.

I only ever ring someone as the very last resort, when all other methods are unavailable.

I hyperventilate and cry afterwards.

I’m also a 28-year-old scientist with three degrees and a teaching position. I’m normally a logical (albeit emotional) person. But anxiety is not logical.

Anxiety is due to inability to correctly perceive threats—more specifically, due to both increased expectation and increased frequency of false recognition of threats in response to neutral stimuli (this is called “pessimistic bias”). Social anxiety simply means that this inability to correctly perceive threats is specific to social interactions, rather than generalised to all aspects of life. (For example, a resting facial expression or lack of verbal acknowledgement is more likely to be perceived as anger, disgust or rejection by a socially anxious person than a neurotypical person. But a socially anxious person is not particularly more likely to worry throughout the day that they’ve left their stove on.)

Therefore, socially anxious people learn to cope with this bias by becoming hypervigilant to social cues such as posture, hand gestures, nodding, eye contact, eyebrow position, mouth tightness, tone of voice, talking speed etc., and then using all the available information to attempt to be logical and “talk down the anxiety”. We also learn to be high self-monitors, which means that we closely observe our audience and constantly (subconsciously) monitor their responses in order to ensure that they accept us and deem us “appropriate”.

But non-verbal social cues aren’t available during phone calls!

There isn’t any body language to read, or eyes to look into. You can’t monitor your audience for approval. They don’t follow the script you prepared. All you have is their voice, which is usually masked (everyone seems to have a “phone voice”, “customer service voice” or “professional voice”) and distorted by the phone and is therefore useless. All of a sudden you’re back to relying on a single neutral stimulus, and the pessimistic bias kicks in, and you start to panic because you’re not getting constant feedback.

It’s a Recognised Psychological Thing™.

Phone anxiety (actually, phone phobia) is one of the most common, most recognised and most treated phobias in the world. Social anxiety—of which phone phobia is an extremely prevalent trigger—is one of the most common, most recognised and most treated anxiety disorders in the world.

It’s most definitely real, most definitely not “childish”, and you’re not alone.

I have this, it is definitely real.

Personally for me my main thing is that I can’t start conversations with people without a lot of practicing and scripting in my head. Nowadays this means that I can’t start spontaneous, unscripted conversations - but before I used to not be able to order food or book myself in for appointments. I couldn’t get the bus or train anywhere because the thought of just asking for a ticket was terrifying.

I can’t phone people, like at all. I phone two people, my mum and brother - and that’s been after years of practice. There’s been situations where my safety is in danger and I’ve been unable to phone anyone to get help - like, I’d literally sooner die than phone for help. Apparently this is a fairly common thing with social anxiety, here I just thought I was weird.

I won’t go to events/social gatherings/etc. unless I’m sure I’ll know a few people there.

I’m extremely scared of embarrassing myself or looking weird/stupid, or any kind of negative judgement. Most of my behaviours are based on a fear of negative judgement.

I guess most of my anxiety symptoms are physical though, like a racing heart/sweating/rapid breathing. I shake a lot and my voice trembles, which basically just makes me more scared to talk in case someone can hear that I’m afraid and make fun of me for it.

Anxiety of all sorts is a really broad thing that affects everyone differently and has a whole range of symptoms, ranging from physical, behavioural and emotional. So everyone will be affected very differently.

Thank you for sharing your experiences!

Re : Phone stuff, It actually easily becomes a vicious cycle. Even with my family i only feel safe to phone if I’m reasonably sure it won’t entail any arguing/reproaches, but then said family members tend to complain about me being hard to reach almost first thing which doesn’t help

Calling for an appointment or even a dang pizza requires hours of premeditation, thinking about what i’m going to say exactly in what order, and postponing a LOT.

Also my heart jumps like a frightened rabbit every time someone calls me or knocks at my door, unless i’ve been expecting it (and sometimes when something rings in a movie or something i react the same way which is pretty annoying)

Thanks for adding your experience!

Same here. I actually have to prepare myself mentally for social situations, I often wake up earlier than needed for appointments or even going to a contest because I need some time before the fact to just relax and make sure I have everything prepared.

Also, negative social situations can and will leave me a mess. My doctor yelled at me over the phone because I messed up something small and I needed an hour after that to just cry. I literally couldn’t stop crying and was beating myself for the perceived failure.

With people I don’t know that well, I will agonize over conversations after the fact. During conversations I often try to ‘go with the flow’, but afterwards I started going over what I said and analyzing it, trying to weigh in whether I offended them accidentally or not, or whether I said something stupid or not.

And even with people I feel safe around, I’m prone to being paranoid about upsetting them. Meaning if I get a text that’s too vague/short, I will start worrying and thinking about what I’d done that could’ve upset them. And that’s with people I’ve known for 5-10 years. 

And yes, anxiety has physical symptoms for me as well. From increased heartbeat to trembling and stuttering. It all depends on how big or unfamiliar a situation or audience is.

But that doesn’t mean a person with social anxiety can’t be social and/or good at socializing. I was class leader for a while, I took debate classes and got involved in public speaking too. It’s different from one person to another, but I thought I’d maybe share my experiences with it too.

@ostensiblyexistential also added:

Thank you both for sharing your experiences!

Personally for me my main thing is that I can’t start conversations with people without a lot of practicing and scripting in my head. Nowadays this means that I can’t start spontaneous, unscripted conversations - but before I used to not be able to order food or book myself in for appointments. I couldn’t get the bus or train anywhere because the thought of just asking for a ticket was terrifying.

I can’t phone people, like at all. I phone two people, my mum and brother - and that’s been after years of practice. There’s been situations where my safety is in danger and I’ve been unable to phone anyone to get help - like, I’d literally sooner die than phone for help. Apparently this is a fairly common thing with social anxiety, here I just thought I was weird.

I won’t go to events/social gatherings/etc. unless I’m sure I’ll know a few people there.

I’m extremely scared of embarrassing myself or looking weird/stupid, or any kind of negative judgement. Most of my behaviours are based on a fear of negative judgement.

I guess most of my anxiety symptoms are physical though, like a racing heart/sweating/rapid breathing. I shake a lot and my voice trembles, which basically just makes me more scared to talk in case someone can hear that I’m afraid and make fun of me for it.

Anxiety of all sorts is a really broad thing that affects everyone differently and has a whole range of symptoms, ranging from physical, behavioural and emotional. So everyone will be affected very differently.

Thank you for sharing your experiences!

Re : Phone stuff, It actually easily becomes a vicious cycle. Even with my family i only feel safe to phone if I’m reasonably sure it won’t entail any arguing/reproaches, but then said family members tend to complain about me being hard to reach almost first thing which doesn’t help

Calling for an appointment or even a dang pizza requires hours of premeditation, thinking about what i’m going to say exactly in what order, and postponing a LOT.

Also my heart jumps like a frightened rabbit every time someone calls me or knocks at my door, unless i’ve been expecting it (and sometimes when something rings in a movie or something i react the same way which is pretty annoying)

Thanks for adding your experience!

Personally for me my main thing is that I can’t start conversations with people without a lot of practicing and scripting in my head. Nowadays this means that I can’t start spontaneous, unscripted conversations - but before I used to not be able to order food or book myself in for appointments. I couldn’t get the bus or train anywhere because the thought of just asking for a ticket was terrifying.

I can’t phone people, like at all. I phone two people, my mum and brother - and that’s been after years of practice. There’s been situations where my safety is in danger and I’ve been unable to phone anyone to get help - like, I’d literally sooner die than phone for help. Apparently this is a fairly common thing with social anxiety, here I just thought I was weird.

I won’t go to events/social gatherings/etc. unless I’m sure I’ll know a few people there.

I’m extremely scared of embarrassing myself or looking weird/stupid, or any kind of negative judgement. Most of my behaviours are based on a fear of negative judgement.

I guess most of my anxiety symptoms are physical though, like a racing heart/sweating/rapid breathing. I shake a lot and my voice trembles, which basically just makes me more scared to talk in case someone can hear that I’m afraid and make fun of me for it.

Anxiety of all sorts is a really broad thing that affects everyone differently and has a whole range of symptoms, ranging from physical, behavioural and emotional. So everyone will be affected very differently.

Thank you for sharing your experiences!