If you write down what you want to say before you call the doctor’s office, or you answer a voicemail by text so that you don’t have to call back, this video is for you. You’ll see what makes phone calls hard with social anxiety, what research shows about moving to text, and what phone anxiety has in common with other social situations. You’ll also see how to tell whether you simply prefer texting or whether fear is part of it.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Disclaimer:
This video is for education. It is not medical advice and not a substitute for professional treatment. If you have a diagnosed condition or a history of serious trauma, please work with a qualified professional.
Transcript
You need to call the doctor’s office. Before you dial, you write down the first sentence you want to say.
You tell yourself it’s just a phone call. Telling yourself that has never made the call any easier, and there is a reason for that.
The method I work with starts in the body, where this reaction begins.
You’ll see what makes phone calls this hard, what they share with the moments that make you nervous face to face, and how you can tell whether you simply prefer texting or whether fear is part of it.
Much of what makes a phone call hard happens before you dial. You write down what you want to say, sometimes word for word, so that you have something to read if you can’t think of anything.
You wait for the right moment to call, and when that moment comes, you find a reason to wait a little longer.
You search the website for an online form or an email address that you could use instead of calling.
Calls that really matter, like calls to the doctor, to your landlord or to your insurance company, can stay on your list for a long time.
Calls that come in to you follow a similar pattern. When an unknown number appears on your screen, you don’t answer it.
Afterwards you send a message like “Sorry, can’t talk right now, what’s up?”
When someone leaves you a voicemail, you listen to it and then answer by text message or email, so that you don’t have to call back.
When you do end up on a call, other things start to happen. Your own voice sounds strange to you while you are speaking.
When the other person asks something you didn’t expect, you feel that you won’t be able to give the right answer.
When there is a silence on the line, you feel that you have to fill it right away.
You start to talk faster so that the call will be over sooner.
If other people are in the room, you worry that they can hear every word you say.
After the call has ended, it often stays on your mind. You go back over what you said, and you think about how your voice sounded.
A survey of five hundred and twenty adults found the same pattern. People who felt more anxious about phone calls were less likely to choose a call, even for things like booking a doctor’s appointment.
If you recognize yourself in this, nothing is wrong with you.
Texting often feels like the answer to all of this. Most people would expect that someone who avoids phone calls simply sends more messages, so that they stay in contact with others as much as before.
Researchers have looked at this, and their results show something different. I’ll come back to these results later in this video.
A phone call has a few features that make it harder than many other conversations.
The first feature is that you can only hear the other person’s voice.
When the other person goes quiet, you can’t see whether they are smiling, thinking or frowning.
You may notice that you read that silence as a bad sign, and that you start to explain yourself or correct what you just said.
The second feature is that everything happens in real time. On a call, each sentence reaches the other person the moment you say it, and you can’t change it before they hear it.
A recent study shows how much this matters to people with social anxiety.
In this study, adults answered questions about texting and phone calls, and people with more social anxiety especially valued one thing about texting.
They could prepare a message and change it before the other person saw it.
The more they valued that, the more anxious they felt about phone calls.
A phone call does not give you the chance to prepare and change what you say, and for people with more social anxiety, that chance mattered.
The third feature is that other people may be able to hear you.
At work, on the train or at home with your family nearby, people who are not part of the conversation can often hear what you say.
You may notice that you speak more quietly, that you choose your words more carefully, or that you wait until you are alone before you make the call.
The fourth feature has to do with your own voice. When you feel anxious around others, your attention often turns to yourself and to what you are doing.
On a call, your own voice is one of the few things there is to pay attention to, so you may find yourself listening to how you sound while you are still speaking.
All of this makes a phone call harder. It still leaves one question open, and that is why the fear is there in the first place.
When calls feel this hard, moving to text makes sense. When researchers combined the results of twenty-two studies with more than thirteen thousand people, they found that people with more social anxiety felt more comfortable communicating online.
Because text feels safer, most people would expect that someone who avoids calls simply sends more messages instead. An online survey with one hundred and fifty-eight people checked this.
The more socially anxious the people were, the fewer calls they reported, and they did not report enough extra text messages to make up for them.
The messages did not take the place of the calls that were missing.
A second question is whether the body calms down during a written conversation.
In an experiment with seventy-three people, some with high and some with low social anxiety, researchers compared a chat with a conversation face to face. People said they felt more anxious face to face.
However, their heart rate and sweating went up in both conversations, and for these measurements the researchers found no measurable difference between the chat and the conversation face to face.
Choosing text makes sense, because it makes the moment easier. At the same time, contact with other people tends to become smaller, and the body still reacts during a written conversation.
You may also have noticed that the next call doesn’t feel any easier after you have chosen text.
This leads back to the question of why the fear is there in the first place.
On the phone, you are afraid of how the other person sees you and whether they judge you.
This fear of being judged is the same fear that many people with social anxiety feel when they speak up in a meeting or meet someone new.
The fear of phone calls is therefore a part of social anxiety. The phone adds its own difficulties to this fear, and that is why calls can feel harder than many other situations.
Research supports the view that the fear of phone calls is a part of social anxiety.
Researchers and clinicians measure social anxiety with a questionnaire called the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale.
It asks about twenty-four everyday situations, and two of them are phone calls.
Phone calls are therefore counted among the situations in which social anxiety shows up.
If you notice this fear mostly on the phone, there is a reason for that.
In a group, you can stay quiet and let the others talk. On the phone, you have to speak, and the other person hears every word.
That is why the phone is often the place where people notice this fear most clearly.
Even if you only notice it on the phone, it is still the same fear of being judged.
It is often said that younger people simply don’t like phone calls and that this has nothing to do with fear.
A study of five hundred and twenty adults in the United States found that younger people reported more anxiety about phone calls than older people, so being young does not rule out social anxiety.
To tell whether you simply prefer texting or whether fear is part of it, ask yourself whether you feel afraid before a call,
whether you keep thinking about a call after it has ended, and whether there are calls you need to make that you keep putting off.
If your answer to these questions is no, and the calls you need to make get made when they are needed, then you simply prefer text.
If fear is part of it for you, what you are experiencing matches a pattern that is typical of social anxiety. A professional can tell you whether it meets a diagnosis.
The method I teach explains where this pattern comes from. In this method, earlier experiences in which being seen or heard went badly have taught your body to expect the same again.
Your body now reacts to situations in which someone could judge you. You don’t have to force yourself to make calls for this to change.
The work can begin at home, before your next call, so that calls can become easier and easier.
Remember the doctor’s office and the sentence you wrote down before you dialed?
You wrote it because you expected to be judged. It makes sense that you needed it.
If you want to see how this method works and how you can start working on this from home, watch this video here. (points to the end screen) It starts with a phone ringing.
(End screen: “Working Through Social Anxiety at Home”) Thank you for taking the time to watch this. If phone calls have been hard for you, there are reasons for that, and those reasons can be worked on.