I have phone anxiety. How do I deal with my phone anxiety?

Hi. It’s Jenny at AnxietyBoss.com. Our question today comes to us from Lori in Los Angeles. I have phone anxiety. How do I deal with my phone anxiety?

Phones, especially cell phones, are such a big part of most people’s lives. However, there are many people who have phone anxiety. Typically, a person who has anxiety about the phone may have fears about the general use of the phone, difficulty with verbal interactions with others. They may be more comfortable with face-to-face interaction or may have a social anxiety that includes anxiety with the phone.

The best way to help resolve issues with phone anxiety if there’s no social phobia is to use exposure training. This technique involves small steps to begin use of the phone and extinguishing the phobia over time and build confidence. The person begins with simple steps such as making a phone call or if that’s too challenging, it may just be holding the phone with a dial tone. This occurs until the person feels comfortable with the step. Then there’s a progressive step forward such as calling a specific number. It may be a number where it’s known that a voice mail will pick up like a realtor’s office after hours.

The goal at this step will not be to leave a message, but rather to practice making a call and hearing the response on the other end. The person would practice this until they felt comfortable to move to the next step. The sequence of steps continues until the person is successful in managing to answer or use the phone with little or no anxiety. The result is that the phone phobia would be eliminated. This is one method of dealing with it. Not every method works for everybody.

You can visit AnxietyBoss.com and see if you have other types of anxiety with our anxiety test. You can also see other methods that can be used for dealing with anxiety.