Phone Anxiety - A Growing Mental Disorder Thanks to the New Normal

Is avoiding calls a routine for you? Or, When your phone rings, do you feel nervous and stressed? Please don’t ignore these symptoms.

I ignored it and almost ended up in a depression.

It’s almost a year working from home due to the pandemic. As a team leader in the financial service industry, my work involves monitoring team performance and reporting any issues to senior management. It's a time-critical process and requires frequent updates and information to be circulated within various teams.

In a general office setup, getting an update was easy. I had to walk down to my team’s bay and get the work done. But, working from home meant, for every update, I had to keep calling multiple team members and at the same time keep providing those updates to my stakeholders.

The amount of time on the phone had increased drastically, and I was almost on the phone for 10 hours a day. This started to affect me. I was getting irritated with phone calls. I used to avoid them as much as possible, to the point that I used to hand over my phone to my wife to excuse me from attending to calls.

I was experiencing frequent mood swings. I was holed in my room the entire day and preferred to be left alone. A ringing phone was the last thing I wanted to see in front of my eyes. It began with me avoiding official calls but slowly aggravated, and I started to avoid calls from family and friends.

I would disconnect the call and instead prefer texting. An unknown number would make me anxious, and I never picked up the ring unless I knew the person. I even had caller id detection to know who is calling if the number was not on my contact list.

My wife being a yoga trainer and a dietician by profession is around doctors all the time. She was keenly observing the changes in me. She started speaking to me about it as she saw major changes in my behavior.

But I was in denial mode. I always brushed it off as a normal behavior due to work stress. The issue continued until one day; she made me sit and listen to her as she spoke about the mental disorder called “phone anxiety.”

What is phone anxiety?

So, when it comes to your phone, do you relate to any of this?

Do you avoid answering calls? When your phone rings, do you feel any anxiety or stress? Do you worry about who is calling or what you are going to talk about? Do you feel uneasiness before, during, or after the call? Do you prefer texting over phone calls?

I know those are a lot of questions, but they all are important. If you experience most of these symptoms, as I did, chances are you could be suffering from “phone anxiety.”

Don’t worry if you hear this word for the first time because even I was never aware of it; it’s as real as any other phobia that people suffer. Phone anxiety is common among those who have a social anxiety disorder — social phobia or anxiety disorder that causes extreme fear in social settings.

Do not misunderstand phone anxiety with a general dislike for making or receiving phone calls. Phone anxiety is a telephobia when talking to someone on the phone causes you to experience certain extreme symptoms. Symptoms could be emotional, like heightened anxiety, or physical, like nausea or dizziness.

Multiple studies have proved that phone anxiety is a common fear.

According to a 2019 survey of the United Kingdom, phone anxiety affects over half of Britain’s office workers. It was also found that 76% of millennials and 40% of baby boomers have anxious thoughts when their phone rings.

Reason for phone anxiety

There are various reasons for developing phone anxiety.

1) A only voice communication is not preferred by some people. The absence of facial expressions, gestures, or eye contact could be daunting for them. This was one of the reasons working from home affected me.

2) Long pauses during phone conversations can be overwhelming for people with anxiety-induced thoughts. Silence on the other end could be a sign that the chat is not going well. Whenever I used to speak to my team, and there was a long silence, I used to get anxious. I sometimes used to shout on the phone. This would often lead to my team member panicking and taking the wrong decision.

3) Confrontation or fear of being misunderstood may be another reason. Like with me, whenever the phone rang, and it was my boss calling, I knew 9 out of 10 times, he would start firing at me. I used to keep staring at the phone, and my mind would never decide whether to reject or accept the call.

4) Bad experience of past or abuse are some other reasons. In my case, the delay in providing updates meant my bosses were pulling me up as they felt that my team efficiency had dropped. I tried to justify the issue to them, but they were not buying it and questioning my ability to manage teams. Over a period of time, even my mind started to question my own abilities.

Now comes the most crucial question: What can you do if the phone calls make you anxious?

1) Acceptance- Look for the symptoms and accept that you have a problem. Acceptance is the first step to recovery. Like in my case, I kept denying that I was suffering. Luckily I had someone by my side who knew my issue and guided me in the right direction.

2) Fear- The best way to deal with phone anxiety is to gather the courage to face your fears. You can do this by exposing yourself to more phone calls. The more you do it, the better you get. In my case, I started speaking to my friends for a longer time. We spoke about our memories, families, and everything under the blue sky. I started loving the conversations, and they continued.

3) Professional help- I was fortunate not to reach this stage. Still, if needed, there are various talking therapies available in the market. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is one such treatment that helps overcome distressing thoughts and emotions; if you are not able to solve the problem yourself, it's better to take professional help.

4) Speak up, don’t be shy- The biggest issue with any mental disorders is that we try to hide it. But the action has to be exactly the opposite. The best advice my wife gave me was to speak to my bosses. I reluctantly followed her suggestion, and the experience was tremendously positive. They heard me and assured me of full support. I found them to be more accepting and humble after that. So, speak about your mental issues, and you may often get a positive response, which will help you heal faster.

5) Help others- This is not related to yourself. So if you know someone who could be suffering from anxiety, encourage the person to seek help. Anxiety is a serious issue and can cost people their mental wellbeing and adversely impact their overall quality of life. Identifying a mental disorder is difficult, and if detected, early treatment would help the victim with a better and faster recovery.

Takeaway

I have been through it, and with experience, I can tell you that it’s not a comfortable feeling. Phone anxiety was impacting me and my lifestyle. I had gone away from my friends and family. I preferred staying alone. And my professional life had taken a beating.

Had I not been made aware, the situation would have worsened. Now that I am out of it, I feel much better. I am back to my routine, and things are positive. All thanks to my wonderful and darling wife.

Phone anxiety is mental and cannot be identified easily. You have to be close with a person to know about it. But as soon as you spot it, don’t delay and make matters worse. It might look like a small problem, but it can develop into a major mental disorder like anxiety disorder.

It can be easily treated if action is taken at the right time.