Dialing Down Your Phone Anxiety: How To Beat A Fear Of Phone Calls

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Phone anxiety is incredibly common. It can include a fear of answering calls, a fear of making calls or both. While instant messaging and online ordering has helped to make phone calls avoidable in some situations, there are still many instances where picking up the phone is necessary from booking interviews to speaking to customers at work. Putting off important calls could lead to missed opportunities, strained relationships and problems remaining unresolved. 

If you’re currently fighting with this fear, the good news is that you can conquer it. You may not ever love phone calls, but there could be ways to make them less scary as this post explores. 

Why do phone calls feel so scary?

First, let’s try to understand what might be causing your phone anxiety. There are a few common reasons why people don’t like talking on the phone:

• No visual cues: Some of us rely heavily on expressions and gestures to judge our responses. Without these, it can be harder to read people.

• Fear of awkwardness: Many of us dread not knowing what to say and having moments of awkward silence. This may come down to not being a confident speaker or again not having visual cues. 

• Fear of being misunderstood: If you’re not a clear speaker or you have an accent/are trying to speak a second language, you might fear a person not being able to understand you.

• Hearing difficulty: If you have hearing problems, you may fear phone calls because you can’t hear what the person is saying. Hearing loss and social interaction problems are strongly linked, and phone calls can take away the ability to lip read or read body language. 

• Inability to prepare: Some of us fear answering unexpected calls more than we do making calls, because we don’t know how to prepare for them.

Embarrassing or traumatic past phone calls can also cause phone anxiety. In these cases, there may be a fear that a phone call is going to end up the same way.

How to beat a phobia or phones

There are a few effective ways to beat phone anxiety…

Prepare scripts when making calls

Many people find it easier to make calls when they have notes to follow. Jot down some key points and questions to help guide you through - if you freeze up, you can look down at your notes to prompt you as to what to say next.

Start small and work your way up

Building up experience with low-stakes calls and working your way up to more important calls can help you become more confident. Consider practising with friends and family members, or by phoning up to book tables or haircuts, before taking on more difficult calls like complaints or phone job interviews.

Go somewhere quiet and private

Going somewhere without distractions and without people listening in could make it easier to hear what the other person is saying as well as making you less conscious about being overheard. 

Stand or walk around

Many people find that standing up or moving around can burn off some nervous energy and improve confidence. 

Prepare backup phrases

Improve your telephone manner by learning a few backup phrases to fill silence and help you think. This could include things like ‘give me a second to check my notes’ or ‘hmm let me think about that for a bit’. 

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