[Rivière]

I was just reading this thread on conquering phone anxiety. It reminded me of when I was growing up.

I used to struggle to speak to people on the phone as a child, all the way up until I went to university at 25. I used to say I had a 'phobia of the phone' but clearly this wasn't the case. It just gave me a lot of anxiety.

I was perfectly ok answering the phone... to a point. However, when I was required to be the one to make a phone call I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I'd start panicking, my chest would get tight. Sometimes even though the call was important, I'd delay making the call. It'd play on my mind over and over to the point where I just couldn't bring myself to do it and I'd have to get my mum to help me.

In one instance, I was in my mid to late teens and I'd bought some Xbox Live Gold membership as it was on sale for £1 for the first month and then £30 every 3 months after. I found out the only way to cancel the subscription was to call the company and get them to cancel it. I panicked and put off calling so hard that I'd spent £60 in total (6 months of membership) before I finally plucked up the courage to cancel it. It took all of 2 minutes to answer some brief questions and that was the end of it. The subscription was cancelled. It was a hard lesson learned, but also my most memorable.

Did you ever suffer phone anxiety growing up? How did you overcome it? If you're still going through it, what kind of coping mechanisms do you use to help when you can't get help with calling/answering?