anxieties and hangups

We all have them. Some make sense to everyone. Some don't make sense even to the person who has them, much less to anyone else.

My annoying quirky anxiety is about making telephone calls. Now, my dad would probably be flabbergasted to learn this. I was well known for calling friends and tying up the phone line for hours back in my teenage days. I also had a number of long-distance friends, so every month he would chase me down to pay for my LD charges on the phone bill out of my babysitting money.

It started small enough. When I was young, I used to hate calling for pizza or to schedule a hair appointment. Then, when I worked in social work, I hated making calls to my clients. I was so stressed out in those jobs, that I dreaded calling because I was afraid I'd hear about some major problem or other that I would then have to try to solve. I used to carry a pager for my 1st social work job and would have to respond to crisis calls. For 2 years after leaving that job, I would experience a strong startle response if I heard someone else's pager beep. Thank goodness that was about the same time that everyone started switching to cell phones and pagers fell out of favor. In my current job, I encourage my students to email me if they want to reach me, which most are happy to do.

A few years ago, this anxiety about making calls started impacting my phone calls to friends. I'm not quite sure why. Whatever the reason, I worry that I'm bothering people when I call just to chat, and that they are tolerating me, not actually enjoying the conversation. I know it's stupid, but once I have decided to call someone, it can take me a little time to convince myself that my friends will be happy to receive my call, not annoyed.

The good thing is that I still enjoy receiving calls from my friends and experience no anxiety about that at all, nor do I usually get worked up about returning a call when someone has left me a message. Still, I hate putting it on them all the time. I'm grateful to email and instant messaging as alternate ways of maintaining contact with friends while I work on overcoming this stupid hangup.

Psychologists use a technique called systematic desensitization to help people overcome phobias. While this is not even close to that level, the principle would still apply well in this case. The more phone calls I make, the easier it will become again. It worked for me with public speaking, I know it would work with this. I don't want to put numbers on this goal, but I did call a friend tonight to wish him a happy birthday. It's a start.