PHONE CALL SWEATS: INITIATED.

           I’m starting to get the phone call sweats.

It used to be just the dramatic fear of opening an email – would I have a job reply, would I have a job rejection, would my mother be emailing to ask me about how ‘it’ is all going, will I have been billed for using a service that I have had no idea about, what if, what if, what if?

Job hunting is like being on drugs.

   It involves numerous highs and lows, mood swings, extensive exhaustion coupled with under-eating and then over-indulging. It involves physical effects – irratic behaviour and extreme paranoia, fear of public places and open spaces otherwise known as agoraphobia. It involves hitting the bottle every night and having nightmares about the next time you see an ex-boyfriend and he wonders ‘what are you up to now?’ It involves watching ‘Helicopter heroes’ in the morning and then crying simply because a girl was allergic to a guinea-pig.

And now it involves fear of the phone call.

You can google it.

This shit is real. And it’s happening!

    Telephone phobia

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Telephone phobia (telephonophobia, telephobia) is reluctance or fear of making or taking phone calls, literally, "fear of telephone".^[1] Telephone phobia is also considered to be a type of Social Phobia or Social anxiety problem.^[1]

Sufferers typically report fear that they would fail to respond appropriately in a telephone conversation,^[1] and fear finding nothing to say, which would end in embarrassing silence, stammering, or stuttering.^[1] The associated avoidance behavior includes asking others (e.g. relatives at home) to take their phone calls and exclusive use of answering machines.^[1] As a result, the sufferers avoid many activities, such as scheduling events or clarifying information.^[2]

Another reason is the sufferers may believe that people who call them bear bad or upsetting news.

As is common with various fears and phobias, there is a wide spectrum of severity of the fear of phone conversations and the corresponding difficulties.^[1] In 1993 it was reported that about 2.5 million people in Great Britain have telephone phobia.^[3]

   The truth is, I have no idea how many people now have my mobile telephone number. I have signed up and registered to so many jobsites, websites, shitsites, I don’t know if I am being rung by a friend or a foe or a potential employer. The other night, whilst drunk, I realised (the morning after whilst doing a standard phone check) that I had been called by a random number at eleven pm, and I’d actually engaged in a three minute conversation. Now, three minutes is quite a long time. However, I have no recollection of this number, nor the phone call, nor any idea of who could have rang.

  I have deleted the number (it scared me a little, the day after) and refused to call it back.

 So…. It’s just another little something to ponder over, don’t you think?