phone phobia

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psychology: introspective: phone phobia

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phone phobia (alternate keywords: phonephobia, phone-phobia, telephobia) is a psychological condition in which an individual experiences extreme fear or avoidance of using the telephone. In some cases, it is experienced while making (as opposed to receiving) phone calls, but it can also be escalated to the point where the phone-phobic is afraid to listen to voice-mail (answering machine) messages.

Notes

As far as I can tell, this condition is not officially recognized, though if you Google for phone phobia the evidence would seem to indicate that it is a known problem.

Community

• Phone Phobia (at Ning): forum and blog space opened (by the owner of the HypertWiki site) in March, 2008
• Phone-phobia at HypertWiki: has some personal experiences from maybe a dozen people; discussion welcome

Links

• therapy
  • CTRN: somewhat dubious, as their ad says "To learn more about our 24-hour fear of phones program, please call us at 1-800-828-7484"... <facepalm> (sort of like the famed "Illiterate? Write to this address..." posters)