Published on 12, July, 2020
I’ve had problems with using telephones forever, I get anxiety and just struggle with most phone calls. I’m fine with text messages and emails, I still don’t answer them immediately. I understand the difference with being able to plan replies to texts and emails.
My question is a family member just keeps mentioning how I never answer my phone, “why can’t you answer your phone?” It’s something I struggle to explain, I still don’t fully understand.
Is there a really good link or tube video that will explain the reasons why autistic people struggle so much with telephones? It needs to be in very plain language. I’ve tried to explain to the person but normally just shutdown.
Telephone communication is the worst and has caused issues most of my life. I no longer use the phone except in extreme emergency.
An academic research study (from the University of Bristol) looked at autistic communication methods and produced results entitled:
"Anything but the phone"
https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/autistica/downloads/images/article/Anything-but-the-phone.pdf
There's a lot more to it than anxiety. For me I believe it is mainly an auditory processing issue. Without any visual clues it is much harder for me to process what the other person is saying. I tend to memorise what they say and replay it back in my head as many times as I need to to 'process' it and try and think of a reply. Of course that takes time and while my brain is doing that it isn't processing anything else they say.
That's assuming I can actually hear what the other person is saying. If there is any background noise, such as a noisy call centre, I hear everything and can't filter what one person is saying to me. The last time I tried calling my dentist I could hear so many voices, from other staff and customers in the background, that I couldn't make out anything that was said to me even when repeated numerous times. Eventually I gave up and emailed instead. To be fair they were really good when I explained my difficulties in an email, replying straight away with an appointment the same day.
When I did used to force myself to use the phone I used to find myself agreeing to stuff just to get off the call or because I would go blank and not be able to say anything. The other person would either assume my silence means they've been cut off or take it as implicit agreement and move on to something else. Invariably after a call I would end up thinking wtf just happened and be annoyed with myself because the call had not gone as planned.
You explained it perfectly. I have never had a successful phone call. It takes me so long to process that the other person usually assumes the line is bad and hangs up.