I have high anxiety with using the phone - with calling someone AND answering it. I haven't phoned anybody in YEARS. I rarely if ever use my home phone or my cellphone for calling purposes - it's mostly for text purposes. I've always preferred to contact people through text or email.
Yesterday I had received a phone call from a social worker that had help run this group therapy for the 'transitional' age range(15-24) I had attended. I went to every single session, as this was the first time running a group for this age group here. They have a feedback session coming up soon and I was expected to get a call from them about it as a reminder for it. So, yesterday this lady had phoned me and left a message, then another message since she forgot to give me her email address if I had wanted to contact her back that way.
I never answered it, even though I was here the entire time listening to the messages. I felt guilty for a short time and I had about 4hrs to call her back before she would leave her office. After many tears of frustration and anxiety, spoke to a friend about it. I decided to call her back(about 3hrs later). I had talked to my parents as well, did some pacing back and forth with the phone in my hand, deep breathing, then pretending to press the buttons on the phone multiple times. Going through the whole phone number to practice my swift button pressing skills haha
And then... I just closed my eyes, took one last deep breath and just started dialing the number. It was an extension number so I had to dial a few numbers afterwards to get to her office phone. Then... anxiety struck me because nobody answered the phone. She was not there! I had to leave a message

I've never left someone a message before and since I was unprepared for that outcome, I left a trainwreck of a message. Sounded very incoherent in it, she does know about my phone phobia and I did mention I was really nervous in it. After ending my message, I was trembling SO much and tired. I almost wanted to nap, but instead I continued to talk to my friend via texts(had been almost the entire time).
However despite how horrible my message sounded, I felt really proud of myself for doing that, especially when I had the choice to email her instead. I will probably be hearing from her on Monday or Tuesday and I will hope someone is here to answer it for me because I am not doing that again for awhile. LOL! I need time to recover from this experience.