Talking on the Phone

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Why talking on the phone is exhausting to Aspergers people? I had to talk on the phone twice, one to my health plan & the other to my phone company. I love the old days when you talk to a live person & not a recording, you have to press alot of numbers if the recording don’t understand you.

I hate talking on the phone too.

I'm autistic and talking on the phone really tires me out compared to say emailing or posting on an online forum. I think it has something to do with all the internal translating I have to do from words I hear into meaningful images or patterns and again from thought patterns into words I speak. I think in patterns and I learned a lot of words by pictures, so I have to translate back and forth like crazy. And gauging when the other person is finished with saying their piece and it's my turn to speak can take a lot of mental focus. It is like communicating with someone down a very long tube. Plus I can be put on the spot to reply to something without having time to think it through. And I usually have to have a list of what I intend to say because otherwise I can get lost. Just chatting offhand on the phone gets exhausting. I do very well making technical presentations with slides and pictures when I've thought through all of the material ahead of time, so it's not that I can't speak well.

Automated phone systems with numeric menus that you have to navigate get to me, especially when they are designed poorly (which is not uncommon). If it's a phone line I haven't used before, by the time I get through navigating the menu and punching numbers I tend to forget what I have to say - like my short-term memory can either hold what I want to talk about or it can hold information about where I am in the numeric phone menu, but not both...

Repeatedly hitting zero gets you to a live person most of the time. Automated message options never list the option I am interested in.

In my experience also and the same with the automated message options... Sometimes you can repeat live operator a few times. But then getting someone on the phone who isn't a half asser is another issue. I cant' stand people who only half ass listen.

I despise talking on the phone almost to the point of phobia; I don't know why. I wish I could stay in touch with people like a normal person, but it's a skillset that I've never acquired, much less mastered.
I'm very fortunate to have a mate who's capable of spending literally hours on the phone talking to Social Security, Medicare, insurance companies, DME, and doctor's front offices; all of which appear to enjoy passing off responsibility like a game of 'hot potato' (MEDICARE: "You need to call Social Security." SOCIAL SECURITY: "No; you need to call Medicare."). I don't know what I'd do without her.

The other day I was listening to her talk to a CSR on the phone who literally had the intellect of a potato. Everything; name, social security number, address, had to be repeated five or six times, spelled out V E R Y S L O W L Y...
and still they couldn't repeat it back correctly. I had to go outside so I wouldn't feel compelled to scream in frustration, and I wasn't even the one on the phone.

Making phone calls makes me nervous. I'll take messaging over a phone call any day of the week.

Phone calls make me nervous too. It's even easier to talk face to face for me sometimes.

Phone calls are just awful for me as well. The hardest part of phone calls for me is: I never know when it's my turn to speak. So I find myself accidentally interrupting the person on the other end. And then after I interrupt, I become embarrassed and even more nervous, apologize profusely, etc, etc.

I noticed many aspies despise phone calls, so you're certainly not alone.

I also hate talking on the phone. I know there's a good chance that the secretary isn't going to understand my accent. I always have to rehearse what I'm going to say, word for word.

Talking on the phone gives me so much anxiety. I avoid it as much as possible.

I think it’s exhausting cuz it takes alot of energy to talk & to find the right words to say. Talking to my dad on the phone is hard, alot of the time he don’t understand, he can say stuff that he think he heard, he can make me angry & cry too. I don’t talk to him too much anymore.

My biggest irritations are with telemarketers. The Caller I.D. function is terrific, and weeds-out ninety-percent of useless calls.

Also, I've gotten used to communicating, and getting information online; esp. the abilities to glean straight-answers faster than by telephone.

I'm not a fan of recordings, either. Very time-consuming.

Couldn't tell you why, but I find phone calls to be strange in general. They freak me out a little. (As in, "what is with this bizarre device, and I don't like that I can't see who I'm talking to" heebie jeebies type stuff) The only person I can talk to on the phone without any anxiety or difficulty is my Husband.

I also find it extremely difficult to understand how I should respond over the phone. I've exhausted myself for a large chunk of my life learning how the average person talks, behaves, etc and what's typically considered a standard response to daily conversation so that I can pass well enough to avoid problems. It's been a long arduous process, and I'm still incapable of picking up on most subtleties, but what I've learned has made navigating the NT world much easier. So when I'm limited to only vocal tones (which.. pardon my language but there's no other way to get my point across.. I'm f****** terrible at) no facial expressions of any kind, no body language of any kind, I get all "Deer in the headlights" or I force myself to respond quickly and start rambling. I can't recall a single phone conversation where I didn't think "Oh no... did I say something wrong? Was that the wrong response? Are they angry? Annoyed? Do they think I'm weird or stupid? S*** S*** S***!"
Like many people have said as well, I don't know when I should speak so I often interrupt the person speaking or there's this giant gap of air where it takes me too long to realize they're waiting for me to talk, and that just makes it all even worse.

I get uncomfortable talking on the phone or any form of communication where I have to speak verbally and listen to others respond. Even with my non-soulbond friends I get nervous as it's something I'm not used to doing. Plus social anxiety adds to the stress.

A friend and I did a Skype cam session a couple years ago... it was nice but I was scared and had a hard time finding the right words to say to him through my mic. It was also hard letting Shadow talk to him.