By Moyo Olisa<\/p>\n
It\u2019s that time of the year when everyone starts talking about leaving people behind in the year. I think I usually fall into a lot of people\u2019s lists, because my list of \u201cfriends\u201d seems to reduce every year. Not that I have a problem with it, but it\u2019s a clear indication that people have a problem with something that I am doing.<\/p>\n
If you ask anyone who really knows me, they will tell you that I am an absolute \u201cpeople person\u201d, but I lack basic communication skills. It\u2019s funny because my job requires me to constantly engage with thousands of entrepreneurs across the continent, and I absolutely love it, but how is it that I am not able to apply the same fundamental skill set when dealing with family and friends? As with any other weird symptom I have experienced, I went against my better judgement and consulted WebMB. Scrolling past the usual brain cancer and certain death predictions, I finally came across a diagnosis that seemed more believable and yet still unbelievable.<\/p>\n
I have a form of Social Anxiety Disorder called Telephonophobia<\/strong> (I swear I\u2019m not making this up).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In this fast-paced world where everyone can be reached through a button on a mobile communication device, and people develop FOMO (Fear OF Missing Out) from being out of the loop for a few hours, its actually not uncommon to find people who instead have the Fear Of Not Missing Out (FONMO).<\/p>\n Why am I able to better engage with strangers than familiars? I pondered over this for hours before it finally came to me. Conversations with friends and family are extremely stressful! When strangers call, there is always a reason why; an enquiry about something work related, a delivery, wrong number, etc, and I always have a ready response. These calls are predictable and last for a short time. With familiars, I never know what the call is about, and because most conversations start with them reprimanding me for not calling them or responding to their messages, I decide to ignore their calls. Conversations with familiars can go on forever (I don\u2019t know why they get so comfortable) and its mentally exhausting having to engage in a conversation that I didn\u2019t want to start in the first place. Like, unless I am sick or its my birthday or something major recently happened in my life, don\u2019t call me, I\u2019ll call you (NOT).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is not limited to phonecalls, it also extends to messages. My whatsapp is filled with hundreds of unread messages and it makes me just avoid the platform. I HATE SMALL TALK! I find people are worse when it comes to messaging. Instead of just going straight to the point, they first ask about parts of my life that I do not want to discuss – My neighbour\u2019s dog is fine, thanks. Then its time to end the conversation, because I don\u2019t want to be rude and just ghost the conversation, it ends up looking something like:<\/p>\n ME: \u201cOkay, we\u2019ll talk about it when we see. Later\u201d<\/p>\n Other Person (OP):\u201d Why are you always dismissing me\u201d<\/p>\n Me: \u201cWhat? LOL. I\u2019m not\u201d<\/p>\n OP: \u201cHave you eaten?\u201d<\/p>\n Me: \u201cErr.. I don\u2019t eat dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n OP: \u201cReally? Lol.\u201d<\/p>\n Me: \u201cYes. Lol.\u201d<\/p>\n OP: \u201cLOL\u201d<\/p>\n Me: \u201cLOL\u201d<\/p>\n OP: \u201cLoL\u201d<\/p>\n Me: \u201cLoL\u201d<\/p>\n OP: \u201clol\u201d<\/p>\n And it goes on and on!<\/p>\n I keep promising a certain someone that I will try to do better, because this phobia really affects the people I love, so I think I will start by reaching out to all 893 people (clearly no longer friends) whose messages I\u2019ve aired on WhatsApp since January this year and wish them all a Merry Christmas and joyeaux New Year. Hopefully I don\u2019t receive more than 10 \u201cLol. Who this?\u201d messages in response.<\/p>\n I wish there was Mail Chimp\/ Mail Merge for WhatsApp\u2026 Zuckerberg should look into this, and no, broadcast messages don\u2019t quite cut it.<\/p>\n Anyways, I wish everyone reading this a Merry Christmas and Joyeux New Year, and if there\u2019s something you\u2019ve been doing that you feel you should improve on, there\u2019s no better time than now to make things right.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Moyo Olisa It\u2019s that time of the year when everyone starts talking about leaving people behind in the year. I think I usually fall into a lot of people\u2019s lists, because my list of \u201cfriends\u201d seems to reduce every year. Not that I have a problem with it, but it\u2019s a clear indication that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-moyos-musings","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3588"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3626,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3588\/revisions\/3626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heirsholdings.com\/hhpeople\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}