Sounds to me like this guy has an anxiety disorder that he's masking as a hatred of phones.
>Recently, when I was at mum’s alone, the house phone rang. I didn’t answer it. It rang again immediately. I didn’t answer it. It rang again immediately. I stood over it, willing it to stop, palms sweating. The stand-off was only broken when mother texted me to tell me to answer the phone. I hate telephones.
My fear of phone is more among the line of "I might miss something _very_ important if I don't answer immediately." Unsolicited phone calls, and sometimes non-important phone calls make me very annoyed/angry to the point that sometimes I started yelling at caller over the phone. I know I shouldn't.
However, at the same time, I'm also scared of answering the phone from known or unknown callers since I _don't know_ what they're calling me for. Even such call is expected, I always assume they're to tell me a bad news. I'm fully aware it's absurd, but it's uncontrollable.
More elsewhere in thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15678214
For example, I can actually pretty much relate to this guy's feelings about telephones. Is it also caused by me having some mental disorders?
> In many polls, people list their number one fear as “public speaking”, beating out “death” by some margin. Not me.
Perhaps for this reason the fear of talking to a stranger must be so strongly suppressed.
Personally, I also often feel uncomfortable when accepting a call from an unknown number, but I try to lean into the pain and pick up nevertheless. I actually think of my phone as something like a therapeutic device that allows me to practice talking to strangers and little by little the feeling of uncomfortableness will fade away...