Chapter 16
Beat Your Technophobia and Step Into Possibilities
Regardless of one’s feelings about technology, however, these devices are part of our daily lives and, while someone could theoretically avoid them in their personal life, odds are very little that they could hold a successful professional job without technology.
Exploring Technophobia
Given the ever growing market of available and sophisticated, evolving technologies, most people can understand a suspicion of technology that is often accompanied by some degree of fascination. However, for those suffering from technophobia, that suspicion or fear is there – but without the accompanying sense of excitement and curiosity.
For some, it’s the idea of built-in Web cams that brings concerns about spying or hackers being able to see into their living rooms. For others, it’s suspicion of someone tracking their Web history or online activity – that violation of privacy, if you will.
For other sufferers, it isn’t so much the suspicion of the technologies so much as it is a sheer resistance to them due to frustration or anxiety about actually learning how to use them successfully.
Technophobia comes with a variety of symptoms, such as:
Technophobia varies from many other phobias and fears in that it is not necessarily psychologically crippling.
For example, many other phobias are rooted alongside anxiety, panic, or behavioral disorders and often require medicinal approaches to treatment – however, for many, technophobia is simply rooted in emotion and personal preference.
This difference is important in not only approaching those with this phobia, but in approaching a cure. Though people who suffer from technophobia do not choose to have this phobia, it generally a more direct phobia to encounter and overcome.
Overcoming Technophobia
By helping those close to you to encounter and move past their technophobia, you give them more than release from their fear; you open new doors and possibilities for them. Overcoming this fear is about more than simply encountering and learning new technologies – it is about furthering one’s professional upward mobility and potential and about arming them with the tools to perform more successfully and efficiently.
For many, treatment is as simple as working to face and learn new technologies in a more intimate setting with a teacher who is extremely approachable and patient – after all, the root of technophobia often ties to frustration from learning or technology’s rapid development and change. Many businesses provide hands-on support for sufferers given the importance of technology in the workplace. There are also therapeutic approaches to delve into one’s phobia. Everyone’s fear is a bit different and so exploring that fear and treating it must take an approach just as individualized.