Hello, I have this problem too. I cannot handle anybody yelling at me, it just makes me break down and cry. In addition to that, I also suffer from depression, panic and anxiety attacks, not being able to make eye contact with any1, and a devastating fear of social places and situations. I understand where you're coming from. If u ever need someone to talk 2, please feel free to email me. My name is kari .

I too work in a call centre to, I had never had any call centre work experience in my life. About a year ago now I actually lost it, I had an abusive customer and I actually broke down and cried, I was so humiluated as well because I was then known as "the girl who cried"
i since then went on a course of antidepressants and to also help with my anxiety as each time I was getting up for work I would have a panic attack!
As the antidepressants took it course I started to get more confidence on the phone, and even started getting regonised as I was noticably starting to do well.
Now i'm at the point where I don't let customers get to me because hey we can't see them, they can't see us, and hey we can always terminate the call if they are being abusive. It takes awhile to get use to, but evetually you grow a what we call "thick skin" and i've learnt to just move right on, they are just a voice on the other end, nothing more.

It is to be expected when dealing with the public that you are going to encounter some people who themselves are not able to handle people.


If I have a hang-up that says : "i am stupid" and some body calls me stupid or treats me as if I am stupid, then I am likely to get upset, because I have no proper defences against something that could be true. This is because the other person has hit my hang-up.


Thus if we want to be able to handle abusive customers - and you know 'customers are always right' - then we must make sure that we don't have any hang-ups about ourselves that could trigger an unassertive response.


If we want to be assertive - that is in a non-aggressive way - we must be able to deal with criticism, in other words get rid of our own weak spots in our personality.


We have a self-help psychotherapy program at our web site that will help you not only to become more confident about yourself, but will teach how to handle criticism from other people, and especially coming from within yourself

the program starts off with an analysis of how people communicate with one another, in term of transactional analysis (ta). This is big word for simple ideas. This system teaches us that we have three ego states called the parent, adult and the child. We seem to be hopping from ego state to another.


It is the inner parent that causes most of our emotional problems. The parent is an automatic judge within us, that robotically keeps on spewing judgments out. Thus if somebody says to me that “you are stupid” I know from ta, that the other person sits in his parent ego state and that he is addressing my child, instead of my adult.


The trick in assertiveness training program is to get the other person out of his parent and back into his adult.

This is easily done once you have got rid of your own hang-ups, because hang-ups are nothing more that robotic judgmental statements about yourself. You have learned these in the past. Regardless where they come from anything learned can be unlearned.


When you do the assertive training program you will be able to counter your own criticism within yourself and by mental exercise gradually get rid of your negative self-images.


Once you have studied that course - which is completely free of charge - you not only have got rid of your negative self-image, but can immediately recognize the hang-ups in other people. People that are rude (and emotional) are usually loaded with hang-ups.


When you have completed the course you will be able to handle any customer.


Look up psychotherapy at our web site and have fun doing the course.


Jurriaan plesman, ba (psych) post grad dip clin nutr

Inreally hate that term "customer's are always right" they just want to think that. :roll: