Animals with too many of anything. Like turtles with multiple heads, and the kitten with two faces, and frogs with extra legs, and two-headed snakes. Fortunately, I don’t encounter these things too often.
I’m ok with conjoined twins, as long as they’re human.
I have a phobia of being forced to stand still. It commonly occurs at work when someone corners me when I am walking somewhere and wants to talk. I work around it by walking with them or telling them to come see me later (while sitting). This phobia precludes attending any award ceremonies in case I won or any other event where I would be forced to stand still. I get very faint and often lose muscle control if I get surprised by it. My knees literally give out and the reaction is visible. I teach classes at work and I have to make sure that I have freedom of movement at all times. Standing behind a podium is not allowed.
I have a balloon phobia. My ears are very sensitive, and loud noises hurt. A balloon could pop at any moment, for no reason at all! Bam!! Auugghh!! I hate even going near a balloon and I could never blow one up, no way.
Also, being trapped. At least once every summer, I get caught in a flash flood during monsoon season. I know from 12 years’ experience that if I just park and sit there, it will very soon let up, the water will start to drain from the street, and I’ll be fine. But I can’t just sit there, because then I’m trapped. So I have to go home, even if the water is up to my headlights. Sometimes I feel like I’m going to die right then, but it’s better than just sitting there being trapped.
Escalators, especially the ones that go down. I can tell you exactly when and why it started. I was nine years old, coming home from the airport with my brother. He told me to take one of the heavy suitcases and go on down the escalator, while he went to try and find whoever was picking us up. I remember not being able to pick up the suitcase, and kind of dragging it as best I could to the top of the escalator.
What I did next was fairly stupid. I took a step onto the escalator, clutching the handle of the suitcase and attempting to drag it onto the steps with me. The escalator moved down, and I still couldn’t get the suitcase on the stairs. So instead I tried to get back up the escalator onto solid ground so that the suitcase wouldn’t be left up there while I was all the way on the bottom floor.
I was a little panicky and flustered by this time, and really hoping my brother would somehow show up to help me. Advice: if you ever feel like trying something you’ve never done before (like walking up the down escalator) while panicky and scared, don’t. I ended up tripping over my feet and falling on my stomach, and all the while the escalator kept up its steady pace. I started freaking out and trying to get back on my feet without success.
Some kind woman, who I am eternally and sincerely grateful to, calmly helped me stand and held me steady until we reached the ground at the bottom of the escalator. My arms got a little scratched up, but I really wasn’t the worse for wear. Ever since then, though, it’s been a challenge to step onto an escalator; I’ve got to assure myself that there really isn’t any danger inherent in what I’m doing.
I have three.
Leeches. Even if they are contained in a safe aquarium just looking at the things makes me flail about.
Things with more than 6 legs. Specifically, milipedes and centipedes. We have [Scutigera coleoptrata - Wikipedia](house centipedes) here in Wisconsin that grow big enough to trot around on a leash. I have been launched into flight from laying in the bathtub when one ran out of the overflow drain.
Lastly, paper cuts. It isn’t so bad that I can’t handle paper, but I almost passed out at the scene from Jacka$$ where they were giving each other paper cuts with a manila folder.
I used to have a severe phobia of house centipedes (and no, I’m not going to post a link). I’d go into a blind state of terror and trample anything or anyone in my path in my desperate attempts to escape. I got sick of it one day and had my husband catch one and put it in a jar, and I carried it around with me, put it on my desk or wherever I happened to be hanging out, and looked at it until it no longer had that power over me. Now, I could just kill it (while shuddering) and throw it away, but I wouldn’t seek one out for company.
I have an irrational fear of water on my face. No idea where that one comes from.
I am also afraid of mousetraps, the old-fashioned snapping kind. I don’t mind mice, not even dead ones, but I refuse to touch mousetraps under any circumstances.
Birds. They are minions of evil and they fly around looking for people to peck to death with their sharp beaks. You can see the evil in their creepy little eyes. Their only purpose on this earth is to be delicious and to leave me the hell alone. shudder
Since moving to New York I am getting better about my fear of birds. Pidgeons here are very aggressive and you can’t show any fear or they will eat you alive, and I figure if I can survive that they can’t be THAT scary and evil, so I am getting better about being able to share space with them and not run screaming into the night when one lands near me.
I also have a mild version of the fear of tiny, clustered holes. Only some clusters of holes bother me, mostly lotus blossoms really, but honeycombs or swiss cheese and other such things don’t bother me at all.
I have an irrational fear of anything that flaps it’s wings within a few feet of my face. It can be as small and harmless as a moth but if it comes too close, I panic. I have bird feeders all over and plants that draw butterflies and I love to watch them as long as they stay at least 3 feet away from me. I can’t fall asleep in a room if I can hear the buzzing or flying of any insects. I have no idea why.
It isn’t something I fear as it’s not something which happens often… it would be like fearing pink elephants with green trunks, but I hate, hate, hate (“run away screaming” hate, if I could, only I can’t cos I’m too well-behaved) being tied. I’ve climbed vertical 100m walls with no safety harnesses or ropes, but put a harness on me and my brain starts screaming “NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Going spellunking in Costa Rica (Barrahonda, beautiful), I was fine while in the cave itself, but having to wear the harness to get in and out? If I’d known there were safety harnesses involved beforehand, I would have skipped the trip
I’ve suffered panic attacks a couple times and it was because I felt trapped.
I dont think I have phobias – just quirks.
But I don’t like to talk on telephones. Whenever a phone rings for me to answer my blood pressure goes up a little. Even if I know who’s calling and I welcome talking to them. I don’t know why.
That, and I hate sitting with my back to a room. I call it anti-assassination training, but since I’m not a secret agent, head of state or terrorist faction leader, I probably don’t need to worry about it too much. But still, in a restaurant, a meeting room, any place public … I get very antsy if my chair doesn’t back up to a wall.
I’m starting to develop a fear of age, illness, and/or retirement. Somehow this whole “getting old” thing feels very unfair and fearsome, like I’m getting pushed unwilling out of the whole circle of life. When I think about what’ll happen when I get too old to work, I almost have a panic attack, because that’s going to entail being banished from my beloved home state (California) at a time when I’ll be very unequipped to deal with such a drastic change. The attendant fears of disease and poverty only amplify the whole aging fear, too.
It’s gotten so that I instantly feel fearful when I hear other people discussing retirement or medical issues relating to aging and I block it all out and walk away, if possible. It’s not a healthy place to be.
It always makes me happy to know I’m not alone in this one. Most people look at me like I’m crazy if I mention being afraid of balloons.
Really, it’s a general phobia of loud noises. I hate fireworks, I’m terrified of guns (not because I think anyone’s going to shoot me, but they might shoot it in my general vicinity, thus causing the loud noise that I hate.), and I get really nervous when thunderstorms get close. Far-away thunder is fine, but those really close sudden claps of thunder terrify me.
Day-to-day this isn’t a bad fear to have, but it is tough to explain to people why you won’t go out on the 4th of July, why you won’t go to live sporting events (they often have pyrotechnics at professional sporting events), or why you want to know if there are any guns involved in a play. (Les Miserables, while being a great musical to see live, is horrible for noise-phobes!) There are also a LOT of restaurants, stores, etc. that give balloons out to little kids. Who then squeeze them compulsively, and I just know that they’re going to pop them.
I’m with the posters who have mentioned leeches. Other slimy things (slugs, snails) don’t bother me, and other bloodsucking things (mosquitos) only annoy me, but for some reason the combination of slimy and bloodsucking freaks me right out.
Also, if there’s anything covering my face, even something that doesn’t block airflow, I feel like I can’t breath, and will slowly start to panic unless I can get my face uncovered right away. Wearing a mask does it, and pulling the sheets over my head does it. There’s at least a few movies that have a romantic scene of two lovers in bed and they have the covers pulled all the way over their heads (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the first one that comes to mind). When I see a scene like that, I hold my breath in sympathy because I’m convinced they can’t breath.
Same. I almost crashed my car once when a moth got in.
I’m also scared of clowns and heights. But lately I’ve developed an irrational fear of dying in my sleep. It’s gotten to the point where it takes me forever to fall asleep cause I’m so paranoid.
Social awkwardness.
Some more for me:
Getting in a car accident that is my fault. I have nightmares about this from time to time.
Slimy things, except for banana slugs, and then only if I don’t have to touch them. I refuse to remove snails from my herb garden, because that would involve touching a gross slimy thing.
Heights, but specifically standing in a high place where there is no railing to prevent me from falling or being seized by some uncontrollable urge to jump over the edge. It doesn’t bother me if there is a railing, but it bothers me tremendously if there isn’t, or if the spaces between the rails are large enough for me to fit through.
Anything getting in my eyes. I can’t put in contacts or eye drops. Anyone doing my eye makeup- forget it. I can do that glaucoma test where they puff air in your eyes if and only if I have a death grip on the machine, and the person who’s doing the test is quick about it once I have my eye next to it. I can’t watch anything in the movies or TV where something happens to someone’s eyes, either.
Winged things flapping near my face. I suspect this is related to the eye thing.
I’m the same way. I feel anxiety when the phone rings, and always let voicemail pick it up. And there’s a huge feeling of relief if the person doesn’t leave a message, or if I don’t have to call them back. I remember when I was a little kid, I’d run and hide when the phone rang. At least I don’t do that anymore.
And the doorbell too.
Grasshoppers.
Yes, irrational, I know. I have never been attacked or menaced by a grasshopper, but the little things are pure eeeevil! If I find one in my garden I slowly back away as I know that if I startle it into flight it will fly directly at my face and…actually, I have no idea what it would do then.
Once many years ago I was driving on a country road when a kamikaze grasshopper smashed into my windshield, lodging his loathsome body in my windshield wiper. I was appalled, and drove as quickly as I could toward the next town where I would use a long stick to get the corpse off my car.
Of course, driving rapidly on a summer day caused parts of the deceased creature to dry out and fly off, but the part that remained stuck was a leg, spiky and rather muscular looking and flapping wildly in the wind. It was a long trip to that next town.
Afterwards, I realized how much worse the situation could have been. The car I was driving, an elderly Volkwagen, had no air conditioning, so I had the driver’s side window down for ventilation. Had the grasshopper flown in the window and bounced off the car’s upholstery, and survived, but racketed around inside the car…I am sure I would have opened the door and bailed out at the forty miles an hour I was driving. Seriously.
Oh, and I am crept out by reservoirs. Not lakes, or oceans or rivers. Reservoirs are bitterly resentful about their captivity, and will take revenge on any one foolish enough to swim in them. The word “drown” seems to go exceptionally with the word “reservoir”.
I am a recovered arachnophobe who overdid the cure, and am now obsessed - I spend hours every day photographing them - in particular wolf spiders, and if I can find any, jumping spiders. These are the two species with big eyes and good eyesight. They are very much aware of your presence - they can see you - the jumping spiders better than the wolf spiders. (I’ve just written a book about spiders, so have done the research and talked to heaps of arachnologists about them.) In analyzing arachnophobia in the book, I concluded that it wasn’t fear of a bite, but the way they just appear totally unexpectedly. One minute there is a blank space, then next instant it has a spider in it. That would certainly be the case with jumping spiders and wolf spiders, much more than tarantulas and the others you express less fear of.
My other phobia, not cured but can be avoided easily, is father Christmases and clowns. The Father Christmases were the worst, though. There was one who I had to go up to in order to get my Christmas present each year at my father’s workplace. Clowns come a close second. I gather this is not a rare phobia.
Spiders (but not jumping spiders). As many others note, it is not a fear of being bitten but of seeing or touching the spider. I have learned to tolerate small ones, though.
Stage blood and the thought of bleeding make me physically uncomfortable, mostly in my left foot, but the presence of actual blood does not bother me.