As I’ve said before in this thread, this is in the Pit because that’s where threads about other posters go; I haven’t asked for, nor do I need apologies from anybody. I just wanted to discuss this a little further, because I got the impression from the other (closed) thread that you didn’t seem to get why what you did was a bad thing. I thought maybe a more thorough discussion of phobias and the people who have them might be enlightening for people who don’t understand and aren’t very accommodating of people who have them.
Participate in a Watson experiment?
I suggest that we take the biblical approach, and give Dio a taste of his own medicine.
begins handing out cotton balls to the others so we may chase Dio around the thread
An eye for an eye, eh? 
It’s a trap!!!
The way I wrote about it (i.e., very obliquely) was fine. If I went into detail (where I got the shot, the size of the needle, the color of the vaccine), I’d start feeling pretty yech. In fact, writing that sentence entailed imagining those things, and I can feel the heat in my face. It’s absurd, but there you go :).
Daniel
I also have the common, irrational fear of spiders. I don’t think it’s the typical arachnophobia though. I have no problem with tarantulas, either holding or watching. It’s the little, fast spiders that get me all hot and bothered. It’s the thought that they could crawl over me while i sleep or crawl into my clothes. The thought that they could be hiding anywhere, behind the drawers in my bedroom, between the cracks in my desk where i lay my arm while typing. If i see one in a room I’ll be spending some considerable time in, i go into instant ‘kill’ mode. I have to kill it before it escapes or it’ll never be able to relax, sometimes for days on end. Long legged spiders are the worst of all, driving me totally batshit insane up until i take it on a tour of my library.
And it pisses me off. I hate killing things, i even hate killing ants. I really wish i could control my fear and let the little buggers live in relative peace.
My mother has a phobia of maggots, yet she delights in telling me why. Lets just say it has something to do with a ‘friend’ and a rather unpleasant experience with some rice pudding.
I’m not Veb or Lefty, but I think I can answer this. I suffer from severe ophidiophobia (fear of snakes). The only snakes that don’t bother me are cute, cartoonish ones (like oh, “Sir Hiss” in the Disney version of Robin Hood). However, I cannot even watch snakes on TV, or even look at pictures of them. Even talking about them, for more than a few minutes at a time, starts to creep me out. I start thinking of them, and I just feel like if I turn around, there will be a huge pile of them on my floor, or something like that. So I don’t like to go into detail about snakes.
Now I have to stop this post, because the idea of a big pile of snakes is getting to me.
Does this answer your question, Lib?
I daresay signs proclaiming 22nd Amendment Repealed; Bush Wins Third! Coulter Appointed to Cabinet would be more effective.
Mildly, mostly because writing comes from thought. The word ‘spider’ conjures up a visual image. Crabs skeeve me out, especially Alaskan kings, because they look like spiders–but I still eat 'em. Spiders exist, in abundance, and that’s a simple fact. It’s up to me to cope.
No difference between reading and writing, listening and speaking. And none of them are therapeutic. None of 'em undo or even mitigate my stupid glitch. It is completely irrational, and after all these years, no amount of study, deliberate exposure, talking, listening, thinking–nothing based in reason–has made a dent in it. C’est la vie.
I’m not surprised. I once mentionned on this board that I’ve not exactly a phobia (since I can stand the stuff) but a deep dislike and repulsion for things with many holes. A good example of what I’m thinking about would be a wasp’s nest. But also for instance an earthenware thing that decorated a friend’s house and had a number of holes in it intended to stick flowers in them. I wouldn’t like you to drill several holes close together in the wall of a room I’m standing it.
Not surprisingly, right after I mentionned this “half phobia”, another poster stated it had the same. This board has a large enough audience that essentially every time someone mentions something that happens or happened to him, howewer weird, there’s some “me too” post following in close order.
And as for what could explain a particular phobia, I think it’s just a pointless exercise, even in the case of relatively common phobias or of phobias of things that could theorically actually harm you. I knew a girl that had a phobia of knives. Another a phobia of windows. Yes, of course, you can be hurt by a knife, or you can fall through a window. However, most of us manage quite well living surrounded by dready knives and windows. Sure, a statue, under some circumstances, can be frightening to see. But it doesn’t explain why a friend’s mother had a phobia of all statues. None of these phobias is any more rationnal than my dislike of “things with holes”, despite me being unable to find an even remotely sensible reason explaining it. The phobia two different former coworkers had of pigeons (actually of all birds, but in Paris, the main issue was pigeons) isn’t any more rationnal than a phobia of cotton balls. Phobia of stillwater. Yes, you can drow in a pond. but avoiding seeing it from a distance? Phobia of sharks? OK, but seriously…sharks in the english channel? A puppet of a shark???
Phobias never make real sense. I’ve met a large number of people with phobias, ad only two of them suspected a reason for their phobia (one of the pigeon-fearing coworkers mentionned above who had been locked in a hen house once as a child by friends, and a fireworks/crackers phobic (may God pity her on July 14th!) who had been evacuated from an african country’s capital during a coup as a young child.
A phobia is a phobia and it’s ludicrous to state that some make more sense than others. Phobias are by definition irrationnal. Being affraid of crossing a minefield isn’t a phobia. All phobias and phobic people should be approached in the same way, regardless of whether their phobia is of tigers or wallpaper.
The only two phobias mentionned in this thread that really make sense are acrophobia (since apparently all human babies have an innate fear of height) and the “passenger seat” phobia, since the irrationnal people in this case are probably the rest of us who aren’t frightened.
In reference to potentially harmful snakes and spiders, in case the context vanished along with the rest of tom’s post. At any rate, this statement is a little misleading, and neatly misses the point anyway. A phobia is not rational. People who fear spiders and snakes don’t fear them because they can be harmed by the objects of their fear. They fear them because of what they are. There is no rhyme or reason. Sure, the phobia can be triggered by, say, a life-threatening encounter, but when an ophidiphobic sees a snake, “That snake may hurt me. I’d better stay out of its way,” which is the normal self-preserving sort of “fear” most of us experience, is not what goes through the person’s mind.
Also, the number of species of venomous or otherwise harmful snakes and spiders is small, but depending on where you live, the actual numbers of organisms that fit the description can be quite large. For example, where I live, we have brown recluse spiders and black widows. They are the only potentially life-threatening spiders in this region (out of a total biodiversity of hundreds of spiders that live here.) However, they are quite common (much more so than most other spiders,) and they live in close proximity with humans. I guarantee I could find at least one of each species around here in the next 15 minutes.
Now, granted the organisms in question are rather shy and retiring, and don’t like confrontation. That, however, is not the point. They have the capacity for harm,which makes a certain fear of them (which may sometimes develop into a phobia, I suppose) much more understandable.
At any rate, most folks would say that a fear of spiders and snakes has a much more “rational” foundation than the fear of cotton balls.
I, incidentally, have a friend whose wife is deathly phobic of rubber spiders and masks of the type that are so common around Halloween. When I first heard about it, the temptation to torment her was nigh overwhelming. It’s just so damn silly. What stopped me was the rather heartbroken way she told me that she knows it’s so damn silly, and that it’s horrible, and that she always feels like she ruins Halloween because she absolutely can NOT stand to be anywhere near that type of rubber.
Also, I wouldn’t say it’s a phobia, precisely, but I get a shuddery case of the heebie-jeebies around, well, things that consist of a lot of deep holes close together. Remember that Photoshopped image (go to Snopes and search on “breast rash”) of the breast that had the lotus pod superimposed on it, with the hoaxish tagline that it was a wound caused by some infestation of tropical worms? Yeah, that was probably icky for most people, but it definitely moved into “raise the hair on the back of your neck and get physically queasy” territory for me. Anybody else get that?
AAAaaaaaaaaaagggggghhhhh!!!
Stop it! Stop it! That’s not funny.
I had yet another friend (yes…maybe I’m surrounded by freaks) who had an extreme phobia of spiders. She wouln’t stand anything spider-related. Since her job involved reviewing or checking a lot of fantasy stuff where spiders are quite common, her boyfriend had to check everything she would see and would cut out all mentions of spiders and in particular all drawings of spiders.
However, she’s now much better off and is just an “ordinary” spider phobic. It apparently did involve facing her fears of mentionning/watching images, etc… of spiders.
Apparently, you’re the poster I was refering to in my previous post (or maybe a third one).
Shame on you for remembering me the most awful picture that ever circulated on the net.
I’ll be damned. I didn’t see your post. I must be the third poster with that quirk, because I don’t think I’ve ever shared that with anyone before.
Awful, awful. I’m going running now, to see if I can sweat that picture out of my head. Brrrrrrr…
Good Christ, I’m not even phobic and I think I’m going to need therapy to get the heeby jeebies out of my brain from looking at that picture.
Before I will see a movie, I read a site like ScreenIt to determine if it has (among other things) scenes with needles, with something happening to someone’s eyes, or anything particularly gory. If it does, I don’t go see it.
I made an exception once, with Master and Commander. Mistake. All I remember about that movie was the scene where the surgeon operated on himself. I couldn’t look at the screen during that scene (was it just me, or was that scene really about five hours long?). I nearly vomited just from listening to what was going on during that scene. And yes, Mr. Neville did have to tell me when it was safe to look, as he has to do with any similar scenes on TV.
Fortunately, my job doesn’t involve seeing any sort of medical stuff, so I’m OK there. I doubt I would ever have taken a job that did require me to do that.
And, if Mr. Neville deliberately told me it was safe to look when he knew very well it wasn’t, the first time I’d have a very serious talk with him and make sure he understood how much it upset me. I’d hope he wouldn’t do it again after that- deliberately upsetting (not teasing, that’s very different) your partner is a deal-breaker in a relationship for me.
I just cry and shake when confronted with needles, instead of puking, but I have the same feelings about doing that as you do about puking. We often know logically that whatever it is we’re afraid of won’t hurt us, but that doesn’t make any difference to the phobia. That’s very frustrating.
I prefer to stay away from people who deliberately take advantage of others’ weaknesses. I think they, by definition, are not good people. Life’s too short to spend any more time than you have to around those who aren’t good people.
aka amaxophobia. And not necessarily irrational, at all. I have a very mild case of it occasionally, depending on the circumstances. It’s about not being in control of the car. Sometimes, my reaction time to something in traffic is slightly faster than the driver’s, and I can’t help letting out a little gasp, and bracing myself, even mock-braking.
I have a completely irrational fear of slatted decks, boat docks and stairs with no backs, though. I know there’s no way on earth I can fall through those little openings, but they have the ability to terrify me none-the-less. I pretty much have to hum a tune and keep my eyes straight down to walk up backless stairs, and usually by the time I’m near the top of a full flight of them, my knees are completely tingly and rubbery.
The boat dock one, I at least know how I came to have it, or at least to exacerbate my already-existing fear of walking on deck plank type thingies, and that’s from having read Stephen King’s short story, The Raft. <shiver>
My Sister-in-Law has a fear of people crawling towards her. If someone in on the floor, perhaps playing with a child, and turns in her direction, crawling towards her, it’s knees up to her chest, arms wrapped around them, a low moan and the on-set of tears.
I find this very odd and have a mixed feeling of sympathy and WTF. I have no idea why and have hever heard her say if she understands it or not. Either way, we take great pains to either prevent this or to stop it if it accidentilly takes place.
FinnAgain That long-word-thing? Funny! That’s some funny shit. Made me laugh out loud and draw looks from Ms.Nic
I doubt this is a true phobia. About half the people I know well have an aversion to some kind of texture. My personal aversion is popsicle stick wood. I can’t touch it with my bare hands. My brother’s is velvet or velour, my best friend’s is metal clicking against his teeth (forks and spoons need to be used carefully).
I could see passing this off as a “phobia” if I didn’t feel like explaining myself. It’s certainly a strong enough aversion - if somebody persisted in coming at me with a popsicle stick I might have to bat them upside the head. If I start clicking my fork against my teeth in front of my friend he will go bananas. At first I thought he was joking but I quickly learned not to taunt.