If it makes your nerves jump, it is not a phobia. If it startles you, it is not a phobia. When someone shoves a writhing spider in your face, and lets it crawl upon you, and you have nightmares for weeks… that may be a phobia. I am terrified of spiders, and that is not a matter of my “tangled brain synapses,” nor is it a “stupid quirk.”
Let me put it this way: I am more scared of spiders than of anything else, including death. I know it’s irrational, but that’s my reaction to the little critters. So tormenting me with the scariest thing in the world would be ok, because it’s no big deal to the tormentor? I think it’s mean and cruel.
Ugh, yes, and thank you much for bringing that image back to my mind. Anything like that – surinam toads, pomegranate interiors, even limestone – will cause great revulsion in me.
Yea, verily. Wasps make up my phobia. I’ve knocked sliding doors off their rails and broken glasses and chairs in attempts to get away from them. It’s not a conscious reaction – one glimpse of one flying around and I will bolt, faster than you can blink. If there’s no way to escape, I’ll slam myself flat against a wall and hyperventilate. I studiously avoid woodsheds, attics, wooden porches, thickets, and any other place they like to hang out. I can’t look at pictures of them, and don’t even like to see the word written – it will be the first word that jumps out at me when scanning a text that contains it.
The preceding has been a description of a phobia. “Oogyness” does not make up a phobia; blinding, rationality-killing fear does.
Since this seems to have turned into a phobia story recounting . . .
I used to be mildly phobic of mirrors. That’s died down to a mild twitch-reaction now; the significant response is now normally limited to mirrors in darkened rooms, especially if they have reflections of doors.
When Teine and I were looking to get a bed, we went looking through the affordable (read here “cheapass”) furniture stores in our area.
Every single one of the beds had mirrored headboards.
Words . . . do . . . not . . . express. Just thinking about it . . . horrible. While I’m asleep, even. Augh.
I have the opposite aversion to the many-holes thing - I get creeped out by many things sticking out close together, like those nose-pore cleaning strips when they have a little forest of blackhead contents on them. Eee, I’m getting creeped out typing that. I think I know where my aversion for this came from, though - I saw a kid on the bus a long time ago who had a huge mole (we’re talking 1"x2") with fur on it on his forehead. Fur - not the odd hair, but an honest-to-god patch of fur. Creeped me out mightily.
I still have nightmares about the few times a spider actually crawled on me. I can’t even think about it without an involuntary shudder. I flinch away even from pictures of spiders. What logic says about their relative harmlessness and useful place in the world doesn’t matter a damn. To me, they’re crawling horrors. If that ain’t phobic, it’s close enough for goverment work.
I won’t play one-upsmanship over who’s most scared. Regard the fear however you wish. I regard it as my stupid personal quirk…and one I’m responsible for handling. I can’t seem to change how I react to spiders, but I can choose how to handle it.
Of course it’s mean to tease people with what they fear most. It’s pretty nasty behavior, even when it’s mistakenly done ‘in fun’. I won’t allow it to be so earth shattering and traumatic that a sincere apology won’t let an incident be forgiven.
Someone earlier wondered about the possible underlying causes or origins of phobias. Where do they come from? For me, the answer may be learned behavior when I was a child. See, I am afraid of bees, wasps, and other sting flying insects. As an adult today, I flinch involuntarily and mightily if one of them sneaks up on me and I realize they’re there only when they’re in very close proximity. I haven’t really run into anything trying to get away from one, but that’s likely been more the lack of potential roadblocks than any real control on my part. I do twist and lunge in pretty severe fashion, tho.
And to the best of my knowledge, I’ve never actually even been stung, not even once. I remember my brother getting stung behind his ear once. I remember a cousin being caught in a swarm of bumblebees during an outdoor birthday party when I was 8. I remember vaguely and earliest of all my father lunging and attacking some wasp or something. I think his fear of wasps/bees and his overkill in dispatching them may have been imprinted on me.
What I’m describing may not rise to the level of an actual phobia. I can control myself, when I am not surprised, such that I can approach a nest crawling with wasps and spray it down with some insecticide. I am piano-wire-tight ready to react in such situations, however, should any of the enemy make a feint at me.
This fear even extends to other flying insects, such as cockroaches/waterbugs, although flies don’t really do more than annoy me. Maybe it’s the difference in the way the two classes of insect fly.
What boggles my mind about Dio’s anecdote is that he displayed immature, jerkish, bullying behavior on a job where he was working with children.
I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he never harassed his co-worker when the kids were around, although if they were, then that is a horrible example to have set. But it doesn’t make him sound like the kind of person who should be supervising children anyway. I wouldn’t think I could trust him not to join other kids in mocking someone who was vulnerable, or at least sit silently by and say “They’re kids; whaddya gonna do.”
That’s right. All I know is what you told me: you harassed a co-worker, on the grounds that that’s what “any guy” would do. Which leads me to suspect that when you see a kid harassing another kid, you simply chalk it up to his being a guy.
I didn’t harass my co-worker. My actions were not intentionally sadistic. My whole point in bringing up the story was that I didn’t get it. I thought the cotton ball fear was so stupid that she couldn’t have possibly meant it. I was only trying to be funny. She usually laughed at the cotton song, so I didn’t appreciate how serious she was until the cotton candy incident. I do not take pleasure in making people feel bad. What I’ve been trying to get across was that I didn’t know I was really scaring her. I thought she was kidding. I thought it was an act (or at least a theatrical exaggeration of a minor aversion). I thought it would make her laugh. When I figured out she really was scared, I stopped and apologized.
I don’t appreciate being told by someone who doesn’t know me that I’m “not fit” to be around children. I spent years working with kids and I was damn good at it. I also have two of my own and I’m a fucking good father.
Come on, Rilch. If a phobia of cotton doesn’t strike you on first glance as being pretty funny, not to say ridiciulous, you’re being too serious. Yeah, Dio went too far on his coworker, he’s contrite, so instead of making comments that have serious implications about his abilities as a parent, let’s appreciate the absurdity of the situation.
And lest you accuse me of being insensitive, I’ll have you know my mother has a crippling fear of Dacron.
FYI, I got bullied unmercifully when I was a kid. I was a short, scrawny, buck toothed little dork with coke bottle glasses who knew all the answers in the classroom and got the shit kicked out me for being a “brain” and an “egghead.” Also because I was always the smallest kid in the class and had no social skills.
In high school I managed to become “cool” (in my mind) by learning to play guitar, growing my hair down to my ass and joining a rock band. It gave me self-confidence and better social skills but I still know what it’s like to be the victim and I would never intentionally make someone else feel that way.