Some plants give me the creeps. Excluding trees, if a plant is taller than my head, it scares me. And something about the middles of some flowers; I couldn’t touch the middle of a daisy or tulip for love nor money, just to name a couple. I remember at a family gathering once people were making leis, and I couldn’t bear to have one put about my neck. Didn’t want to be touch by a creepy flower middle. Queen Anne’s lace (ie, wild carrot) is another that has always disturbed me, though not quite as bad since I grew taller than it does. But when I was a child, it horrified me!
Plus, plants make good hiding places for spiders and bugs.
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
Pluto
I feel that way too about arguments. That’s one reason I hate TV political-shouting-argument shows. Unless people are really nice to each other when debating, it makes me want to crawl into the nearest oversized beanbag with a kitten.
I used to be afraid of heights. Being near the edge of something I might fall off of, like a cliff, or leaning out a window, made me very very nervous. Then in college I got into rock climbing. That cured me. Well, maybe not, but it made me confront my fears. I guess what really did it was that just I stopped being afraid of dying. I figured that, religion aside, if there is an afterlife, It’ll be better than here, and if there isn’t one, well, I’ll never know it. Actually, I used to say about my climbing, “I’m not afraid of falling and dying. I’m afraid of falling and NOT dying.”
I finally proved to myself that I was cured for good last year in Las Vegas. I went to the top of the Stratosphere and leaned against the outward sloping windows. I looked a thousand feet straight down at the ground and said to myself, “Yep. I’m cured.”
I am Chaos, I am alive, and I tell you that you are free.
Zulu! I can’t believe I’ve finally found someone with the same “phone-o-phobia” as me. My husband is absolutely DISGUSTED with me half the time because I insist he make calls for even the most mundane things: pizza, rsvp’s, etc. I almost fainted when I got my new job as dental assistant and found out one of my duties was going to be to call all the next day’s patients to remind them of their appointments. I didn’t sleep that whole night because I couldn’t decide if I should make a stand and quit over it if I couldn’t weasel out of it, or just bite the bullet and do it. I just did it, and almost 2 years later I STILL hate it! Lemme tell you, I LOVE the internet and e-mail/ Instant Messaging because it really keeps me in touch without having to touch that evil phone!
Vixen, I thought I was the only one! No one in my family believes me, they think it’s just a cop out, but I really do freak out over phone calls. Do you have any sadist friends who just love it when you have to call them? I have one friend who always manages to call while I’m in the shower, and I’m forced to call him back. And he loves it! He chuckles over it all the time! He brags to his family about making me have to call him. “Ahahaha! Jenn has to phone me!” I guess I could just not call him back, but then I’ll miss whatever party or get-together he’s having. ARG! He’s out of town at university now, so we’re on email correspondence. I love email. Email good. Phone bad.
Zu! Same here, even if it’s a friend or someone I know I’m afraid to call. But I admit it’s a 1000 times worse if it’s like to find out about a job or get info for something. I’ve seriously never called for info on a job…if they didn’t give an address to apply to I skipped it. Isn’t that freaky? It comes so normal to most.
I’m also still very suspicious of lifelike dolls, puppets and the like. We had a Cisco Kid marionette when I was a lad, scared the living mierda outa me.
I thought of a sorta wacky one my sis-in-law has…she has a fear of going to a car dealership. Apparently once she went, the guy took her keys to “park her car” and wouldn’t give them back until she at least test drove something! She (understandably) won’t set foot on a car lot.
I do, eden. When I shave my legs, I look at the razor, and I can almost feel it slicing
my wrists. Sometimes it’s pretty terrifying.
Ewww, this sounds like a really bad idea. I think not feeling it would make it
twice as bad!
Does anybody know of a word for a phobia of a harmful action caused by the fact
that you have an intense desire to do just that? Like heights. I love them. I love
standing on a high wall and staring at the ground, until I begin to get this feeling of
how totally euphoric and satisfying it would be to just jump. I literally have to force
myself down from the wall so that I don’t throw myself to my own death. Now, I
have absolutely no desire to bungee jump or skydive. It would have to be simply
going to a high place and jumping off.
I sometimes wonder if this is not behind my wrist/vein fear. I’ve often felt that if I
wasn’t so terrified of the idea, I’d gladly slice my own wrists wide open. It’s a very
frightening thought.
And what about a fear of nothing? I mean, a sort of random fear that comes out of
nowhere and takes complete control of your senses? I’ve sometimes been walking
around my house, and suddenly know that I’d better get the heck out of
whereever I am, and run madly into any other part of the house lest “something bad”
will happen. I don’t know what causes this, but I always obey it, just in case my
subconcious has picked up I something wrong that I did not notice.
I don’t know if it’s because of drowning - though it probably is, but I hate water too. I don’t like rain, I don’t like drinking it, and definitely can’t swim in it. Bathing is also something I’d rather avoid if I could. But I can’t, so I have learned to tolerate water for that reason - and rain.
It’s just something I rilly rilly don’t like. I got it from my Mum, actually - she has a similar thing. Can phobias be hereditary? Well, anyhoo…
I’m afraid of running into my old boss one day when my son (who’s never looked like this ) have a kool aid stain on his white shirt, snot running down his face and having a shit fit in public. I decided to be a stay at home mom so my children would never ever ever be like her chimpazee’s she calls kids.
Other than that, I have a fear of getting my teeth bashed in or losing my glasses in a public place and no one will help me see anything.
The true test would be to get on the rocket ride (I forget the name) that sits on top of the Stratosphere. What a rush!
Michelle - You’re right about Stigmata. I have that wrist phobia thing. My entire body turned creapy-crawly during the wrist scene.
Another part of my body that has the same effect is that area behind the ankles and above the heel on the back of my foot.
Cess - Don’t rule out bungee jumping. I too have the urge to “fly” when I am in high places, although I still can’t stand on a chair or the second step of a ladder. I went bungee jumping and experienced what it felt like to jump. It was great.
And what about a fear of nothing? I mean, a sort of random fear that comes out of nowhere and takes complete control of your senses? I’ve sometimes been walking around my house, and suddenly know that I’d better get the heck out of whereever I am, and run madly into any other part of the house lest “something bad” will happen. I don’t know what causes this, but I always obey it, just in case my subconcious has picked up I something wrong that I did not notice.
You might want to talk to a professional about that one. I know its one of the symptoms for Generalized Anxiety Disorder. It’s quite treatable. I should know.
I am Chaos, I am alive, and I tell you that you are free.
I used to have a fear of vampires,thanks to movies.I would sleep with a mini-pillow on my neck! It never occured to me that a vampire could easily lift it off while I was sleeping,but1
(grumble, grumble) Okay, Auraseer, make it HARD for me. (Ahem) Now hear this…At the annual Straight Dopers meeting this month in lovely downtown Sheboygan, Auraseer will be presenting the introductory and keynote addresses. All the cutest, most acid-tongued female SDMBers (you know who you are) will be required to sit in the front row, wear leather miniskirts, and heckle unmercifully. Better?
Shadowfox and El Mariachi Loco: Have you ever read the classic short story “The Thing in the Cellar,” by David H. Keller? First published in WEIRD TALES magazine in the early 1930s, it’s available in dozens of horror fiction anthologies, as well as in collections of Keller’s contes cruels. Read it, and NO ONE will ever get you to go downstairs again. You might move to the roof.
Cessandra: “Does anybody know of a word for a phobia of a harmful action caused by the fact that you have an intense desire to do just that?”
Yes! That’s exactly it with me and the wrist thing. Not cutting the wrists, but specifically biting. As an early teen I was really into the vampire thing; I role-played and dressed up and everything, and it started to get to me. (I’ve since quit; I was into it just long enough to figure out how stupid the whole thing is.) The neck is fine, but the thought of someone’s mouth on my wrist is disturbing. But being kissed there, probably because of the fear, is a HUGE turn-on. Maybe I’m weird.
I’m also claustrophobic (I think you’d call it that) but only as relates to moving my arms. I can tolerate being in, say a crawlspace or a ventilation shaft for short periods of time, but once I was handcuffed (don’t ask) for about half an hour and had to deep-breathe the whole time. In a tight space, though, it helps if my arms a above my head, rather than pinned to my sides.
As far as needles go, I’m ok as long as I try not to think about it and and absolutely don’t look at it. If I see it going in, I lose it, start to shake, the whole nine.
Bravo, Auraseer! I’ll buy the first pitcher Pabst Blue Ribbon!
At the risk of being called a phobia-literary-reference-nerd, are any of you wrist-nursers familiar with the great Chicagoland underground cartoonist Skip Williamson? Former contributor to BIJOU FUNNIES, creator of “Halsted Street” and “Snappy Sammy Smoot” ?
He did a hilarious one-pager back in the early '70s, I believe, about a beatnik hitchhiker who gets picked up by a middle-aged man with a beetling brow and unshaven jowls, who harangues him unmercifully about the dangers of BREAKING ONE’S WRISTS. Describes how he had been a successful businessman, head of a happy household, when one day, in a fit of postadolescent exuberance, he BROKE HIS WRISTS…“It became pain and agony just to fill my family’s bellies with common groats and lentils!!!”
He gets so emotional that he runs the car into a tree; the accident, of course, BREAKS the kid’s WRISTS. “Reckless whelp! I see you chose to disregard my warning…still, I admire your spirit.”
