There are some things humans are supposed to be afraid of.
OMG, I hate deep water. It’s not better when it’s clear… 
My grandfather took us out in the ocean off Fort Lauderdale once and let us swim from the boat. Two minutes and I was scarred for life.
Yep, same here. I used to love driving down the mountain roads when I had the rare opportunity. But I discovered on my last two road trips that now I’m almost white-knuckled going around those curves.
And I refuse to drive on icy roads anymore, unless absolutely necessary.
Mango worms will give you nightmares.
For me, the new unlocked fear came about when I learned about Frank’s sign, that crease in the earlobe that people tend to get as they age. Supposedly it’s an early marker of heart disease. And I have it in one of my ears. I’ll occasionally notice it in the rear view mirror while driving, which will trigger pangs of worry.
Yep that walking starfish is creepy.
And I thought I was cool with big crabs…even the long-legged asian ones don’t bother me. Until I saw coconut crabs. I can’t even google them to share a link.
I’ve got a weird one, and yeah I can remember discovering it in stages. Big featureless emptiness / sameness creeps me out.
a) There are some really flat parts of Texas with identical green swaths of farmland surrounding the highway, where the horizon feels like it’s several hundred miles and all of it identical. There was this huge stretch of it with no buildings, no cows, just infinite green.
b) Saw a visualization of the structure of the universe — the big picture, a 3-d filament composed of clusters of galaxy groups. Very little difference between this patch of several billion cubic light years and that patch of several billion cubic light years. Somehow the notion floated up in my head about how horrible it would be to lose track of where I’d started from and be sifting through all this trying to find the milky way.
c) Satellite photo of a section of the Pacific on a still day, zoomed out to the level where the waves are barely visible little ridges, no clouds no islands or continents, just all that infinite undiffentiated water.
Not exactly a new fear, but the return of a half-forgotten fear. When I was a kid, our house was near a commuter train station with a high pedestrian overpass. We took the train a few times, and I realized that I was afraid of heights, especially on narrow stairways. We moved away from that house and somehow the fear faded.
Fast forward 18 years. I was inside the Statue of Liberty, on a freezing day, so it was very uncrowded and everyone was moving along quickly. After enjoying a wonderful view from the crown, I walked down the steep narrow spiral staircase, looking at the copper interior of the statue and thinking that the height seemed much more noticeable on the way down. “This would be really scary for someone with a fear of heights–and that’s me! OMG I’m scared!” My fear of heights, which had been relatively dormant for years, came roaring back.
Here’s a picture; just looking at it scares me
I guess I’m the opposite. When I was a kid reading the Little House on the Prairie books, Laura’s description of the landscape near about gave me nightmares. When I was an adult, and saw such a thing for the first time (driving across Washington state), I found it mind-blowing in a good way.
The obvious solution is to have someone amputate your earlobe.
Calling Dr. Tyson…Dr. Mike Tyson
I kind of had that. Back in the mid-'70s, my mother was going to a summer thing in Vermont. We went to see my brother in Montana, then drove through Yellowstone and wandered down to Denver. From there we started east, got about 20 miles and turned around. I remember looking at that rise in the land ahead and knew that we would crest it in 20 minutes or so and beyond would be another gentle roll in the land just like it, and another after that.
It did not help that I was just too young to drive, to spell my mother, or that the speed limit was 55. We turned around to the comfort of the mountains, had a fun trip home, and she took the train from Vancouver to Toronto. In the intervening years, the flatlands east of the rockies were a vast emptiness to me.
A couple decades ago I made a friend in the midwest and we have traveled back and forth across the country a lot. One thing that makes the flatlands more interesting is getting off the Interstates, and stopping on side roads to get, um, relief, where nearly every one else is going by on the highway, on the way to somewhere else. Just like when we drove through the desert and I took the time to see it was all alive, not the vast bleakness that I had always seen before.
Now that I’m older, fear of heights for a couple of sane reasons. I don’t bounce back from injury like I did when I was 16, and my balance is not near what it used to be. I get a little bit of vertigo.
If there is good protection with railings that I can trust or I’m in a harness and have a good anchor, I’m OK, but still a bit spooked.
Interesting. I’m mid-40s and currently going the other way. I’ve been steadily shedding “fucks to give” over the years and I can already see “zero” coming up on the horizon.
Yeah I had the thought recently of being magically zapped to a random point in the universe, with some magic also keeping me alive indefinitely. Even if you could know what the closest object to you was, chances are it would take billions of years to drift to it (I think the only means of propulsion would be throwing your clothes away)
This one. Claustrophobia runs in my family and I thought I had escaped it until I had an MRI a few years ago and this same thing happened to me. I also have experienced minor panic while sleeping in a tent. None of this started until I was nearly 50.
Of course, in it’s own way that’s just as bad as being overburdened with fears.
No irrational ones. I am newly afraid of things like total climate collapse, and fascism, but those aren’t irrational. I have become deathly afraid of new software apps and the Massachusetts RMV, also not at all irrational, but based in repeated hideous experiences.
My regularly scheduled phobias, such as being obliged to watch amateur theatricals or listen to self-composed poetry, have only intensified.
I’ve never been afraid of any animals at all. I don’t have any of the bestselling phobias.
To say nothing of botflies. I first became aware when I saw a video of one being extracted from the chin/neck of a kitten, and I couldn’t quite understand how something so huge could actually be under the skin. I’ve since seen them extracted from humans, and the image just won’t go away.
I never experienced claustrophobia before maybe 20 years ago. It began shortly after my father died. It made no sense. I experienced a few months during which I had to drive with the car windows open, couldn’t wear sweaters or anything tight, and couldn’t sleep with blankets on. And this was during the winter! After a few months it eased off but ever since then I panic in small spaces. Even seeing someone trapped in a small, enclosed space on TV or in a movie sets it off.
Indeed. It’s a Hell of my own making. But at least it’s mine. 