There are a lot of phobias out there, and people have varying degrees of susceptibility TO these phobias. What phobias do you sometimes fall victim to, but not all the time?
For instance: I am not normally claustrophobic. I can be in most enclosed spaces, even small, dark closets, without a problem. But when I’m in an automatic car wash, and I can’t get out of my car, suddenly, its smallness doesn’t seem all that friendly and safe anymore. After awhile I become aware of just how constricted the space is, and that I am stuck there. So my imagination runs wild, and I begin to feel like there’s only a small amount of time before the oxygen will run out, and I’ll asphyxiate. There’s always a part of me that manages to be all “don’t be stupid, it’s just a car wash,” so I never have panic attacks or anything…but it sure is a relief to be able to drive away and roll the window down afterward.
So…your turn! Fill in the blanks, and gimme your sometimes-phobias!
I had to fix crap under a house with a tight crawlspace. Just getting under the house felt like you were being devoured. The only way to get to the back portion of the house was doing that “marines crawling under barbed wire” crawl down an ever smaller, smaller, smaller throat between the wall and the ductwork. It was a slow motion advance, tying this back, duct taping that. The washer drainpipe was a joke that made a foamy mudpuddle I had to crawl though and fix. There was a rat skeleton. The ground was like lunar dust that just hung in the air. Black stuff came out when I blew my nose.
It took two hours to go 20 feet forward down this ever tightening throat (I had been under there for about 6 hours straight). Pushing tools ahead, pulling trash bags filled with insulation behind me, it got tighter and smaller. Just ahead, through the tightest spot, it opened up, but that insulation was crowding me from behind and touching my legs and I just began freaking out.
I wondered if there was even room to turn around at all and that’s what did it. The panic of being stuck took over and I had to just GET OUT NOW, leaving everything behind. I couldn’t go back in there.
The next day I went in again, down the throat, no big deal, done. I found my closet phobia. The feeling of uncontrollable panic was most uncool.
Mine’s claustrophobia too. I can cope with enclosed spaces just fine, but I cannot cope with removing tight clothing that is difficult to pull off over your head. Quite a lot of women’s tops and dresses are like this - easy to put on, difficult to take off - and it’s one of the reasons that I never buy clothes online.
One time I tried on a lovely dress in a shop, on a day out with colleagues, then went to take it off, had a major panic attack and had to call in a colleague to finish the dress off me, even though I was half naked. It’s happened several times and the panic is so much that I over-heat and pass out or start to have an asthma attack and the feeling of terror lasts the rest of the day. I’ve cut clothing off rather than pull it over my head before, but these days I’m just really picky about clothing.
Oddly enough, years after I noticed this trait in myself, I read my baby book and under ‘dislikes’ it listed ‘having her vest taken off over her head.’
I’m not especially afraid of snakes. Sure, I won’t exactly try to pet the nice critter if I see one “in the wild” because I recognize that I don’t know enough to tell which ones are safe, but I’ve touched and held captive snakes and don’t get upset at the thought of them being near me.
But a few years back, it turns out we had one in the garage. Now, I didn’t see it - I had already left the house for the day, Typo Knig was waiting for the nanny to arrive, and was surprised when she phoned him, from the street in front of the house… to say she used her garage door remote and out slithered a big black snake.
Which was, clearly, in the garage when I was stumbling out there in the morning to get into my car and go to work.
And I guaran-dam-tee that had I seen that thing in the garage - loose and in a dimly lit enclosed space with me - I’d have pretty much needed new underwear as soon as I was able to quit screaming and be coaxed down from the rafters where I’d levitated.
The Taos Gorge bridge. I tried and tried to walk across it and my muscles kept stopping. My dad went across, then came back and found me flopping around; he just said “Do you have the vertigo?”
Of course an hour later I was able to walk over a flash flood on a poorly constructed wooden bridge with no rails on the Taos Pueblo.
My phobia is somewhat like yours…although car washes don’t bother me because I’ve had the windows open prior to entering, and I know it’ll only be a short duration before I can open them again.
But if I get into a car for the first time that’s been parked with the windows up, I have to get the windows rolled down right away. I can’t stand those few seconds when I’ve got in to a completely closed car and there’s no air circulating at all.
This is particularly nettlesome if I’m a passenger, and the driver closes his/her door and fumbles with the keys, adjusts the mirror, puts on his/her seatbelt or whatever else before getting starting the car. Seconds seem like hours to me when this is going on.
I’m not afraid of heights. In fact, I like high places. As a kid, I was fond of perching on top of cabinets and high shelves. So I obviously have no problem with heights…unless I’m in an airplane. On my last transatlantic flight, they left the seat-back screens set to a view from the plane’s belly-camera most of the time. I was not pleased.
I’m normally not mysophobic, except when it comes to food safety. I don’t religiously scrub surfaces or wash my hands, but when the uncooked chicken comes out, I start to freak. Counters, sinks, hands… all scrubbed like crazy. I’ll use two or three sets of tongs: one when the item is raw, one when cooked… and sometimes a third when I think it’s cooked, but it isn’t. I can’t reuse that, even if it didn’t touch the raw inside part.
I love water. Love love love it. Love swimming in the pool, in the lake, being on a boat, taking a bath. I’m a great swimmer.
But white water scares me. I went rafting once as a teen with an inexperienced group, and we flipped and I almost drowned (as did some of my friends). For a short while after, I even got nervous hearing the water rush out of the bathtub faucet. I’m of course over that now but I still can’t muster up the courage to go rafting with anyone anymore.
My main/steady phobias are heights and deep water (and I am an excellent swimmer and do so all the time, but ever since I was a kid, I’ve been afraid of deep water, as in a lake, ocean, or even the deep end of the pool:o)
But the only time I ever felt claustrophobic was down in a cave (Inner Space caverns, I think it was) and they got us down there and turned off all the lights for about 2 minutes. After 30 seconds or so, I started to feel panicked, could hardly breathe, and was just thinking, “ok, lol, that was fun, now TURN THE FUCKING LIGHTS BACK ON!!!” :eek:
I say it was claustrophobia, not fear of the dark, because it was the “realization” that I was a mile or so underground and closed in (even though the cavern was vast) that did it.
Yeah, that was me. The tech asked before the MRI if I was claustrophic, and I said I wasn’t, but as I was lying there, clenching my teeth and hyperventilating, I was wishing for some sweet, sweet valium.
Heights don’t usually bother me, but for some reason, sometimes the edge of a high place will freak me out. Such as driving up one of those really tall interchange things. The “Big I” in Albuquerque freaks me right the fuck out. It’s about 80 feet at the top, but you go up and up for what seems like forever, and then you’re closed in on this thin ribbon in the sky, held up by seemingly nothing. AIEEE!
Airplanes, hot air balloons, even most balconies, no problem. But those edges, sometimes…