Needles, definitely. Just talking about he them makes me cringe.
I have vertigo which translates itself in two ways - I’m very bad with heights (mainly a problem with escalators, footbridges across busy streets or spiral staircases) and with deep, fast-running water. This last one is particularly idiotic as I used to swim competitively as a junior, still swim 3 to 5 days a week and am about the strongest swimmer I know. But put me next to a flood-swollen river and I’m a pile of quivering goop. The problem I’ve always had with heights or with water is not that I am afraid of the height itself, but more than one day my legs will suddenly decide to ignore the best warnings of my brain, and take a quick run and hop over the side just to see what happens.
I’m also sociophobic, and once refused to leave the house for six months as I just couldn’t stand being around people. Now I pretty much have it under control except I hate hate HATE answering the phone and am far more likely just to sit and glare at it 'til it shuts up. But the idea of being a hermit in a cave forsaking all human contact is one which has always appealed greatly to me, and in times of stress I still retreat into private for as long as I am able to.
Nothing against y’all, but a lot of what you are describing isn’t really phobias. That’s a word that gets misused a lot for ordinary petty fears. I know because I suffer from a <b>true</b> phobia… that being a totally irrational uncontrollable fear of something for which there is no reason to fear. Thankfully it is a fear I rarely have to encounter. Believe it or not it is very difficult for me to write this because it makes me uncomfortable just thinking about it, especially since it’s such a stupid fear.
I have no idea why, but I am deathly afraid of overflowing toilets. The few times that it has happened in my life I end up literally in a fetal position unable to stop crying and shaking, so terrified that I cannot even communicate for a long time afterwards. I don’t know why they scare me so much, I don’t know what causes me to act like that since nothing else makes me do so, but thankfully it is a rare occurrance.
I saw a program about phobias where a woman was phobic of birds. She could barely leave the house, poor thing.
Spiders
Heights (mild)
Cockroaches
Having something pierce my eye. I can’t even hear people talk about stuff regarding eyes without getting ill. One holiday, while visiting my husband’s grandmother, she was talking about her cataract surgery. I wanted to cry, and nothing my husband did could get her to shut up.
Slow sufficating death. I couldn’t envision a death worse then what the sailors on the Kursk went through.
<shudder>
people touching the inside of their wrists, like where the viens are n shit, i cant even touch my own, nything tocuhing it actually, SHUDDERS just thinking of it my friend came to my house after art n painted red blood on her wrist n was holding a knife, i never screamed n cried so much in my life, nice “so-called” joke of hers…
Public embarrassment.
Like ArchitectChore, pool drains scare me. I’m terrified that I’ll go near one, get my fingers stuck and drown. It’s as if I’m afraid that my body will do it against my will or I’ll do it while not thinking about it.
The actual, freak-out, fetal position, mimics symptoms of a heart attack type phobia: airplanes and needles.
The oogly icky creepy type phobia: eels.
Hehe you would have loved watching me get my wrist tattooed, what fun!
trancey-
Although it wouldnt classify as an actual phobia, I feel you on the wrist thing. I cannot wear a watch, because that space on the inside of my wrist is so sensitive that I feel like I will throw up if it is touched at all. It just grosses me out beyond belief. Glad to hear I’m not the only one!
My personal not-quite-a-phobia would have to be sitting in the back seat of a two door car. Won’t do it. Can’t do it. Feel trapped.
need a way out.
Although I overreact about it, I don’t think it’s completely irrational. If the car wrecked, the people in the back seat would be trapped until the front passengers escaped, right?
Ugh.
Unprotected heights terrify me. As long as there’s a guard rail or some other secure barrier, I’m fine, but if there’s a chance I could go plummeting to my demise, I’m a wreck.
Most other things I can deal with, even things I don’t like… like needles.
Maybe I’m not such a wuss after all.
Heights in general scare the hell out of me. Even getting up on a ladder more than eight or ten feet above the ground makes me shaky.
I loved to go indoor rock climbing (I’m good as long as I’m concentrating on climbing the wall and not looking down) – however, my idiot friend who was belaying me on my last climbing trip dropped me (from about twenty feet off the floor, and managed to stop my fall when my feet were about six inches off the ground). If I had had anything in my bladder at that point, I would have completely pissed myself. (Ain’t been climbing since.)
People. I’m terrified to death of people… but I’m not quite convinced they’re “relatively harmless” yet.
Damned social phobia… I want some friends. 
Oh yeah! Like I am going to tell all of you strangers my phobias?! Why? So you can exploit my weakness by emailing me pictures of naked ladies leaving me crying like a baby? I think not!
Flying.
Actually it isn’t so much the flying as the idea of the 2 min. that I’ll have to contemplate my immanent death while the airplane is falling out of the sky and about to crash, so mark me down for the Evernessaphobia as well. When I’m really deep into it and going through a refusing to ever fly again period, I’m so focused on the phobia that I don’t want to get cured of it, because then I’ll be willing get on a plane that will of course crash. The times when I do manage to fly, thanks to massive doses of valium, I still end up in tears clutching my husband. I then spend the entire time I’m on vacation or wherever fretting about the return journey to the point where I don’t have a good time. It is such a relief to touch down safely at home.
Twiddle
Phobias…I guess the layman’s definition is a fear of something so bad it incapacitates you?
Okay, then, I’m not fond of roaches but I can kill them, and I’m not keen on climbing the ladder to change the bulbs on the ceiling fan, but I can do it (it’s the height, not the ladder). So that’s not a phobia, maybe just a dislike? What do you call a mini phobia anyway?
I don’t like rollercoasters. See, if you sit in the front, the back cars will flip off the track and the entire train will somersault all the way to the bottom of the steep hill it just climbed. I’ve ridden them before, but then I rode Kraken at Sea World last summer with my son and that’s when I knew roller coasters were not for me. I will not go on them again. I don’t consider that incapacitating, since I don’t need to ride roller coasters to live.
But the thing that sends me screaming into a closet are slugs and grubs. Those slimy, witchety things fill me with such a horror that I’m getting chills just typing this. We got home one day and their was a huge yellow slug on the kitchen floor…I locked myself in the bathroom while my son picked it up and threw it out and my husband collapsed on the floor, holding his sides with laughter. But does fear of slugs and grubs keep me inside the house, afraid to step outside in case I step on one? No…so I guess that would be an intense aversion.
Are there levels of phobia?
For me it is definitely needles. It is now at the point I have to go to the doctors and dentist early to get gas just so I will not be irrational and violent when the needle comes out. Intellectually, I know they are not as terrible as I have emotionally established them to be, but the intellectual side starts taking a walk about the time I see the things.
I posed the question to my staff and I have one person who is a bundle of them and two others have some pretty entertaining ones.
One guy on staff is deathly afraid of: bodies of water, insects, closed-in places, being near a stage, high places and the dark. About the only story I can assign him is a non water-oriented, sports story. It turns out one of my feature writers is deathly afraid of clowns (no “circus comes to town” assignments for her), and my ad guy is afraid of midgets.
I have such a strange office. We’re lucky to get a paper out.
Chainsaws, and to a much lesser extent axes. I don’t know why, as I’ve never known anyone who got hurt with one, and I’m not afraid of other power tools, motorcycles, firearms etc. I don’t mind being around other people using them, I just don’t want to do it myself.
I have used an axe occasionally, but unfortunately (depending on how you look at it) I’ve never had a reason to use a chainsaw.
Someday I hope to own a home, and then I’ll just have to get over it, because I really love fireplaces and woodstoves. I guess if I start with one of the lightweight ones, and wear all the protective gear I can find, I’ll get used to it.
Getting a hernia. Don’t know why.
And I am a weightlifter, so maybe it isn’t really a crippling phobia, but the idea creeps me out for some reason.
Regards,
Shodan
Ack!! Questions that put me on the spot where I don’t have time to formulate an answer and I end up blathering and looking like an idiot in front of everyone!!
(Really. I hate them. And cockroaches.)