Francesca’s and kevsnyde’s threads gave me this idea. Seems like we have a few wierd phobias going around, and I always figured sharing might help. I’ll start.
I’m terrified of heights. I hear that’s common. But I’m not scared of being up there, I’m scared I’ll go bonkers and jump. Or if I’m driving over a bridge, that I’ll all of a sudden steer my car off it, and fall into the water or whatever. I think basically I’m scared that I might kill myself, because I know I think about it sometimes. Not seriously considering it, but just thinking. What if I just walked out into the ocean and started swimming until I was too tired to turn back? Things like that.
I have a friend who’s terrified of birds. It’s hell taking a walk with her in the park, she’s so scared she just wants to run away. Her brothers scared her with a dead crow when she was a kid and she obviously never got over it. Another friend hates feet. She wants to throw up when she sees toes, and it’s hell in the summertime when everyone is walking around in sandals. I once asked her if she’d help me paint my toenails and she almost freaked out. I will never ask her that again…
I’ve been there with the “but what if I climb up to the very top of that building and leap off, it’ll really hurt hitting the concrete” thing. I’m always afraid I’ll jump in front of a truck. Perhaps I fear madness, or myself: on the whole I’m actually pretty happy and would rather NOT jump in front of a truck. I blame it on having an over-active imagination, which I haven’t directed at the right things. Plus watching too many horrific accidents etc on television.
Maybe it’s that fear which made it so scary last week when I was completely exhausted and got an involuntary neck-spasm. My wife gets little sleepy-twitches all the time, and she just lives with it - but it freaked me out. What if there had been a button right in front of my forehead which I inadvertently headbutted and set off the ritual-disembowelment machine?
I get that thing of heights and being terrified i might suddenly jump off. I have absolutely no suicidal desires, FTR. Bridges especially do this to me - when walking over the Thames on Waterloo bridge i always get a terrible urge to jump into the water. Weird innit? I think it has to do with the perversity of human nature - it’s not generally talked about (well, the only casual reference i’ve come accross is David Baddiel’s book “Whatever Love Means”) but i think that a lot of people, when confronted with a situation, often think of the worst thing that could happen and, not being terribly confident of the control we have over ourselves, become afraid that we might just do that thing. It’s a fear of losing control, being irrationally impulsive. Well, IMHO.
And of course, as you can see from the linked thread in the OP, i have a mighty phobia of bees.
Odd you should mention David Baddiel - when I wrote my last post I was thinking of how he and Rob Newman often used to talk about their own fear of madness. Of course that led them to some rather controversial impressions of mentally ill people, but I could see where they were coming from, even if I thought their sensitivity a little off.
I used to be afraid of heights, but one day I just decided dammit, I’m going to do this, and I did. I still get nervous, but nothing like the knee locking, cold sweat, sheer panic I used to get.
Next, I’m going to conquer my fear of Hot Air Balloons!
I am still afraid of falling out of a window and impaling myself on a fence spike.
And giant rats eating my face in my sleep. Anyone’s face. Ugh. Glad I’ve never seen a wild rat in real life, I think I’d die.
I share your fear, Soda. When I was living up in St Pete, there’d be many times I’d be driving over the Skyway (not a low bridge. Uh-uh. It’s where most people in the Tampa Bay area go to do suicide jumps. It got so bad, they have a hotline phone at the top of the bridge), and think about jumping or driving my car over it. Just impulses, but it got a little scary. And these would be when I was in the upswing of my depression!
One of my biggest phobias (I think I’ve mentioned this some place before) is talking on the phone professionally. I’m scared to death to pick up the phone and call a client. I’m ok if they call me, but having to call them… I have to literally force myself to do it on a daily basis. And I cringe at the thought of calling for pizza. But talking to friends on the phone, things like that… That’s fine. It’s just when I have to talk to someone I don’t know in any professional manner, I get freaked out.
I’m horribly claustrophobic… in a weird way, though! Small places are OK if there’s an exit, but if there are a bunch of people in there WITH me, I panic! Subways are sheer HELL during the busy times! If I get into an elevator with 4 or 5 people, I’m breaking into a sweat by the time we reach our floor…:eek:
I even have a plan: if I am ever buried alive (in a cave-in, or a building collapses while I am in it (Koreaphobia!)), I am going to slit my wrists with a key… no way I’m gonna be stuck there for days, or (God no!) weeks awaiting rescue!!
I have the same thoughts about jumping from high places and the like, but for me, it’s rather amusing. I cant help but grin when I’m thinking “I could jump right now. It’d be a hell of a lot of fun, til I hit the bottom…”. But I’m weird. And I wanna go skydiving!
What am I scared of? Snakes? Spiders? Public speaking? Heights? Death? Horrific accidents?
Nope.
Water.
Not in any way people seem to be able to understand. I’m not scared of the water itself. I’m not scared to shower, of swimming pools, I’m not scared of drowning. It happens only in large, (lake or larger) natural bodies of water, and it happens only when I go too far from shore (Read: three feet) or if I cant see the bottom. At that point I freak out and have to get back on land. I have some theories, but I wont go into it.
Oddly, I’m a very avid canoeist. What noone on my trips realise is that if I ever fell out of the canoe, I’d probably panic and drown (but dont tell anyone that, especially the SO, or they wont let me go!)
I run a bunch of aviation-related web pages. Last year we ran a poll asking how many pilots had acrophobia when NOT in an airplane: it was 54%.
Put me upside down in an airplane in a spin. Just don’t put me on a the roof of a high-rise – like Soda, I have this feeling that some force wants to suck me off the edge.
~“I’m afraid of the world.” Hehe… David Bowie.
Anyway, I’m deathly afraid of flying insects, especially those in the Vespula genus. So, tho’ not nearly as bad as Fran, I’m afraid of wasps especially, and bees and their ilk to a certain degree. Nothing else really bothers me.
Of course, we can’t have a phobia thread without bringing up Arachybutyrophobia… ((I think I’m spelling that right, but probably not))… which, as I understand it, is the fear of peanut butter and more specifically, choking on peanut butter.
I’m deathly afraid of worms. Yup, that’s right, those little wiggly things you put on hooks and fish with, that dig in the dirt and come out during heavy rains. I’m deathly afraid of those little buggers.
Whenever it rains, I have to wear closed shoes, boots or sneakers–the more platform and higher the heel, the better. I refuse to walk in the grass when its rainy, and if I see a worm on the sidewalk, I freak out and scream. I’m afraid they’ll attack my feet and crawl up my legs and strangle me.
I know why I’m afraid of them. When I was 2 years old, my mom used to keep worms in our basement to sell for bait. I was looking into the galvanized metal tubs and I fell in. All the worms kept crawling over me and I was screaming and mom didn’t get me out of there. She thought it was funny, and I’ve hated worms ever since.
Weird…but that’s my only fear. Not heights, not spiders, not water, not anything else…just worms.
I’m afraid of fish. I have no idea why, but they’ve freaked me out since before I can remember. I can’t stand going into those dark corners of pet stores where aquariums line the walls and are stacked from floor to ceiling. When we go up to our family’s camp on the lake, I make my sister get in the water first to splash around and scare off all of those creepy, slimy, terrible fish. Swimming in the ocean is especially anxiety-provoking, because not only might I run into your average little guppy, but – my God! – there are sharks out there! ::shudder:: Just the trailers for movies like Deep Blue Sea send my heart racing.
**ME TOO ME TOO!!! ** people never believe i’m as afraid as i say i am until they see me…i see a worm and i panic-total complete absolute panic. i can’t breath, i start to cry hysterically. if someone mentions a worm, like in psychology we were talkin about fears and my friend told them mine, i’m paranoid the whole day…i mean someone might have heard that i was scared and throw one at me. does it help to tell you that the psych class that had me running scared from worms was in the middle of an Ohio winter? few inches of snow on the bitterly frozen ground…still, someone could have gotten one SOMEWHERE…
::shivers, casts a paranoid glance behind me and slinks out of the room ::
Oh I have a bunch. Most of them are recent (well, past 10 years or so) developments, not sure why…
Bridges. Well, heights in general, but bridges especially. I dropped my car off to be fixed a few weeks ago and figured I’d walk back to work cuz it was a nice day and about a mile walk. I had to walk across an overpass. With a low railing. At noon with a ton of traffic. I hit about the halfway point and had a total panic attack. I thought I was going to pass out. Keep in mind I now live in the Bay Area, so I go over the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge often. But I’m getting used to it. I don’t like it but I can tolerate it better now.
I have this odd fear that my car is going to catch fire and explode. Every time I’m on the highway and hear people honking and beeping, I’m convinced that it’s because my car is shooting flames and I don’t know it.
I’m sort of afraid of snakes, but as long as I know they’re there, I’m ok with them.
I also realized I’m pretty agoraphobic. I get over it, but I was out at this huge 900 acre ranch that was in a valley. We were surrounded by a ridge of hills. Those hills were so big and so close, and the sky was so open! I swear I could feel the hills pressing in on me.
Really??? I am scared to death of the Five Americans and that awful Western Union song.
I am very scared of needles. Hypodermic ones, not the sewing kind. It is almost hard to even hold them. And fish hooks too. I have no trouble touching them though, or baiting a hook, or taking a fish off a hook, but I am paranoid of someone else hooking me when they cast or something like that. I once found what this was called, but I forgot and I can’t find it any more.
Anyone know what the fear of small pointed objects is called?
