They're scary: Phobias you have.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Bees, wasps, hornets, yellowjackets. Whatever you call them, if they can fly and sting you several times, and can attack en masse, then they’re evil, evil, EVIL! Just looking at them makes me cringe. I am allergic to the reaction from a sting. I had a terribly traumatic experience on the first day of school in the fourth grade. We were playing in a group of trees on the playground and a yellowjacket nest had been built there over the summer. About a dozen of us came running out of there fleeing from the angry swarm. I only sustained a couple stings, but they hurt like a son of a bitch, and the sound of all those nasty little bastards buzzing around just gives me the chills!

Other things I’m afraid of include spiders and snakes. Spiders don’t usually pose an immediate and imminent threat as bees/wasps do, and I rarely see any snakes around here. I’d be afraid of fire ants if we had them around here. I’ve heard they’re just as bad, if not worse than a swarm of bees or wasps.

22

Vomiting is currently my biggest fear. I’ve gotten arachnophobia down to a bearable fear, at least - I’m no longer incapacitated by the sight of them. But I’ve recently come to realize that I think I have another fear - one that I never really thought of as a phobia.

I have the biggest fear of seeing other people get hurt. If I see someone on a ladder, I can’t even stand to watch; it causes me physical discomfort. If I think I see someone about to do something as mundane as trip and fall, I will stop dead in my tracks, frozen by fear. I have three kids, and I always struggled with letting them play outside, or do simple things, because I was just so terrified that they would get hurt. At first I thought it was just motherly overprotectiveness; then I realized that it was well beyond that. If I see them doing something that I as a child would love to do - climbing on rocks, running down the sidewalk - I’m so incapacitated by my fear that I have to let someone else keep an eye on them. I’m working through that though, for their sakes; no one wants a spoilsport mom just cause she’s irrationally afraid.

But as the OP said, I’d take just about any other bodily harm over vomiting. It’s horrible.

Incidentally, my middle child inherited my fear of spiders - but 10 times worse. She was truly paralyzed by fear anytime she saw one. It was difficult to manage, living right by the woods, where all manner of spider happened to find ways into our home. Then one day, when the baby was maybe 3 months old or so, my daughter was sitting next to her watching TV. She happened to look at the baby, who had a spider walking on her shirt. Cool as can be, she said “Baby! You have a spider on you!” and plucked it off of her and tossed it aside, and resumed watching TV as if it were the most natural thing in the world. My jaw was on the floor, and she’s never been afraid of spiders since.

23

Ladders. They always sway.

24

Well, I’m not afraid of vomiting as such—I mean I don’t like to vomit, I try to avoid it as much as possible, but a phobia? I can’t say I have that.

But I am absolutely revulsed by vomit itself. I can’t stand to see people vomit, I can’t stand to hear about it, and the smell of it, well, I’ll leave that to your imagination.

My biggest fear however is spiders. It’s so bad it’s almost not even a fear; it’s more like a deep-seated sickness. I can handle small spiders, but anything with a legspan bigger than an inch or two gives me the crawlies in a way I just can’t handle.

True story: Just last week a spider built a big orb web right in the frame of my back door. I didn’t notice it until I had already walked through it. The web’s builder thankfully didn’t get on me in the process, or I’d probably be writing this from a padded cell. Still, how fitting that the most arachnophobic person around gets a huge web built right in his door, where he has no choice but to destroy it (or otherwise never use the back door again).

25

I have a phobia of vomiting, too – it’s called emetophobia. To me, vomiting is practically a fate worse than death. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get pregnant, or when the subsequent child gets sick.

That’s really the only phobia I have. I don’t like spiders or other stinging/biting things, but it isn’t a phobic reaction.

-stargazer (who hasn’t vomited in 9 years)

26

Then don’t put . . ., nemmind: too easy.

27

So how long have you been waiting to use that one?

For me, it’s needles near the eyes.

28

Spiders and sharks for me.

The shark one is weird, though. I’ve only seen the ocean once in my life and never swam in it, yet the fear is there. When I watch a documentary on them I get the willies and have to get my feet up off the floor and keep checking behind me. I don’t go swimming in lakes or go very deep in the water at beaches.

The spider one was triggered when I was about 12. I was at a friends houseboat and when we got there the place was just crawling with them. That kinda freaked me out. Later that weekend we were docking the boat and I was to jump off and tie off the boat to the dock, but a spider got on me and I started panicing.

Then a few years ago I went up into the attic in the garage, and I seen what I thought was a bunch of sawdust in the air, but as I got up there I took a close look at one piece of “sawdust” and it was a baby spider. The garage was filled with them. I immediately got a picture in my mind of the mother spider, sitting up there in the dark. I jumped down and got out of there really quickly.

29

Iceland_Blue and Sean Factotum, yes, those were two different phobias. I don’t have a specific phobia about having octopuses and/or squids shoved down my throat, although that would certainly be unpleasant.

30

By the way, if anyone needs a technical term for their phobia, here you go.

31

Don’t look now, but there’s an evil-looking robotic sloth clambering over the countryside even as I type… :eek:

Sean Factotum: I agree about the needles in (or around) the eyes. I can’t even stand the thought of inserting contact lenses – I’ll stick with glasses once I’m too blind to see without vision enhancement.

I have a gas stove in my apartment, and I avoid lighting the oven for fear that I’ll blow the house up or something. I can use the range-top burners with no problem, but anything that requires an oven larger than a microwave doesn’t get cooked unless my sweetie is here to strike the match and apply it to that little Tinderbox of Terror. But spiders and other creepy crawlies? No problem – I just pick 'em up and throw 'em outside!

32

Snakes. Can’t abide 'em. Turtles are fine, but lizards…not so much. But nothing get’s me curdled like a snake.

33

I don’t really have any serious phobias myself, though calling people on the phone does take a deep breath or two first. I just thought I’d throw in the following story for the spider-lovers who have posted here.

One morning I got up half awake, put on a robe, and went to make coffee. I started the kettle and reached toward the cupboard for the coffee, only to see a big hairy spider the size of my hand climbing over my shoulder! Luckily, by the time I had jumped out from under it and started breathing again, it had returned to its usual leg span of an inch and a half so I could urge it onto my hand and put it outside.

34

I can handle most insects; they don’t bother me. But the evil Giant Flying Cockroach, aka Palmetto Bug, will send me screaming from the room.

Actually, I’ve gotten much better, and have killed a few this last year or so. But I will scream every time.

The other day, I was getting laundry out of the washing machine to put in the dryer. A drowned roach fell on me! I freaked out. My (newlywed) husband came running to see if I was still alive. What a sweetie, he picked it up and threw it away for me. But he snickered. I heard him.

35

I am terrified of elevators. I have been afraid of them for a very long time, and I have absolutely no idea why I am afraid of them. It can’t be from getting stuck in them (which has happened twice) because I was afraid of them long before that happened.

Some people ask if I have claustrophobia, but no, it’s not all enclosed spaces. It’s just elevators. Something about dangling inside of a coffin on a string really bothers me. Must not be the heights, either, because I am a skydiver and I love that.

It used to be so bad that I hyperventilated at going into an elevator, and many years ago I would hold the elevator railing with a death grip on the few occasions that folks managed to get me into one. It was around that time that I set about to get rid of my fear of elevators, so I went to a couple of really tall buildings (Toronto’s CN Tower and the Empire State Building) in order to work out the fear. I have not, as of yet, completely wiped out this fear, but I am now at the point where I can go into an elevator and arrive at my floor without hyperventilating.

I much more dislike descending in an elevator than ascending, and still prefer to take the stairs down when in the Cathederal of Learning at Pitt because the elevators there haven’t got handrails and they shake horribly. It was also at Pitt (after the CN Tower and Empire State Building experiences) that I was stuck in two elevators. One in Litchfield Tower B, and one in Lothrop Hall. Let’s just say that they thought my tubby butt would have trouble climbing out of that elevator, but I shocked everyone with my 48" vertical leap for freedom.

I do have nightmares about being in runaway elevators, sometimes, particularly when something really scary is coming up…

Like public speaking. I’m terrified of that too, but twice a year for the last three years I have been invited to be the faculty speaker for the commencement ceremonies where I work, and I do it every time. Shake like a leaf, horribly scared, but I survive it.

Only other really irrational fear I have is getting shots, like injections. It’s not the needles that bother me. Piercing with a needle? No problem. Donating blood? No problem. Sticking stuff in me with a needle? Big problem. I’ve opted to have a biopsy and stitches without any local anesthetic because that would’ve involved getting a shot. Not entirely sure I want to work that one out, either.

36

I hate, hate centipedes. Unfortunately, we live on the ground floor of a 100-year-old building, and they’ve had time to get into the pipes. The first time I noticed it, my black cat was in the bathtub (empty), and he started playing with something in the bottom of the tub, hopping around and whacking at it with his paw. I leaned over to see what he was playing with in time to watch him smack the thing until it went splat, then he somehow managed to pick it up and tried to give it to me. I ran screaming from the bathroom, with my cat chasing after, the half-smashed centipede still in his mouth. Finally he threw it down on the floor near the door I had slammed in his face, and it took me 20 minutes to get up the courage to get a tissue to clean the centipede off the floor then go back in the bathroom to clean up the little waving legs that were stuck to the bottom of the tub.

37

Never visit my backyard. You would be in a tizzy ( I love that word).

38

Wow. So many vomit phobics. I feel less crazy now.

39

I’m scared of the dark. I also can’t stand being anywhere near guns.

Mr. moonstarssun is afraid of heights and spiders.

40

Mundane, but some heights and deep water (water deeper than my neck). Put me on one of those bridges where you can look down through the expanded metal at the river below and see me break into a cold sweat, if not downright freak the freak out. I have an irrational fear of drowning (I don’t swim) and refuse to get on any water-borne conveyance unless absolutely necessary. Comes from several near-death water experiences, but sure cuts into my fishing desires.

My wife wanted to walk across the cable suspension bridge on the Yukon River near Miles Canyon. I just looked at her. She had the decency to apologize for the suggestion.

For heights, it’s a matter of perception. If I can’t see the slope, I don’t walk on the path. No unprotected building edges. I can’t even stand to watch someone standing on the edge of a building or peering over the edge of a cliff. I think it has something to do with nearly falling off a railroad trestle when I was young.