What are you afraid of?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m a grown man, married, father of two (obviously), I have a house and family, a job, responsibility.

I’m afraid of the dark. Like pulse pounding, I’m not going in the basement at night what’s that in the shadows O MY GOD I’M RUNNING BACK TO MOOMMMMYYYYY!!! kind of afraid of the dark. I always have been. It doesn’t seem to be getting any better as I get older or more “mature”. If I’m with one of the kids, I’m OK, but, for instance, as soon as I put my daughter to bed upstairs and have to walk back down…here it comes! Heart starts beating a little faster, and I walk a little more quickly going downstairs.

What are you afraid of?

2

Not too crazy about dogs.*

Little yap balls I can deal with, as they can double as footballs.**

Big giant dogs running around unchained scare me, though. Until I know for sure that they’re nice, I treat 'em as if they want to eat my face and head indoors.

*In fact, I pretty much hate them. Especially dachsunds. Ferrets of the dog world, I say!

**Joke, relax.

3

I’m with you on the dark thing. I can be in it, but I’d rather not.

Needles. I hate needles. I abhore going to the dentist because I know they’re going to stick a needle in my mouth. When I have to get injected with something, or blood drawn, I close my eyes and tense up. I have been made fun of by doctors and blood withdrawer people because of my fear. I don’t care that I act like a 5 year old girl. I HATE NEEDLES.

And enclosed spaces, I don’t know why. Not elevator enclosed, but not being able to move enclosed. I can’t even sleep in a sleeping bag. I begin to freak out. I get all hot, and I can’t breathe.

And bugs. I’m not one of those people who can’t kill a bug, but if one touches me, I will scream. Where I used to work, some of my co-workers found out, and put a dead roach in an envelope and left it on my dest. I opened it and nearly flew back. My boss found out, and she acted like she was going to throw it on me. I acted like a sissy. I screamed, I hid behind this one girl. When I thought it was on me, I jumped up and down, and squirmed. Everything. They thought it was funny…I miss working there.

Being murdered in my sleep by someone sneaking in through the window. A few years ago, I woke up early morning to some sounds. I lift my head and see a hand under the curtain. When I’m asleep, I’m out of it, so I just laid my head down, and when back to sleep. When I went to close the window in the morning, the outside screen was torn off and broken on the ground, and there were footprints leading up to my window. Now, my window stays closed once I’m no longer in the room, or the sun goes down.

The black part of the lightbulb. I don’t know why, but I will not touch that. I think I was burned by it when I was little. I don’t know. But I will drop the bulb before I touch it. My mom says when I was little, she purposly put a finger on the oven because I kept trying to touch it, no matter what she did. She said from then on out, I would never try. Now, if I even think I’ll get burned, I’ll stay away.

That’s all that I can think of off the top of my head. More are sure to come later.

(Man, I may need some therapy.)

4

My friend has the Great Dane. I’m sure it’s a nice dog and all, it seems sweet. But that dog is bigger than me. I swear I see a look in his eyes that say, “I’m going to eat. I’m in the mood for mexican.”

When that dog gets near me, I freeze up. I won’t make any sudden movements.

5

Rand, looks like you have what I think they call issues… :wink:

But I’m with you on the bugs and I’m not quite as bad on the small spaces. To plug in the lamps in our bedroom, you have to squeeze under the bed and futz with an extension cord, and figure out which one is the clock etc. Makes me almost frantic if I take too long. Silly, huh? And sometimes I’ll get my wife to kill bugs, sometimes I’ll do it. But the locusts this year were almost more than I could take. I never screamed and ran back inside but man did I feel like doing so a few times. Locusts are bug ugly nasty things with these wings, and eyes and they flew around…ick ick ick.

6

Water. I’m terrified of water. I don’t like going out on boats, don’t even want to look at the arroyos after a rainstorm, and frequently have nightmares about flash floods. (In a recent nightmare, I woke up yelling that I hated water.)

But a week after that nightmare I was cheerfully strolling in Utah’s Zion Canyon in spite of all the signs warning that there could be sudden floods. Go figure.

7

Whatch’a got?

Heights, so much so that I cannot recall the last time I exposed myself the a high place.

Needles, although I now have to jab myself periodically. That does not bother me too much.

On the other hand, I find small, dark spaces oddly comforting. Go figure.

8

Flying, drowning, snakes, spiders, wife finding out about multiple other wives/secret life/swiss bank account, dentists…

Oh, shit! The wife might read this, better not hit

9

[Geoffrey]DAMMIT![/Geoffrey]

10

I have gradually grown more and more phobic as I’ve gotten older. Things I didn’t fear at all now make me nervous, and things I feared a lot have grown to full-blown phobias.

Top of the list is spiders, a phobia which over the years has grown to include almost anything with more than four legs. I’m claustrophobic to the point that I opted for surgery to correct my sleep apnea rather than attempt to sleep with a CPAP. I cannot bear having my face touched by someone else. I can’t put my face in water (or rather, under water. I’m OK in the shower.) Bridges terrify me. Flying makes me a nervous wreck (lots and lots of drugs help when I absolutely have to fly.) Open heights paralyze me. I’m afraid of fire, slamming doors, amusement park rides. I am VERY weird about food, too.

11

I’m afraid of a lot of things. I’ll just tackle the top ones, though. I’m afraid of thunderstorms. I cannot sleep if it storms at night. No matter how tired I am. I just lie there and cringe at the crack of thunder or the flash of lightning. I’m afraid of spiders, scorpions, and roaches. Where I live, we have these big roaches that fly ! Gahhh! Like LifeOnWry, I am not that wild about things with more than four legs. It seems that those roaches like to fly right at the heads of people like me. A couple of weeks ago, a roach got into my room. It ran across my foot. I yelled. Didn’t wake anyone else up–my parents must have been really out that night. I’m afraid of heights. I’m not as bad about that as I was, but I still hate to be near a railing or something like that where you can see how far you are off the ground. I also can’t watch scary movies because subconsciously I believe them. Roller coasters are definitely out for me.

12

Anything hot, for fear of getting burnt, and the dark of course.

13

Spiders of Medium Size. I’m Ok with tarantulas (sp?), I’m OK with the super tiny, nub of a pen sized spider. But, any spider in between I have a hard time getting close enough to kill. I generally spray them with whatever is sprayable handy. So you know, the combination of 409 and Shout will kill a Medium Sized Spider. Dead.

Water deeper than I am tall. I know how to swim, but I can’t do it if I know that when my feet are on the bottom of the pool (or whatever) my mouth will not be out of the water.

Water on my face. I can’t even stand in the shower with the water running straight onto my face. I must use a wash cloth to wash my face. Just thinking about my face being wet is giving me the willys right now.

Riding Motorcycles. I can do rollercoasters all day long. I can go 100 mph in a car. Everytime I’m on a motorcycle (which isn’t often, haven’t been on one in probably 10 years) I have a vivid image in my brain of my right leg leaving my body. Always my right leg.

And, the weirdest of all:

Everytime I hear a Rod Stewart song, doesn’t matter which one, I feel nervous. Or anxious, maybe. I don’t like it, either way. And I couldn’t tell you why. To my knowledge/memory, I’ve never had a particularily bad Rod Stewart experience. All the same, Maggie May is the worst song ever.

14

People emerging from the dark or from reflective surfaces, like Sadako from The Ring or Bloody Mary. That sort of thing. I find that I have to reassure myself when I walk past the extremely reflective big flatscreen TV to get a drink of water late at night.

Mysterious noises at night. Which kind of ties into my previous fear.

I’m not too sure how to describe this, but I cannot watch anything that involves eyes getting pierced by sharp objects or forced open with clamps. At all. It’s not really a phobia, but I just cannot help thinking about what that feels like and how painful it must be, then my right eye starts to hurt in sympathy.

I am also deathly afraid of big flying roaches that crawl around on my posters at 3 am and refuse to get whacked to death with dictionaries. I tried to whack it with a dictionary and it flew right into my face. Ugh.

15

Heights

Failure

Those two girls in the Shining - :eek:

16

I’m still afraid of heights.

Though I’ve been both skydiving and bungee jumping, when I’m up really high like the top of a building, I get that that “whoah whoah” feeling like I have to catch myself. I get the butterflys even when I’m inside a restaurant at the top of building like the Signature Room at the top of the Hancock building or Top of the World restaurant in the Stratosphere Las Vegas, but the kicker is being outside that high up, as in the balcony on top of Mandalay Bay.

That rollercoaster at the top of the Stratosphere? Forget it.

17

Pudding. And success. But mostlly pudding.

18

Heights mostly… well actually it’s not the height but the depth… I can’t say that I freeze up totally, but it’s distinctly unpleasurable to be painting the crown of a 3 storey house on a ladder.

19

Heights terrify me. I can’t look over railings. Being on the second floor of a building with open spaces to see the floor below makes me ill. I can’t stand on anything higher than two feet to reach things around the house.

Water. I can’t even splash water on my face to rinse it. I feel like I’m drowning.

Bugs creep me out. I’m happy to have a husband to relocate them for me.

The sound of air brakes.

20

Yikes! Me, too. When I still lived with my parents, I make the turn from the steps to the upstairs hallway without seeing them at the end of the hallway.
I’m not really fond of any bug, but spiders scare the living piss out of me. Just last Sunday I encountered one while doing laundry and screamed until my husband rushed to save me. I keep telling him that the little bastards are trying to kill me, but all he does is roll his eyes.