I’ve got what my fiancee calls “an insane fear” of fire. I’d call it a phobia. I do have a very unrealistic fear of all kinds of fire. It sounds stupid, even to me, but I don’t even like lighters. My parents have got pictures of me as a kid holding sparklers like they might just kill me. I used to have nightmares of fires frequently, I still do but not as much. I hate it so much that I even hate phrases like “his old flame” or “she has a torch for him” and all kinds of fire-y type phrases, which is also very weird.
I’ve looked it up on-line and its called Pyrophobia, but most of the websites tell me that most people with it have had some sort of horrible experience with fire in their lives. I never have. I asked my parents and they said nothing ever happened when I was an infant either. I had very serious surgery as an infant but it was nothing at all fire related. Or even accident related. It’s been suggested to me a couple times that maybe I died in a fire in a past life, although I don’t know if I believe in that.
So I guess what I’m wondering is what do you think could cause such an insane fear of fire in someone who’s never been harmed by fire, or had someone they love harmed by fire (well once but that was long after my phobia started that just made it worse, when it was just getting better). Do you think it really could be a past life? Maybe a repressed memory?
Any ideas?