I have the dropping my keys down the elevator shaft fear too. Every time I step on or off one, I check my pockets, take out my keys so I see that’s what is really in my hands, and put them back in the pocket before stepping across the gap. Same for stepping over manholes, grates, sewer drains, etc.
And the accidentally hurling myself from a balcony even though I don’t really want to fear.
And the ‘will this $20 bill cover this diet cola and gum I’m buying?’ fear.
I also have an irrational fear of spiders. Not giant hairy pincer-clicking acromantula spiders, but some kind of 2-3 inch diameter spiders, black, not as hairy or soft as tarantulas. Little, well, medium creepy spiders. I imagine these everywhere: lurking in the shoes I’m about to put on, scuttling under my bed or :eek: between the covers, on the plate I’m about to serve food onto, in the box with remote controls, etc, etc. Basically anywhere there’s space for a spider, I imagine one in it, I guess so I won’t wet my pants in case there should be an actual spider in any of the unlikely places.
My fear is women. I remember every rejection from the first time I asked a girl to dance with me at a junior high school dance through the last one that happened a couple of weeks ago. I’m trying to start dating again after the death of my wife several years ago. I know that the rejection won’t kill me but every one hurts as much as that first one. I often wonder if the pain of rejection outweighs the pain inherent in loneliness.
-Needles and needle pain. It’s gotten worse over the years. This summer I had to go to the ER because I couldn’t breathe. They inserted an IV (bad enough). Then they decided to do a CAT scan of my chest, and I guess it had gotten clogged because when they tried to flush it…well, I screamed and started crying. I didn’t stop crying until I was out of the scan room (and I’m actually getting a little teary just thinking about it now). I’m supposed to get a meningitis vaccine but I just can’t face the thought of getting a shot if I can concievably get away with not having it.
-Animatronics or whatever you call 'em. Anything that moves on its own. The holidays are terrible for this: little santas and stuff all moving in this rythmic, mechanical, entirely creepy sort of way, with accompanying noises.
There are others, but these are the most irrational.
I have a lot of the fears already mentioned (heights/falling, bridges, car accident, spiders, etc.) but mostly to a rather controllable level. Nothing approaching phobia/panic level except: when I am on an airplane, I will get increasingly uncomfortable (both physically & psychologically) if the flight is more than 2 hours, and by the time we are making the final approach for landing, I want off that damn plane so bad I could chew my way through the fuselage to get the hell out of there. I really have to take deep breaths and concentrate on keeping my cool until it’s my turn to exit in an orderly fashion.
The most odd & irrational minor fear I have is one I’ve never heard from anyone else before: when a sheet of paper is being waved in the air by someone, or is dropped and starts doing that back & forth sailing through the air until it lands, I have this persistant fear that it will fly horizontally right into my eyeball & slice into it. :eek: :eek:
Another scaredy cat here for light bulbs. I hate it when a bulb blips out and I have to put in a new one. I keep thinking that thin, flimsy glass is going to explode when the slightest amount of pressure is exerted on it, and glass shards will eeewwwuuggggackackackackeeeeek!!!
By the time it’s over, I’m sweating and breathing heavy.
Hm, I’ve had my share of irrational fears over the years but this thread is completely confusing me.
You are actually afraid of dropping your keys down the elevator shaft?
Your car breaking down and leaving you stranded?
Locking your keys in your car?
Kicking your window screen out? I just don’t understand. I mean for most people the fear results in something bad happening. i.e. when you’re afraid of heights in a way you’re afraid of falling and dying. But, why would you care if you dropped your keys down the elevator shaft? I mean it’s just a minor inconvinience. Locking your keys in your car? I only have one set of keys for my car and I never seem to care about this. Maybe I’ve locked them in twice in the past year, but who cares? It’s day to day life, I can’t fathom how I could possibly even get upset about it.
Car breaking down and leaving you stranded is a good candidate for an actual fear, but then again, the only issue is how fixing it will affect my finances. Why would you care if your car broke down on the road or at home? I mean getting home, especially if you’re far, is kind of like an exciting adventure. It might cost a little, but that’s what the rainy day fund is for, right?
Kicking your screen out? Are you afraid it’s seriously going to hurt or kill somebody below, if so then secure it properly. Otherwise… why do you care? Do you really have enough time in your life to notice if you have a screen on your window or not? Is it that hard or expensive to put back if it falls out?
I’d love to hear your guys reasoning on some of these (Rational, or irrational, a fear has to have substance, be it heights, planes, spiders, ants, etc.)
I guess it’s my turn? I’m really afraid of the different personalities people present to each other. I even doubted my own parents, and I always wonder if my friends are really my friends at all. I’m afraid somebody is betraying me in some awful way and I’m not aware of it. And it’s not the betrayal. I could live with somebody actively hurting me behind my back as long as I was one up on the information war. If I know but they don’t know that I know. I get urges to spy on people. Once I followed my own mother to work to make sure she was actually going to work. Just in case. It’s very irrational for in reality I’ve been lucky enough not to ever get seriously betrayed. Maybe I have clinical paranoia
dropping my wallet in the toilet whilst “powdering my nose.” (almost became a rational fear once)
I discovered my intense fear of heights while half way up a mountain (man-made heights don’t scare me as much somehow, though I too feel the need to fling myself from them at times)
tunnels or anything else I can get barried alive in
going down ladders (can’t see my feet!)
walking over grates lest they break and I fall through
sitting or standing on anything which might not be able to take my weight
getting on the wrong plane/train/bus, going to the wrong class
getting to the cash register and either not having money or my credit card being denied (a fear that has come true)
stairs that you can see through
having food on my face
forgetting my keys or wallet when I leave home
losing control of my car
being alone in an elevator when something horrible happens (ie the apocalypse or the elevator breaking)
ghosts–I don’t know whether or not I beleive they exist, but they scare the holy bejesus out of me
Dropping your keys in a place where you can’t get them is far from a minor inconvenience. I live alone and often come home late at night. I’m completely screwed if I lose my keys. Can’t drive my car, can’t get into my office, can’t get into my apartment. Heaven forbid my wallet is locked in one of these places. The stress of the situation is what I’m afraid of, not to mention the fear of spending a night homeless.
For a lot of us, it’s NOT an adventure to get home when your car has broken down, especially if you have a busy schedule, have kids, or live/work out in the middle of nowhere (I have broken down in the Everglades before…it’s NOT fun at all). Being stranded all alone also invites all kinds of dangers, like being raped/murdered by predators, being hit by careless drivers, and being subject to inclement weather (ever had to change a tire in the pouring rain?).
That’s why it’s an irrational fear, dude.
I don’t get your confusion. Are you really looking for an explanation for why people would be afraid of losing their keys or having a car break down?
Yeah pretty much. I can understand getting eaten alive by ants or spiders, falling from somewhere, getting sick from gems or crashing in an airplane. All these things result in very uncomfortable situations that overwhelm your being and possibly kill you.
Losing your keys or breaking down your car is so relatively minor on the grand scale of things… I bet the type of people who worry about this also never wind up in a situation where they run out of gas because they didn’t feel like filling up (but had ample opportunity to do so as well as were aware of their impending doom). I really can’t imagine ever being wound that tight. Speaking of which my car is probably 10K miles overdue for an oil change… does that scare you?
I don’t like unpredictability, especially when it affects my comfort. Losing my keys or being in a car that won’t work both cause unpredictability and stress in my life. And no, I don’t worry about running out of gas. (I’m actually very laid back. But when I get stressed out, I get stressed out).
Fear doesn’t have to be life and death to be “real”. You know that yourself: you are afraid that people are two-faced. Maybe discovering that your best friend really hates you is something would overwhelm your being, but should it? Can you explain why it does?
The OP didn’t specify that we mention only debilitating fears that border on the pathological. None of the fears I mention disrupt my life in any meaningful way, and I’m sure that’s true for everyone else who has contributed to this thread. I don’t lose hours of sleep, wondering if my car is going to break down. I’ve never avoided elevators so that I won’t lose my keys. So I’m not “wound tight” at all. None of us are any more tightly wound than you are.
We all have our buttons. I couldn’t care less about people’s motives or inner thoughts or “real” personalities. You obviously do. But I don’t think you’re “wound tight”. Nor do I think it would be nice if someone grilled you for an explanation, like you’re some kind of neurotic fool.
I am also confused by your confusion, groman, and I agree with most of what monstro said. The only debilitating fear that I mentioned is one of heights; the rest are silly things I’m a little neurotic about, but I deal. And I’m usually not tightly wound. Very few things are really worth getting my panties in a bunch about.
But if you’re truly interested in my psyche, which I know you are because, hey, isn’t everyone?, I can tell you a lot of my fears stem from not wanting to look or feel stupid. Crashing through a grate in the street would make me feel pretty stupid; explaining that I need a new driver’s license because I accidentally flushed my wallet would make me look pretty stupid. Are these life threatening things? Most likely not. But that doesn’t make them any less a minor, but persistent, irrational fear.
I guess my confusion stemmed from the fact that to be afraid of something you have to think about it. For a lot of these things I would never even notice I’m walking over a grate or my car keys missing. I’m just too distracted to ever think about something like that.
Well, when this thread was new, I figured a rational fear was a fear of something that could plausibly happen, or of an object or creature that has the potential for harm. An irrational one would be of something that had a one in ten million chance of happening, or that couldn’t possibly hurt you. So I would classify many of these fears as rational: one does have to be careful not to drop one’s keys, and many spiders are poisonous. It’s when you get into stuff like zombies, or falling through a window that you couldn’t physically fit through, or danger to a child that doesn’t exist yet, then there’s probably a deeper psychological basis for the fear.
Now that I’ve gotten that over with! I have a plausible fear. I just sent an amusing video clip to my mom. I’m fairly confident that she’ll be able to open it; she has opened clips I’ve sent in the past, but she usually adds, in her acknowledgement, a comment to the effect that this was a triumph for her because she doesn’t “speak computer”. So my fear is that either I’ll get like one letter wrong in the link, or she’ll do something other than simply click on it, maybe copy and paste it into a new window, and in so doing, open a webpage full of graphic fetish PORN! And then I’ll get the phone call: “OMIGAWD why did you send me that!!!..Well, but now I’ll never get that out of my head!..Well what kind of sites do you normally visit? Is this something you and Mr. Rilch like to do don’t tell me I don’t wanna know!”
Everyone have experienced different events that shape their mentality.
I used to have the fear of forgetting to bring down my homework. I would check my schoolbag three or four times to make sure I did bring it down. It wasn’t just a minor thing - I would be breathless with fear till I am absolutely sure that I had my homework with me.
Why? Ask the beast of the teacher who kept punishing me for forgetting to bring my homework (or textbooks. Or worksheets) in the most humilitating way possible. And by nature I am a terribly forgetful person
I’ve got the “but what if I decide to fling myself off this balcony/bridge/high place?” fear, as well as a minor form of the lightbulb fear.
I fear that I’m breathing bad breath on someone.
I fear that I’ll just start screaming in public for no reason. That’s a fun one.
I had a teacher who used a metal holder for the chalk when he wrote on the board. I feared constantly that the chalk would break and the holder would skitter across the surface of the board with a horrifying shriek.
Some of us would really, really love to *not *notice that we are stepping over a grate. Some of us have actually gone on medication in hopes that we could *not *worry about whether we lost our keys, and *not *have to check our purse five times to make sure they are there. Some of us also found that the side effects from the medication are worse than the symptoms they were supposed to alleviate and are trying to live with our symptoms. We like to call them “quirks” and joke about them in threads with other “quirky” people so we can feel more normal.
I am happy for you that you don’t share our comman ground and can not relate to us. And I do mean that with absolutly no hint of sarcasm.
My irrational fear is that someone will steal my paper before I can get to it.
If I wake up and it’s possible it could have been delivered already, I will rush out to get it.
When I’m scolding myself to be more rational, I will start the coffee pot before going out.
The fear is truly irrational, as when, as happened today, the paper didn’t come at all, I just hit the “redeliver” button on my favorites list, and they send me one within a half hour. So, even if it were stolen I would be covered without panicing. But that’s how my mind works- I panic every morning.
