Heights: Probably about a 3. Oddly, I like rock climbing (although I haven’t done it in years), but that’s because I trust my equipment. If I’m up anywhere high without being roped in, I start to panic. My grandfather’s widow lives on like the 9th floor of an apartment building in Dallas, and I can’t go out on her balcony any further than a foot or two. Yeek.
Caves/small enclosed spaces: 4.5. Just thinking about being in a cave makes me start to pant and sweat. I read this story (supposedly true) about some weird stuff that this guy and a friend encountered while caving, and they had pictures of some of the spaces they had to crawl through; some of them were barely wide enough to accommodate a human being, and they got stuck sometimes. Literally made my flesh crawl.
At a severity rating of about 4.5 I’ll list apiphobia/melissophobia. Fear of bees.
My fear has extended itself from bees to wasps, dirtdobbers, bee or wasplike creatures and most frustratingly, anything that makes a buzzing sound.
My biggest fear is that someday a bee will get trapped in my car while I’m driving and I’ll run myself right into a tree or telephone pole. It’s so irrational that in the heat of the Florida summer with no air conditioning I still drive with my windows up.
I’ve gone into full-blown panic attacks at the sound of a weed wacker and am very thankful I’ve never had to be drilled at the dentist. Strangely enough though, I freak out when I hear a fly buzzing, but am able to calm down once I realize it’s just a fly.
My mother tells me it’s probably from an encounter when I was about 3. My hair was really long and my mom used to wrap it up on my head so I wouldn’t get it caught in anything. One day a couple bees got stuck in my hair and stung me on my head. I don’t remember it, but I’m sure it may have contributed to my fear.
4.5 on spiders I would say. I can see a photo, but it upsets me (not clawing my eyes out, but elevated pulse, slight hyperventilation if I keep looking). Small little tiny ones I can trap in the various “cup on a stick” contraptions I have created and throw them out the window, but it leaves me shaking. I would love to visit remote places in foreign countries, but I know they have spiders and other scary bugs there. Ita kinda shit.
At a level of like 2 or so I probably have the crowd fear mentioned earlier by Tir Tinuviel. When people keep banging past me and crowding round me I am just glad I amn’t armed. I have roared at strangers in cinema lobbys etc cos they just keep crowding and pushing. Rock concerts etc are no problem tho, I am always in the front line, and get left with bruises in the pattern of the barrier across my front
Not a phobia perhaps, but I have obsessive thoughts about… I don’t know how to verbalise it, but the sensation of running my lips and tongue over sandpaper or concrete or something like that? I think of that sensation all the time and it makes me really uncomfortable and I have to try visualise doing the same with ice or glass or something, which doesn’t help very much. Is that a phobia?
I’m terrified of clowns. Laugh all you want, but I will run across the street to avoid clowns. I saw that movie It when I was a wee one and though the movie sort of sucks, the image of Pennywise the clown freaked me out I guess. When I was in college, I always used to be afraid that there would be a clown in the shower at the dorm. Irrational, I know. Clowns are just, well, creepy and I always think about them in the shower (because there’s a scene in It where the clown comes out of the drain in a shower). The worst thing is that clowns think that it’s funny to screw around with me because they know I’m afraid. I’ve been chased by one once! I ran! Okay, make fun of me now! I probably deserve it!
By the way, I’m also afraid of flying. I get very nervous and upset on airplane flights…especially take off and landing. When I flew to Europe once, I fell asleep while watching a movie with the headphones on me. There was a line of dialogue in the movie where someone said, “This is an emergency!” and I woke up hearing that, terrified that the plane was crashing and that the voice I just heard was the pilot!
Bellybuttons. I HATE them. I have this irrational fear that something will enter it, or come out by it, and be inside my body, or something that should be inside my body will be outside…I’ve told my SO many MANY times not to place his hand near my bellybutton when he holds me, and he even knows that if I ever need to get my appendix taken out, to request that they do it the old-fashioned way and cut me open rather than try and "hide"the scar in my bellybutton like they did for my best friend…sudder. I can’t watch that scene in the Matrix, and I once saw a stupid people trick on Letterman where the guiy opened a beer bottle…gave me nightmares! And its one of my fears with pregnancy - that my belly button will pop out! Definitly a 5+!!
I also don’t like people touching my knees. I had friends who would "tease"me about driving a cork screw through my kneecaps (well, it came about in a discussion of most torturous things, and I was soo freaked out that they then teased me about it). Since then, I’ve been freaked out about anything bad happening to my kneecaps. Maybe a 2 or 3 on your scale
I also have a fear of knives, or blades in particular. The scale would vary by context, but this fear is mostly related to people holding knives as if they would cut themselves, or hurt someone else. This is due to a friend once showing up at my house with a knife to his wrist…since then, I just can’t deal with that kind of image, but its rare enough that I’d probably rate it a 2 or so. A couple of years ago, it would have been a 5. I’m also VERY nervous using knives, like in the kitchen, and I need my SO to be there, and it really is a big accomplishment for me to chop up an onion or something because it involved a sharp blade near my hands…
I’m terrified of glancing in a mirror in the dark. I assume this is a leftover from those adolescent “Bloody Mary” rituals, but I’m 24 now and I still can’t set foot into a bathroom without flipping the light on.
Even then, I’ll sometimes worry that I’ll see something weird in the mirror… someone behind me or something.
I’m also TERRIFIED of ghosts. Tell me a few ghost stories and I won’t be able to function normally for the rest of the day.
I don’t like half opened doors either. Specially the closet. I have to open it all the way or close it all the way or I wont be able to quit thinking about it.
And ever since Stir of Echoes, I’ve had a weird fear of my fingernail snapping back and off at the cuticle. EEeeeeeeee!!!
I have mild agoraphobia – literally, fear of the market place. My fear is low: about a 2. But it affects me of level 5 because I’m retired and lazy and really don’t have to get out of the house. Once I’m actually outside, I’m okay. But I go out only once every two weeks or so.
MrsFace said:
The fear of flying (I have that too) is irrational. Planes are the safest way to travel. If you are driving from New York to L.A. and your sister is flying, she has a lot better chance of making it. I will see if I can find some statistics.
Now I have probably made everyone’s driving phobia worse.
I, too, have the fear of being trapped in a car under water so I don’t like bridges very much. I can’t drive on long bridges and I don’t like it when someone else is driving and we have to cross at night. I didn’t realize how common that fear is.
College parties get a 5 for me, but that is really two fears put together.
Big groups of people, especially people I don’t know make me feel really uncomfortable. Also, with large groups of people, there are usually invasions of personal space, which I really don’t like to have invaded. This gets a 4.
Alcohol gets a 2. When I see people drinking, I just think of all the bad things that could happen.
This normally wouldn’t be the first thing I think of when asked what I fear, but I was stuck at a party last night because my driver was drunk. Not fun! (But I admit that it was better than trying to make her drive)
spiders (a 3…once a 5), spider squishing is the man’s job I say! strange other bugs don’t bother me, just spiders are creepy, the way they jump or skitter around…ack!
getting poked in the eye with something by someone else (wow, tisn’t just me who has that fear)
going to McDonalds , I’ll jones for one of those fish burgers (fries too for like a month before I get up the nerve to go in…I’m convinced it’ll be bombed the day I feed my need for them yummie hot fried apple pies (4)
Mine is vomit…If i see/hear/smell it, I will run screaming and get as far away from it as possible.Its a definate 5
My other fear is agorophobia…fear of being out in public, its about a 3-4 .My phobias are a vicious cycle cause when I go out,I get panicky,when i get panicky I feel like Im going to throw up, which of course triggers my other fear and it just keeps going round and round like that.It gets ridiculous enough to the point where I don’t really leave the house much anymore.
I’m suprised no one has mentioned dentists yet…for me…5+++
The way my phobia began though makes it really understandable why I freak out at the dentist.
As a small child there was ONE dentist within 45 miles of where I grew up and he was a sadist…he would genuinely torture the small kids he worked on…me included.
He would drill without any novacaine…he’d tell you he was gonna keep drilling and if you moved he was gonna cut your tongue off with the drill…caps he put on would fall off within a week of him putting them on just so he could have you in his chair that much sooner…he did other horrible things to me and others I talked to later in life…but ONLY to kids.
You tell your parents what he did and they would think it was just natural fear of going to the dentist because he never did any of this to an adult.
BTW A few years ago I went to another dentist in another city and the dental technician there had previously worked for that evil dentist and she told me she left him because of what he did to kids…IMO she should of reported that jerk and saved a lot of kids this same phobia!
Microwave ovens. No idea why. Something to do with that noise they make when they kick in. Can’t be in a room with one running without sweating and starting to sneak away looking for metal things to hide behind.
I rate somewhere around 4/5. My mouth doesn’t seem to react properly to anaesthetic. Unfortunately that means I have had two root canals where it all went hopelessly wrong and as soon as he got inside my tooth allI got was cold white pain - all other senses giving up. These days I have to go to special dentist who is trained to handle people like me. The last time I went to see a “proper” dentist, she got me to sit on the chair and I just curled up into the foetal position and started crying.
for like a month before I get up the nerve to go in…I’m convinced it’ll be bombed the day I feed my need for them yummie hot fried apple pies (4)