phobias... what is your personal phobia?

[scatcat]

I have a serious arachnophobia... ( fear of spiders), as well as vertigo.. ( scared of heights).. and agoraphobia ( fear of crowded places!)


I don't mind mice, rats or snakes, in fact I would rather have a mouse in the house than a spider!!

Due to the heat here... the 8-legged & 8-eyed arachnids are invading my space.. 


what are you afraid of??

[Steve]

I have an acute fear of falling over.
Bit of a bummer really, as it prevents me from skating (what half the town are currently doing on the lake right now).

[Steve]

I know. It is odd huh?
But i was royally plastered last night & managed to stay upright, despite the icy pavements.
I think it stems from when I was run over when I was 10 & smashed up my face on the kerb.

[scatcat]

I'm sorry about that steve, 
i just remembered the post about that... I'm sorry!!  :(

wow... maybe this is a thread where we need a psychologist!! 

[Hero]

I have quite a few phobias but i think its partly because i have OCD.

My biggest fear is flying It often leads to panic attacks, pathetic i know!
I also have phobias of spiders, eating and certain social situations!

[japanesebaby]

if you really do have a serious case of arachnofobia, i wonder how can you post a pic like that? i would have never been able to do that... 
i've had arachnofobia since i was very young and although it has gotten slightly better over the years, i still get a serious anxiety attack after just glancing a pics like that.
i remember that back at school my friends used to laugh about it and joke about it, i suppose they just thought i was making a big thing about something small. until after one incident: i think we were 17 or 18, we were in the school library, studying something.  then somebody found this big two-page close-up pic of a tarantula from one of the books. and they thought they'd play a joke on me and they threw the opened book in front of me while i was reading something else. i panicked so much that i instantly fell back with my chair and hit my head on the floor and also injured my right arm. not to mention i was totally shocked mentally. i was allowed to leave school early and go home. 
after that, i think people left me alone.


i don't tell a story because i'd want anyone to say "oh that was so nasty, poor you". that's not the point. i just think people should understand the difference between real phobias and some "oooo i don't really like rats, they are kind of nasty" kind of dislikes. phobias are not fun and they can really have effect on your daily life in a not-so-nice way.

(i can't refresh this page because the damn spider always jumps on my face from the first post! i think i'm not going to check this thread again!)

[scatcat]

Yes, My fear is real,, I spend most of my time, everyday on the look out for spiders. But recently I have been thinking, that in order to overcome this really debilitating obsession, that maybe I should try the approach of controlled exposure... maybe understanding the spiders more, I won't be as scared! .. but since my son enlightened me to the fact that spiders have 8 EYES, NOT just one , as I had always assumed, I got a bit more creeped out!

I watched 'Home Alone' with my son last week.. and I screamed when the spider appeared on the screen!! I would've rather have watched a horror film, so this got me to thinking about the gradual exposure therapy. 

I don't know if I will ever get over the arachnophobia, but I can't let it control my life to this extent. ( even cartoon pics of spiders freak me out!! ) laugh at me !! it sounds funny but, anxiety is not!!  :(  that's my OCD!!

[japanesebaby]

one thing i've never understood about my fear of spiders is that ever since i was a kid, i've been very much into nature and animals and anything and everything there. especially when i was a kid, i was totally into all kinds of weird lifeforms - i loved nature programs on TV, especially anything that was rather strange, like some underwater/deep sea creatures and so on. i also spent a lot of time outdoors, observing all kinds of weird creatures "live". and i was never the slightest bit afraid/appaled of  anything else i saw, quite on the contary: i was just very interested and excited. i could easily hold snakes or bats or or some insects or other creatures like that in my hand BUT whenever a spider appeared, i was totally unable to even look at it, not to mention i could have touched it.
i've always thought maybe i could understand my phobia better if i was also freaked out by lots of similar things too. at least then i could say it's a sort of more general thing, that there's an wider area of things that freak me out in a similar kind of manner. it would somehow make it all more acceptable for me, make it somehow possible to deal with it. but since it's very selected, very defined phobia - i somehow can't even start understanding it and i can't seem to deal with it fully, at least not by myself. and it's also a real  mystery, where i got it from, where it came from and why...

[scatcat]

hehe.. I'm sorry I freaked people out with the spider pic!! 

I promise I won't post it again!! 

I feel the same as japanesebaby... I can touch snakes, lizards (used to keep these), and camping in the Aussie bush is in my blood! Grew up on a farm, acres and acres of bush.. BUT I remember now.... I am SCARED of COWS!! horses not too bad, BUT COWS!! they freak me out... they just stare at you... 
I'd rather play with bugs and worms and six-legged things ... 

[iwannashagsimon]

Limousines!  Yes, that is odd. Please don't ask me why. But everytime I see one I get a empty feeling in the pit of my tummy and my heart starts racing.  Maybe it's cos I can't see who's in it or something.

Syringes. I HATE getting shots.  Too many bad experiences with bad nurses who didn't know what they were doing. What's worse is my veins are hard to find so they usually end up poking and proding til they find one.  OUCH!

[japanesebaby]

Grew up on a farm, acres and acres of bush..

I'd rather play with bugs and worms and six-legged things ... 

me too, i grew up on a farm too! and yet... eight legs = BAD.

related to syringes:
spiders might get the gold but hospitals get at least silver - or maybe it's a shared gold? anyway. but i think i can handle my fear of hospitals better because i know where i comes from: i had all sorts of issues with my health when i was a small kid, like younger than 10 years. i had to spend time in hospitals, smetimes i had to be there for a week. and if you're a 4-year old kid and you never had to leave your home or be away from your parents - and then they take you to a big hospital and leave you there - that's a scary situation, for any kid i suppose. we also had other severe cases of illness in the family all throughout my childhood, so i had to visit hospitals a lot, even when i was not a patient myself anymore. nowadays, even the smell of hospitals makes me sick. today if i have to go to a dentist or to a doctor myself, i feel sick while sitting there and waiting for my turn - even if i was there for some very simple and harmless reason - but that hospital smell, it's awful and it's so depressing... it creates the atmosphere of complete hopelessness. like someone was repeating to your ear: "you're never going to get out of here."
and the fear of surgical operations: i REALLY do hope i never have to take one in my life. i'm not at all afraid of physical pain as such, but the idea of my body being cut open while i'd have to lie there, all helpless and unconscious - 

[scatcat]

OMG    same, same here!  needles.. I cry like a baby when I have to have blood taken. Even the 'flu shot.. I have to warn the nurses that I will cry.. and I do.. I'd rather go thru' labour than have someone stick something in my veins (which are so prominent they have no problem) or injection in a muscle!
I think my fear of doctors and hospitals comes from when I was hospitalised in an infectious ward/hospital for whooping cough when I was about 1. No-one was allowed to visit. I was behind glass. ( mum was expecting another baby and I was too infectious)

as for operations, I've always told my son.... "Don't keep me on life support, don't let them operate, just pull the plug and donate my organs!" I can't stand blood!! But do not fear death. STRANGE BUT TRUE.

[Steve]

Just wanna say PUBLICLY that scatcat's comments about my phobia (those who read them earlier) were in no way taken by me as insensitive. Sha has since deleted them & I hope that you put them back please.
I consider Lara as a genuine friend (even if I've never met her) & can say to all of you that my phobia is real & even I find it quite funny.
Hope that helps.
x

[japanesebaby]

OMG    same, same here!  needles.. I cry like a baby when I have to have blood taken. Even the 'flu shot.. I have to warn the nurses that I will cry.. and I do.. I'd rather go thru' labour than have someone stick something in my veins (which are so prominent they have no problem) or injection in a muscle!
I think my fear of doctors and hospitals comes from when I was hospitalised in an infectious ward/hospital for whooping cough when I was about 1. No-one was allowed to visit. I was behind glass. ( mum was expecting another baby and I was too infectious)

as for operations, I've always told my son.... "Don't keep m :?e on life support, don't let them operate, just pull the plug and donate my organs!" I can't stand blood!! But do not fear death. STRANGE BUT TRUE.

i agree, being hospitalized at a very early age is something that surely WILL stick in your psyche, i'm certain of that. it just cannot be a healthy experience, psychologically, having to be marooned like that, in a pretty hostile and scary environment.

strangely, i don't have any fear needles. i'm NOT saying i like to be stung or anything, but otherwise it's almost on the contrary: i only seem to get this feeling of strange mixed feeling of slight fear and lots of thrill when someone's about to take a blood sample of stick me with a needle - i guess that makes me a potential fetishist...  but only a potential one!! 
anyway. i'm not afraid to see blood either (someone else's or especially not my own), or i'm not afraid or pain as such. yet i'm afraid of operations - i don't fully get it.

about life support and so on - agreed. i've asked some people close to me the same, that please pull the plug if i become a vegetable. not sure if everyone considers it fair, to ask anyone such a thing. yet if anyone should ask me, i'd totally understand.

(anyway, maybe it's not something i should ask but i wonder how you weren't too scared to give birth to your son? weren't you afraid of that?)


i never feared death at all, until it changed very recently. and i still don't fear the possible pain and i'm not afraid of what might happen to my  poor soul or anything. i guess i'm just afraid that i'll notice that i've just failed everything in life and then that suddenly it's all over and what was the point, that sort of fear i guess. it's more like a fear of failure, i guess. some kind of immense failure as a person, the biggest as there can be: what if you ended up wasting your life? made all the wrong choices, screwed up everything good? 


**edit: ok now i think you know too much about me already! )

[scatcat]

now I can't stop laughing... I am 'daft'!!

(okay... the comment went something like..)

hahaha    'acute fear of falling over'??

how drunk are u? Are U like 7 foot tall, and the distance to the ground is terrifyingly frightening?