Phobias

[Klynne]

About a year ago, I started to experience panic attacks when I have to drive on an expressway. It has become a pain in the arse. I have to meet a friend of mine in Detroit December 9 to go to a football game. Lions vs Cowboys. I am excited about seeing her and going to the game, but the panic attacks I get are unbelievable. It is hard to even visit my family. I am thinking about going to an hypnotherapist over this. What I have read about my phobia is that it is a fear about lack of control.

So, share you phobias with me. Thanks, lurves, me.

[auntie aubrey]

i'm terrified of mummies.

and not in an abbot and costello way, like i think they're going to come to life and chase me around. more like in a terrified-of-the-mummy-exhibit-at-the-museum kind of way. it must be a corpse thing, but there also is a whole creepy thing with the way the exhibits are always set up really close and the air is really still and the lights area always low and it's all quiet in there...

probably a good 15 years ago my family all went to the field museum in chicago and i knew right away that i would avoid their very extensive mummy exhibit. that was on the first floor, but there was a replica of an actual pyramid on the second floor with real walls and real hieroglyphics and all that good stuff. i figured i could handle that. what i didn't realize was that at the end of the twists and turns in the pyramid there was a spiral staircase that sent us straight down into the bowels of the mummy area. having no choice i descended to the first floor and as i cleared the landing i saw before me dozens of mummies in glass cases, some with the bandages peeled back from their faces. i opened my mouth to shriek in unholy terror but just at that moment my sister hit the bottom step and *WHAM* threw her hand across my eyes. she hissed, "WALK!" and led me sightless through the exhibit to the other side. i waited with shaky knees until she finished her perusal of the exhibit and then we moved on to the rest of the museum.

i've sort of made it a policy to avoid egyptology since then.

[Klynne]

Kisses! Thanks for sharing.

QUOTE=auntie aubrey;368661]i'm terrified of mummies.

and not in an abbot and costello way, like i think they're going to come to life and chase me around. more like in a terrified-of-the-mummy-exhibit-at-the-museum kind of way. it must be a corpse thing, but there also is a whole creepy thing with the way the exhibits are always set up really close and the air is really still and the lights area always low and it's all quiet in there...

probably a good 15 years ago my family all went to the field museum in chicago and i knew right away that i would avoid their very extensive mummy exhibit. that was on the first floor, but there was a replica of an actual pyramid on the second floor with real walls and real hieroglyphics and all that good stuff. i figured i could handle that. what i didn't realize was that at the end of the twists and turns in the pyramid there was a spiral staircase that sent us straight down into the bowels of the mummy area. having no choice i descended to the first floor and as i cleared the landing i saw before me dozens of mummies in glass cases, some with the bandages peeled back from their faces. i opened my mouth to shriek in unholy terror but just at that moment my sister hit the bottom step and *WHAM* threw her hand across my eyes. she hissed, "WALK!" and led me sightless through the exhibit to the other side. i waited with shaky knees until she finished her perusal of the exhibit and then we moved on to the rest of the museum.

i've sort of made it a policy to avoid egyptology since then.[/quote]

[Pixie Cherries]

When I was about seven back in the 1960's my parents had access to hollywood movies through the military. They showed them on a regular basis in our home. We usually saw good, fun movies like The Pink Panther.

Except one night when we saw the original 1963 version of "The Haunting of Hill House" with Julie Harris and Claire Bloom. Wikipedia says it is the most famous literary ghost story published in the twentieth century.

I can tell you that is one scary movie. The scariest I have ever seen. And I do question my parents showing it to us, but I don't think they knew how scary it would become until we were all transfixed and pretty deep in the story. There were two adults and five kids couching out together. So, we just kept watching. And I was petrified.

Julie Harris and Teddy are two women who are weekend guests in a big creepy house. They share a room. Weird things happen the first night. So, the second night they push their beds together for comfort. One of the worst things is that the walls of the house bow in and out as a ghost whispers in the dark to the main character. And the ghost of an old woman upstairs bangs on the walls with her cane when she wants someone to come and help her. The second night after they had moved the beds and turned out the light, Julie Harris is talking to Teddy, asking her if she hears the strange voices. She is telling Teddy how scared she is. I am getting goosebumps as I type this. She is sweating and frightened, whispering to Teddy about her fears as they hold hands for comfort. Julie finally tells Teddy she is holding her hand so tight it is hurting her fingers. She decides to turn on the light. When it goes on Teddy's bed is clear over on the other side of the room! They had pushed them together right before laying down! How did it move? Who was Julie talking to? Who was she holding hands with?

Okay, that's all I can type because I am sweating a little and getting goosebumps 43 years later. I haven't seen the movie since then, but I can't even think about it without having a reaction. I am not totally certain if all that is right for the movie, but I think it must be close.

That night after the movie my mischevious older sister snuck outside and pounded on my bedroom wall. I almost died of fright and my mother said my face was sheet white when I came running into the living room. She got in big trouble.

That was the only scary movie we ever saw, but it was enough for one lifetime.

[Coffee]

Used to be spiders...over it now...Now I realize that they are just little bugs with little fangs ridding my personal space of flying bugs...Gooooo spiders.

[Anna]

timing out. crossing bridges for a while, not so much any more. airplane, would take a lot of spirits and or drugs to get me on one; big aluminum tube 30k above the ground ha! think again, but I'd jump off a mountain or a building with a chute.

Klynne why not take Amtrak especially, considering the price of oil?

[Frieda]

i'm afraid of being flushed away with the water through a drain -- shower, bathtub, swimming pools, etc. sometimes i'm ok and sometimes, with my head full of shampoo and accidently stepping on the drain makes me freak out and hyperventilate.

also of eyeballs. when they're round. spheres that look at you and don't show any signs of a human being. or maybe just too many signs of a human being but the human is missing. i don't know. uncanny valley probably.

[lukkucairi]

usedta-be:

flying - hit very hard after my divorce. got over it by habituation (no choice but to fly on small planes very often) and, oddly, sitting in the copilot's seat. seems like seeing out the front of the plane made a big difference.

swimming in the ocean - got stung by a stingray when I was 17 and it was the most amazingly painful experience I've ever had. lived away from the ocean for a few years, and when I returned I found I couldn't swim in the sea without hyperventilating. habituated myself out of it - but I still don't like putting my feet down on the bottom.

large earthmoving equipment - when I was a kid I had a major phobia. at 13 I was passing a construction site at a fast trot, having all the hyperventilation/coldsweat symptoms, when I realized it was a pretty silly thing to be afraid of. I made myself go up to a bulldozer when it wasn't being used and poke around it - it didn't come to life and try to eat me, and the phobia eventually waned.

presently:

still got a dental phobia to beat the band. had an unscrupulous dentist hit a nerve with some novocaine when I was 20 and endured half an hour of double vision and increasing panic shut in a room alone with nobody coming to check on me. now I vet my dentists very carefully, state my phobia before coming in, and make sure they have gas available. plus I take a xanax or a valium

in general -

I found that I had to get to a place where being pissed off at being phobic was just a smidge more compelling than being phobic in the first place. my mother always had phobias when I was a kid, and they got in the way of all sorts of things - so I kind of lost patience with myself quickly when I realized I was doing the same thing.

after that it's just trying to figure out how to habituate yourself without exacerbating the phobia. like flying in the copilot's seat - that was a control point - being able to see out of the front of the plane. with swimming in the ocean, I started out again in very shallow, very clear water where I could see the bottom, and I always had a friend with me.

hypnotherapy sounds like a good place to start, but maybe also try some small habituation - making yourself drive on the expressway regularly for small distances in places where the exit-to-exit distance is very short and pretty controllable. doing deep breathing or mantra meditation before and after can help too.

[auntie aubrey]

i also have a phobia of standing underneath large things. airplane wings, for example. if i go to an air show or an aviation museum i have to be very careful where i walk to make sure i don't stand beneath even a little itty bitty edge of the wing.

it extends to other suspended objects as well. when we visited the aquarium in chicago (grew up near chicago, that's why the initial discoveries happened there) i had a moment of pure terror when i glanced up and saw the enormous model of the largest squid ever found suspended over my head. i couldn't even stand underneath the thinnest end of the longest tentacle. i broke a sweat even thinking about something being over my head like that.

it's not as bad as it used to be. i used to have to be very wary of where i sat at restaurants because i couldn't sit beneath any suspended decor. there's a barbecue place we go to fairly regularly and there's a big canoe hanging from cables over the middle of the restaurant. if i sit anywhere near that thing i can't concentrate on my food. i have to suspiciously eyeball it the whole time.

the spouse has learned to scan areas for large suspended objects and warn me ahead of time. and he tolerates it quite sympathetically when i have to press myself against a wall and edge carefully through an area where walking beneath things is unavoidable.

oddly enough it's not as simple as a fear of being crushed. when we went to the aquarium here in atlanta i had no problem going through the tunnel beneath the large tank. it never occurred to me to be scared of that much water above my head. but every time i've toured a nasa facility i've had to grapple with near panic-attacks every time we had to get up close and personal with a craft or engine or pod. i'm particularly interested in the nasa gemini program but every time i've had the opportunity to get near a gemini rocket i've had to take deep breaths and baby steps. and eventually i get to a point where i can't make myself approach any closer. the larger the object, the further i stop from it. i think it's more related to relative scale than the danger of being crushed.

[auntie aubrey]

ooh, let's name these fears! list of phobias

fear of large objects: megalophobia
fear of mummies (decaying matter): septophobia

[AllegroNg]

Ok.. is there such a thing as a fear of being startled? Is there a cool phobia name for that? Because I won't get near *anything* that might startle me.

[Avalon]

Huge expanses of water and suspension bridges; put them together and...not, let's not.

[Stephi_B]

Used to have arachnophobia - mainly of garden spiders and similar ones with thick legs and bodies - after an exemplar did bungee-jumping above my bed one night (when I was like 15) with way too long rope and landed right in my face. It went so far that I couldn't approach such spiders closer than 2, 3m and could not sleep as long there was one around (somebody else had to bring it out), and kept looking (very, very cautiously of course) in corners, on-top the wardrobe etc.
I mostly lost that phobia after a kind of self-therapy, I tried first to go closer or even touch the more sympathic spiders, with thin legs and small bodies like harvestmen and then went on to approach the unsympathic ones. Today I still cannot touch the nasty ones or take them on my hand, but I dare to carry them out on my own on a piece of newspaper or so.

Else am quite phobia-free, except for a little Acrophobia, if I have to walk on or climb to certain heights without proper hold (wall, ceiling, handrail)

[brightpearl]

I have a phobia of phobics.
I hope that doesn't sound flippant; I really don't mean it to be. I just happen to be surrounded by people who have a lot of phobias, kind of like the way lulu describes her mother, and it wears me out.

I almost didn't read this thread.

[Avalon]

oddly enough it's not as simple as a fear of being crushed. when we went to the aquarium here in atlanta i had no problem going through the tunnel beneath the large tank. it never occurred to me to be scared of that much water above my head

Like it never occurred to me to be bothered during an MRI. My hsb. has terrible claustrophobia...he nearly fainted just knowing I was having one.