Which childhood fears are still with you and which ones are gone?

Fear of heights is still there.

My fear of public speaking or being on stage is gone.

Fear of the dark.

I still get panicked sometimes when I go back up from the basement and the stairway light isn’t on, and I’ve already turned off the basement lights.

Fear of spiders has completely subsided for me

Trains, man. And the color blue-green.

I’m not falling for this. It will be used against me.

Ashamed and embarrassed to admit. Too old I think to still have fear of the dark. Lol

Dang fertile imagination is to blame here. Have the same vivid and ridiculous imaginings I had as a kid.

I was in elementary when I for some reason saw The Exorcist. More than 40 years later, I started reading the book for the first time and guess what I’m unable to sleep peacefully lately. I suck I guess.

Still reading. Enjoying it actually. Lol

I had a constant fear of my father dying as he was very sick. That went away when he died.
My grandma had Alzheimer’s and from the time I was 6 I worried my mom would get it. And she did.I was so very afraid of my mom dying. Well that is done now too.

I had weird neurotic fears of us having to move
(we stayed in the same house for over 30 years)

that fear is gone.

I was also afraid of not having a car. That doesn’t worry me anymore, but I do have an inordinate fear of my car breaking down somewhere. Even when it was brand new, I did.

They will, too @chyna! It’s evil, man.

Hugs @anniereborn. That sounds so hard. Your fears were logical.

@Dutchess_lll I was almost afraid to post them, cuz they did seem logical. Like geez every kid worries about their parents dying.

Well I didn’t but I had no reason to. You did Honey. It just sounds so painful. Kids are so vulnerable and innocent. Their fears are so private and SO real…

My long-held fear of the dark evaporated when, commencing late teens, I lived for 5½ years without electricity (by choice incidentally).

Excellent! But how did that come about @Adagio?

@Dutchess_lll As I said, living without electricity. Getting up in the middle of the night to go outside for a pee, walking into unlit rooms, walking down the hall. I quickly became accustomed to it.

My fear of new places and new experiences have left. Instead I look forward to these things.

My fear of dying in pain is still with me. Or, I guess even worse living many years in pain without being able to help myself.

My fear of being tortured or raped. I’d say this has actually become worse as I’ve grown older.

@Adagio but why did you decide to do it for 5½ years?

@JLeslie, the relief from constant sexual harassment/ worry about rape has dropped so drastically in the last few years for me…what a relief. So you can look forward to that.

Fear of house lizards, no kidding. They can even detach their tails and those tails will keep on wriggling on their own. Ultimate grossness. I can smash roaches no problem but lizards will make me dash out of the room.

Oh my Darling! I know. I am so sorry. Snakes and worms do the same so you go to your room for a bit. I’ll take care of it.

I’m still afraid of snakes.

I used to fear spiders but I learned to love them from a former member. He taught me so much and now I only scoop the large ones and put them outside. I let the small ones stay inside. Before I met this former user I used to kill spiders. Never again.

@Dutchess_lll It was the spirit of that era. And I loved it, great way to live, wouldn’t have missed it for the world!

I still kill brown reclusers but I do let the rest live.

@Adagio you were in a commune, weren’t you! In the 60s?

@Dutchess_lll Not at the time I referred to, but previous to that, yes.

I’m still afraid of spiders, but I have learned to control my actions when I encounter them.

@YARNLADY Baby steps. The spiders appreciate it.

Please elaborate @Adagio?

You’re so sweet, @Dutchess_lll . You know I’ll be having an epic level of trepidation following this incident so I hope you don’t mind to bring some sandwiches (with tomatoes, please!) and tea (make sure it’s cold) to my room after you’ve taken care of it. Quick! There’s not a moment to lose…

Btw, I also love spiders. Daddy long legs are abundant here and I just love to see them sucking the blood out of trapped mosquitos and wrapping the leftover.

Like….vinegar

I still scramble away from bees and wasps with a bone shattering banshee wail.

My fear of cockroaches is deeply rooted a childhood incident. It has followed me since.

But to be honest, I was afraid of a lot of crazy stuff as a kid. I was afraid of noise from planes and drills. Now I never notice the planes , and the drill is just annoying.

Hey, how about something you didn’t fear as a kid but do now? In my house there is a small storage room. When I was young the room was equipped with a light, and it was actively used for storing stuff, so it was just a weird but fun place to hang around and play hide-and-seek. Then we moved things out elsewhere, the light got broken, and the only thing left in the room is the main power supply of the house. That room is now a thing from nightmare itself. You don’t know what’s inside in because you can’t see anything, and there’s the obvious risk of being electrocuted.

Wasps
Ginger people
Dwarfs
White dog shite
Burger nipples

Alas, all these fears remain, although white dawg crap is mercifully no longer around…somehow.

OK, cockroaches can make my short list of things I’m still afraid of…but it isn’t exactly fear. It’s more like a feeling of vomit

Wolf spiders I trap and throw out. Brown recluse and Black Widows I kill on the spot. All others, live on. I had a daddy long legs that lived in my kitchen for a bunch of weeks. We even named him, but I forget the name. He was so funny. He’d stand so still, so still. You could wave stuff around in front of him and he wouldn’t move. But it you barely touched his leg he’d run, run, RUN as fast as he could!! for about 6 inches, then stop and freeze again. It does creep me out to come across a whole nest ball of them, though.
I honestly can’t think of any bug or snake from around here that would cause me to run away screaming.

When I little we lived in West Seattle. We had a scary basement. I had to turn the light off before I came up the stairs and you know how that goes. I told my mom about it and she tried to reassure me by saying, “That’s just Jesus following you, making sure you will be OK.”
My thought was, Jesus likes scaring the hell out of little kids??!! Also, maybe there really IS something down there I need to be protected from.!
Her reassurances were not reassuring.

^^I was raised Catholic. If someone tells me as a kid that Jesus would be with me down in that scary basement, that might increase my level of fear since gory images of a bloody man nailed to a cross would be pommeling my brain.

I was only about 4 and I thought, Now why in the hell did you even tell me THAT? Only I didn’t use the word hell because I was raised not to cuss.