Do you have a particular phobia? How has it affected your life? How do you deal with it?

Hey there, my phoia is for snakes…im hate snakes!!! i like watching then like on animal planet and stuff but i dont like them in person. Now i live in iceland and im from Zambia, here I always watch them and then start thinking of home cause I used to go visit my grandparents in the village and there were ful of snakes:( im kinda getting scared of going to Zambia now.

Hope its a good answerxD

i don’t actually have any phobia. but i think i have a kind of messed up opposite of a phobia. probably a variation of vertigo. whenever i go up to a high place, i can feel the height pulling on me like some strange attraction. if it where not for the fact that i know i would die if i jumped off i would probably end up jumping. i normally lean over the wall or fall and take it in, then i get a little too freaked out by my temptation to jump and back off.

because of this, i do try and avoid high places if i can.

@Thesexier I never liked the look of snakes, I always imagined that they’d be sort of cold and slimey, you know? but a few years ago my sister showed me her pet snake. I still don’t know anything about snakes so not sure what kind he was, he was very small though. She got me to stroke him and he was actually quite warm and after a while she persuaded me to hold him and he was lovely. He was very tame though (is that the right word? can snakes be tame?) my sister loved that little snake, I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but he was actually quite cute the way he behaved. Used to wrap himself round her hand and wrist and loved being stroked. Welcome to fluther, it’s lovely to meet you,
hugs xx

My phobias are crowds and social situations. I can “crawl inside my shell” to do grocery shopping, etc. I’ve had to deal with mandatory formal social events in my career; I show up at the last moment, go through the motions required and leave ASAP.

I’m afraid of heights. I’m too the point where I know it’s an irrational fear, so I can climb a ladder or get up on the counter tops, or even go into my attic. However, once I’m up in these places the knowledge that it’s an irrational fear doesn’t help. And I have been stuck in high places for long periods of time. I sat on top of a ladder for three hours once because I was terrified of trying to get down. I guess it hasn’t really impacted my life other than that. I just feel kinda stupid when I can’t get down.

I think it is fair to say I have arachnophobia. It’s not super super strong, but I really can’t kill any spider of any size, I always have to have someone else do it for me. And if there’s one on the wall, I want it gone. It was made worse by seeing gigantic ones at Tahoe, including a dark black one that was about 3 inches in diameter. It was so big that it was very hard to get rid of. There was also that time when I was holding a vacuum cleaner hose (again, at Tahoe) and a big spider jumped out of the end while I was holding it. Traumatized me. The only way it affects my life is that I have to be on guard while at Tahoe.

I also have some mild claustrophobia. Sometimes I have dreams where I’m trapped in some small space and they’re terrifying.

@bunnygrl : no way….i dont like snakes and i dont think it can never change. Last year I think in September or something I was watching news and there was this girl who had a snake as a pet, that snake hadn´t eaten in 2 weeks and one night when she was sleeping, the snake was out of the cage and she just felt something cold by her side..it was the snake:O it layed right next to her body and were almost the same height..she stayed as still and she could, called the petshop owner and he told he to just get out of the room as soon as possible, because the snake was measuring how long she it and was about to at her. So I dont think I’d ever like them when i heard this and what i see on tv…also my grandfather had one snake spitt in his eye when he was hunting bu the survived it :)

And yeah thank you for the welcoming:)

Scoleciphobia, which is worm fear. I don’t like worms, any kinda worm. I can deal with one worm, if I absolutely have to, but not several worms.

What bothers me about them is that they’re just this moving thing with no recognizable end. I don’t like that they don’t have eyes or legs but yet still manage to move. Maggots have mouths, sometimes a black head, but I still can’t stand them, ESPECIALLY maggots because, well, ew.

I don’t mind things like caterpillars, snakes, centipedes or tentacles, say from an octopus, because those either have legs, heads or are attached to something.
But worms are just like, this little moving thing and I can’t explain it they just totally freak me out.

How do I deal with it? I don’t haha. People often tell me that to get over it, I need to realize that, for the most part, worms are our friends and friendly to the environment, and I totally realize this, but there are a lot of different kindsa worms, and some are parasitic.
I know there’s treatment for it, but as long as I stay away from them it’s fine.

I have a big physical phobia. I don’t feel like I can really understand what I look like.. so it makes me uncomfortable going out and interacting with people. I just hold people to high standards, and when I’m not sure what my standard is… I’m just very confused about it all.

@Thesexier oh my god thats terrifying!!! and your poor Grandfather, he was really lucky too! Why on earth hadn’t that girl fed the snake? if she wanted to keep one as a pet she must have known she’d need to feed it and not feeding it for so long was really cruel so I’m losing sympathy for her a little. I expect snakes are very different in the wild than the one my sister had, which was very, very small and never really grew that much bigger.

I have to admit that spiders used to terrify me, because as a child i woke up with a sort of itch type feeling on my face and brushed my hand over my face and quite a large house spider ran off across my pillow. If I hadn’t fallen asleep reading, my light wouldn’t have been on and maybe I wouldn’t have seen it and gotten the fright of my life hee hee. I can cope with them being in the room now, although its taken me years, and I couldn’t bear anyone to kill one, but i still don’t like them to come too near me.
hugs xx

@bunnygrl Yeah I was really sad for my grandfather.
The girl did try to feed the snake but it didn’t want to.
cxx

@Thesexier I’m so glad that your Grandfather was ok, just the idea of a snake spitting at me really frightens me actually, if my Grandmother were here she’d have said that he must have had an angel looking after him to keep him safe, it makes me quite glad that my pets are two little dogs and a budgie :-)
hugs xx

I am scared of spiders and don’t like bugs at all. Not sure what the phobia name is for that though

@bunnygrl : thank you very much for that;D, and yes i would say that angels helped:D, caus emy family is reaallly religious
I dont own any pets, i haad rabitts but when me mom and my stepdad were going to Italy for a vacation no one could loook after them for me so we had to take them to a veterinally and they killed them :(:(:(

oh no!! that must have been really upsetting. I don’t know what I’d do without my fur (and feather) babies. I like to believe there are angels, it makes me sort of believe that no matter how bad things can look at times that everything will be ok.
hugs xx

@bunnygrl : yeah..so anyway thats just how life it everything van never be perfect , in the same its still enjoyable;D

@Thesexier I agree, I’m so sorry you had to lose your pets though. You’ll love it here, everyone is really friendly and there is always something interesting to talk about, I feel like I’ve learned so much already and I’ve only been here a few months.
hugs xx

@bunnygrl : Thanks, Last year i registered at cosmogirl advice page but i never got any answers:( and here in just a few seconds i get:)

@DominicX I was talking to a friend recently about not just the number of spiders we’ve both been seeing in our homes lately but also that they do seem to be getting bigger too. my friend says they might be garden spiders heading into houses because its been such a cold winter, im not sure but i just hope they stay away from me, they can have free access to the rest of the house just not whatever room I happen to be in at the time lol. @dutchbrossis i agree too about the bug thing <shudder>
hugs xx

@Thesexier I found fluther completely by accident. I had been looking on google for any info on the latest series of House (I love Hugh Laurie as you can tell by my avatar) well I’d followed a link and it brought me here to a question, which I read and then i followed some links around the site and thought, wow this is beyond cool, so I joined and I haven’t looked back since :-) whenever I get to my home page I always click on the home button and check out what the latest topics are. There is always something interesting to learn about or to discuss.
hugs xx

@meagan maybe its just about self confidence sweetheart? I used to envy my friend angie when we were at school, she could always just go over and talk to anybody at all while I was the quiet one and got embarrassed really easily. I’m ok with people now, I don’t know when it changed, maybe its just a part of getting older, I’m not sure.

I used to suffer very badly from panic attacks when i was ill, and I still do get shakey soimetimes but not so much for a while now <touch wood> I hope you feel better sweetheart. Maybe start with something small, like just going out with a friend, maybe a shopping trip or to the movies.

@partyparty this is a really interesting question, it really makes you think. I know they’re not phobias because they don’t really affect me strongly enough but I don’t like lifts either, and even though I’m far too old to be scared of it, i don’t like the dark. Heights make me feel sick though, and I don’t like water, I can’t swim and haven’t been able to learn because I almost drowned when i was about 9 or 10, my uncle took me and my cousins and siblings swimming and i fell and hit my head in the pool.
hugs xx

When I first landed at Fluther, I suffered from Allodoxaphobia. It has cleared up quite nicely due to the fact that much of the answers here are the catalyst for Alladoxaphobia and all that exposure to them has now rendered me immune to this dilemma.

I have Misophonia. It’s quite a weird one to explain. I’m sensitive to certain noises, especially people eating, and people typing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misophonia

It comes on worse when I’m feeling grumpy, upset or tired and it makes me really angry and edgy.
I’ve had it ever since I can remember, my earliest memory of it was my sister eating cereal really loudly and I asked her to not crunch so noisily. She obviously took the opportunity to smack her lips even louder and make it worse for me so I pushed her head into the cereal bowl. I must have been about 7 years old. (She was 17 incase you wondered.)

It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I can honestly tell you, it puts such a strain on my friendships, especially my relationships. I don’t eat Christmas dinner with the family because I can’t deal with so many people eating round a table.

I got off a bus once because there was a man chewing his gum so loud I felt like putting my fist through the window. Once the sound gets in my head I can’t concentrate on anything else.

Makes me sound a little crazy.

@bunnygrl Its basically a weird form of body dysmorphic disorder. Its hard for me to know what I look like. Even looking at photos, I don’t recognize myself. Its rather unsettling. Totally self esteem issue, too. Dating is basically non-existent in my life right now. :/

caterpillars. if i see a considerable amount of them in any given place i avoid that place. for the rest of the day, week, month, as long as i can. i’m not kidding. i can’t stand the sight of them. if i see one up close i have a hard time sleeping that night.

i’m improving. slowly but surely. im learning to live with the beasts. barely.

@meagan that must be really upsetting for you, can anyone help? maybe your dr? I wish I could make it go away for you hugs xx

@sallycinnamon it doesn’t make you sound crazy at all, I tried to explain in another thread how noisy eating really bothers me, its just absolutely goes through to the centre of my being and stomps around on it. <shudder> do you think you have really sensitive hearing? because I do, I can’t remember a time when i wasn’t this way, if a tv is on too loud or whatever, its not that its annoying it really is physically painful, I can’t bear it and i get dreadful headaches too. hugs xx

Sheesh, if I were to make a list of my problems, well it might be a shorter list if i were to write down things that aren’t wrong with me lol, in my case it is true, you get to a certain age and things start falling apart, at least my sense of humour works, might be a bit odd at times but mostly it works :-)
hugs everyone xx

Puppets. They’re disgusting and creepy. Punch and Judy specifically are the worst, then ventriloquist dummies, then marionettes, then sock puppets, then the rest. Most Muppets are tolerable. I just try to avoid them and I’m not bothered.

@ubersiren your reply just made an old movie jump into my head, what was it called? Anthony Hopkins was in it and it was about his ventriloquist dummy coming to life, scared the hell out of me as a kid and still does to this day. What was it called? was it “Magic”?
scarey scarey film,
hugs xx

@bunnygrl Thanks for your reply. I understand what you mean when you say stomps around on it. haha. I’m not sure if it’s because i have sensitive hearing, I’m just sensitive to certain sounds. I love having my tv on loud, and i love music gigs, ect. There’s Hyperacusis which is similar to Misophonia. I think that’s the one where people get it because they have sensitive hearing. It’s all the same basic thing anyway.
God forbid if i listed all my problems, i think fluther would have to remove me.
I like a good sense of humour :) xx

Deep water. It hasn’t really affected my life much. I just avoid pools and (especially) boats. I don’t enjoy spending time near the water anyways, so it’s not a big deal.

im claustrophobia and i got this weird phobia.whenever stainless spoons or forks being clapped together,or the sounds of knives meeting knives,it makes me feel like my ears is being cut by a chainshaw.no,you think this is funny but its not.its really hurt and when im in restaurant or friends house for dinner they always do that without knowing that i cant stand hearing those sounds.so usually i stay silent but screaming inside.woah

@sallycinnamon Being able to laugh your head off at your problems, or sometimes in spite of them is the best medicine there is I think lol. If I was forced to sit listening to people eating loudly or <arrrgggggghhh> smacking their lips together and making num num noises, genuinely I would cry and just run off. As I said in another thread, I have two friends who do this and also eat unbelievably fast, which means thank god that they are normally almost finished eating before i get back to the table to sit with my own meal, otherwise one of these days I may forget about trying so hard to be a good hostess and being polite and it’ll be pow and to the moon for them both lol. hugs xx

@LeetaLuminate do you mean that horrible scraping noise of metal on metal that has the same effect as chalk being scraped down a chalkboard? eeewwwww <shudder> awful, just horrible and actually upsetting. my hubby sometimes does that when he’s eating steak or something he really does have to cut, and bless him if it happens he automatically says “sorry honey” gotta love him :-) hugs xx

@Ivan Did something cause this phobia?

@J0E

There wasn’t any traumatic event or anything. Not that I remember, at least.

I am deathly afraid of Narwhals.

I’m terrified of galaxies! (JK @Ivan)!

I wouldn’t say I have any “phobias,” which by their definition are unreasonable fears, but rail road tracks give me the creeps!

@Val123 Any particular reason for your fear of rail road tracks?

@partyparty Not that I can pin point! It’s not an overwhelming fear….I can walk on them and stuff, but I just feel a twinge of fear when I’m crossing them, either on foot or in a car. Maybe it goes back to when I was teaching my younger sister how to drive. It was a standard shift, and I was showing her how to hold the clutch out on the up grade so that the car neither moved forward or backward. When she went to actually cross the tracks she stalled the car, on the tracks. I switched places with her to get us off the tracks and just as I got the car restarted I heard the train whistle….it was quite a ways away but, still….it was an awful feeling. I think it had more to do with the protectiveness I felt for my sisters than anything….

@Val123 Yes I can well understand your anxiety and reasons for feeling the way you do. Thanks :-)

@partyparty—One time, at night, I was crossing some rarely used tracks closed to my house, when suddenly there was a freaking SINGLE BRIGHT HEADLIGHT off to my right ABOUT 10 FEET AWAY away from me and moving my direction! I seriously understand how a person could have a heart attack due to fright! Turns out, there was a little road that runs along side of the tracks and this guy had his truck parked on this road, and happened to start his truck and turn on his lights…and one of them was OUT…just as I got in the center of the tracks! Talk about OMG!

@Val123 Wow that must have been really awful for you. I think there is always a reason as to WHY we have a particular phobia. Something that happened many years ago, which was so frightening we can never forget it. Thanks

AHHHHHHHHHH!!! The other day I was riding with my son, when I heard a train blowing it’s whistle, and I knew we were a few seconds away from crossing the tracks! I about peed my pants! I kept whimpering, “You gotta stop! You gotta stop!”
My son says, “Mom. They have those little arm things that light all up that come down to stop people from crossing? You know?”
“I KNOW!! BUT THEY COULD BE BROKEN!! PLEASE STOP!!”
Just then the arms started blinking and coming down. I about fainted in relief.
But two cars coming toward us in the opposite direction actually sped up to beat the arms! By the time the second one got there, the arms were fully down and he jumped in between them with the train on coming. I about frew up.

Oh…and @partyparty The other incident with the truck light happened just a few years ago, well after my little phobia was fully developed! Part of me was screaming ”I KNEW IT!! I KNEW THIS WAS GONNA HAPPEN!!

@Val123 Yes I suppose our phobias are such because we blow the situation out of all proportions don’t we? Nevertheless it is VERY real at the time, and nothing can change how we feel. Thanks

@partyparty Oh, intellectually I know it’s silly. Kind of. Getting hit by a train would be a pretty big deal though!

he is my son age 15years he never drink even coffe/tea there is no question of alcohal