What is a phobia?
Phobias are persistent and intense fears of a particular:
object
person (like a doctor or clown)
situation
activity
If you have a phobia, you may experience severe anxiety and panic attacks when you’re:
exposed to the object or situation you’re fearful of
thinking about the thing you’re afraid of
anticipating an encounter with the item you’re scared of
I wouldn’t say I have an actual phobia, but I completely understand people with trypophobia. It makes me very uncomfortable and I find it pretty revolting.
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Heights - fuck high places.
I have pretty strong fear of people in full body mascot costumes. This includes furry suits too. Not a crippling phobia, but enough to keep me on edge.
That being said, I don’t hate furries. It’s just all suits where I can’t see person’s face freak me out.
Is that also the case for full body armor and other fictional or real types of costumes where you can’t see the face? Or does it have to have a ‘fake’ face like mascot costumes? Just curious
Its just those with big fake faces. I have no trouble with things like armor or masks
I have this too! For me it’s something about not being able to read someone’s facial expression and not having the ability to gauge what someone is thinking or feeling, thus feeling like anything can happen.
Spiders. Terrified of them to the point of just picking a direction and running until im far 😂
Yup. Especially those fuckers with extra long legs. Just pure horror.
And also many other insects with long legs.I hate the ones with the big bodies. The ones with long legs are basically just walking strings, they don’t bother me as much.
Scopophobia (the fear of beeing watched/seen) which has basically induced agoraphobia (fear of outside).
I’m an autistic woman though, so people watching me and assuming shitty things, puts me in a very real danger as I can’t information process in real time, or efficiently talk out loud.
TIL the name for this. I don’t like being in public and the opportunity for anyone to observe me in any way. Love being outside, hate that there are other people out there.
I was wondering if I’d see another agoraphobe in here
I don’t really have anything else to add, been diagnosed for years and still workingonit
thalassophobia even in video games. I almost drowned as a toddler so maybe that’s why idk.
Heights and tight spaces make me tense and sweat
Agoraphobia but mainly it’s limited to too many ppl in touching distance.
Don’t know if it related to that but I have to always have an exit plan. I always take my car so I know I can leave at any time I sit on the end of aisles if I can help it and 9 times outta 10 if I’m indoors I know exactly the exit I can head for if I have too
Edit I also will go out of my way to avoid calling anyone by their name. IDK if that’s a phobia but it just feels to personal or invasive to do.
Are… are you me? Because from first paragraph to last, this is 100% me.
(Although to be fair, I grew out of the name-thing some time ago, thank fuck.)
The exit plan is absolutely agoraphobia. I got that too. Gotta sit at the end of rows. Gotta plan my exit so that I either get out before the crowd, or after. Prefer car-vacations over planes or ships. My impresssion from the psychiatrist is that any fear that makes us feel irrasionally trapped, thats agoraphobia.
avoid calling anyone by their name.
I do that too. But because I’m really crappy at remembering peoples names. And those few times I do remember I’m just not used to it. I really should work on this because repeating peoples names does make it easier to remember them.
Submechanophobia. No matter how much I try to rationalise, water grates in pools raise my heart rate.
Deathly scared of buoys.Anyone read how a few divers went to explore weird pillars in a lake, only for one of them to get sucked into a nuclear plant water intake? Jesus wept. (He lived, somehow.)*
person (like a doctor or clown)
doctor clowns
what about clown doctors?
My car is currently parked on the street instead of in my driveway because it’s officially “spiders fall on your car with the leaves” season up here in New England. So yeah, arachnophobia.
I’ve done a lot of self-directed deconditioning work over the years though, and it’s much better now than when I was a kid. I don’t jump and run away anymore. Still don’t want them in spaces I occupy though lol
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So, skyscrapers are right out?
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Im curious, does that include Norwegian fjords? Surrounded as they are by huge, smooth mountains.
In winter times I think that is healthy. How people can live at the water-line there, thats just asking to eventually be pushed into the sea by a snow avalanche.
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game developer hastily taking notes
semi-unrelated, the internet has ruined my mind, it definitely interpreted that thumbnail a lot differently at a glance
game developer hastily taking notes
To give us options to hide our phobias from your games, right? Right?!
Nice try, Dr. Crane.
Someone turn on the batsignal fr
Cockroaches, especially big ones that can fly. I’ve gotten better with age though. I still find them disgusting though.
Similarly syringes, so vaccines and blood tests are a bit rough. Same, getting better with age but I still get my heart racing whenever I have to get a shot.
Emetophobia. Fear of vomiting. I’m super nauseated just thinking about it to type it out. It led to a semi eating disorder when I was young because I didn’t trust any food to be properly kept or cooked. Took a food safety class for work and learned proper food handling and preparation, so I eat a lot better now. But I definitely come off as rude if I don’t trust the person that’s cooking food for me, like my partner’s family, or friends that don’t understand.
I can’t help friends or loved ones when they’re sick if that’s one of their symptoms, which sucks. If someone has a nasty cough that gags them I go into a panic. If I hear someone get sick I instantly start crying, sweating, shaking, and my mind gets fuzzy with panic.
I really hate it. I always thought I had arachnophobia, but I just really really don’t like spiders. I don’t get the mind numbing panic that, to me, would classify it as a phobia.
And yeah, because of the phobia, I haven’t gotten sick like that since I was 8, and I was born in the 80s. Plenty of fearful times, but cold water and pepto helped me through.
I gotta go dissociate on some meme posts for a bit now.
Agoraphobia. Mostly in social situations. Until diagnosed properly, I thought it was social anxiety. Anyway, I easily feel closed in. Trapped. Avoid middle seats in cinemas. Don’t like being in crowds. Or stuffed public transports.
And wasps and bees and their likes. I was on edge for two days recently because a wasp i swatted in my room, I never found its body. Fraid it was just stunned and is waking up anytime. And I get itchy if I suspect any wasp is close.
Bright green rubber-like small spiders. Also big hairy spiders get me on the edge. Not daddy longlegs though, they are cute.
Also just a healthy amount of fear of severe heights. Which mostly disappears as soon as I have a safely attached rope, or a solid branch or railing to hold onto. So I don’t fear climbing.
And dentists. As soon as I smell dentist offices, I start shaking.
are jumping spiders cute
Yes. But I doubt they would be if they were bigger.
I’ve been deeply arachnophobic since I was a young child, and I always found jumping spiders cute lol. It’s so odd
I have a “phobia” (or at least a very strong fear) of insects. This includes regular flies, worms, mosquitos, bees, butterflies to some extent. Whenever I hear that buzz of a fly, my fight-or-flight response activates and I instantly become more aware of my surroundings. Whenever I hear a fly inside my apartment I tell my parents to please kill it or let it out, sometimes I hide in my room. Coincidentally enough, a few days ago I found a decently small worm in my bedroom and it kept wiggling, and my anxiety was intense. I kept yelling for my mom to go get it, my heartbeat was so intense.
People like to laugh whenever I flinch or act nervous around a small fly, and I get why that’s funny, but I really hate it. It distracts me and makes me feel on edge. People keep telling me, “it’s just a small insect, it can’t hurt you”; I know it can’t, but the buzzing and the way it flies makes me really uncomfortable. It’s why I don’t like summer. It’s weird, because I didn’t always feel this way; I only started having this phobia at around 10 years old maybe. Anyway, I don’t know why I have it. But it’s really debilitating.
You really should seek therapy. There are specialists that help people manage their phobias.
I know, people have suggested CBT to me. I haven’t gotten around to take the initiative to actually get help, but hopefully I will soon.
