Does fear of feeling helpless count?
Aug 19th, 2007 by B.
Today a friend asked me what I was afraid of and, for the life of me, I couldn’t come up with a good answer. I mean, I don’t want to die, but that seems more like common sense than a phobia. Heights don’t bother me, in fact I love them. The rush you get when you’re up so high that your knees shake is unlike any other, and what drove me to spend many a weekend skydiving back in the states.
And while I don’t like snakes or spiders or bugs all that much, I wouldn’t say it qualifies as an irrational fear. I also don’t freak out in crowds. I’m not afraid to leave my home. Needles don’t skeeve me. I love all animals, and I certainly don’t suffer from any sort of obsessive-compulsive disorder (sometimes I wish I did… my house would be a lot cleaner and I’d always remember where I put my keys). I view diseases much as I do natural selection- a necessary step in the evolution of mankind. And while it would certainly suck to be stricken with a crippling disease (I think alzheimer’s would be the worst), it’s no use obsessing over it.
I don’t fear flying other than the fact that, should something go wrong, I’ll have no control over my own destiny. In a car I can swerve, hit the breaks, even scream like a little girl without fear of what others will think. On a plane all I can do is grab the oxygen mask and silently debate whether I’d rather die from blunt force trauma, fire, or asphyxiation.
Enclosed spaces are a little trickier. The thought of being trapped or pinned under something scares the shit out of me, but I don’t think twice about hopping into an elevator, or crawling under or into confined spaces just for the hell of it. Again, I think the whole ‘not wanting to be forcibly confined’ thing falls under the common sense umbrella of human behavior.
So I guess after re-reading this I’d have to say my biggest ‘fear’ is of feeling helpless or out of control. Not surprising given my childhood. Still, does that even count as a phobia? Because if we’re adding intangibles to the neurosis pool, shit, I could fill a whole page. Fear of becoming obsolete… fear of never accomplishing anything great… fear of not leaving a mark behind… fear of feeling asexual/unwanted… fear that the lid I keep on all the negativity rattling around inside my brain might one day crack wide open… fear of all those paths not taken… fear of becoming unrecognizable even to myself (ok, so that last one’s a line from a Bruce Springsteen song, you get the drift).
Yep, at the end of the day it’s all those intangible, incorporeal things that scare me far more than any arachnid or in-flight cabin depressurization…
So what are you afraid of?
It’s the emotional shit I worry about too. When one hit too many drops the shields and all that stuff I keep locked up tight in order to function spills out like atmoshphere. (I’ve been watching too much Stargate).
100%, it’s the emotional blackmail life dumps…if I think about it too much, I’m the one flying Freak Flags everywhere!
I sometimes feel like I have a fear of letting my insecurities get the better of me….I feel like I’m wrestling with that lately & it really sucks…But what’s that saying….Que Sera Sera, whatever will be will be….I just keep trying to tell myself that
OK, I’ll admit to an honest to god phobia. It even has a name: Gephyrophobia. I am completely and totally terrified of bridges. Living on an island and working on the mainland means I have to face this terror at least twice a day, most days. I have driven hours out of my before to avoid particularly terrifying bridges. I have aborted trips before after seeing a bridge I could not bring myself to drive over. I have stopped and pulled over and made someone else in the vehicle drive over bridges before. Forcing myself to drive over a particulary scary bridge once (the one on I-10 next to the casinos in Lake Charles, La.) I ended up in the slow lane behind an 18-wheeler losing gears with the lanes beside me moving so fast, I couldn’t get over to pass. We were barely moving by the time we got to the top of the bridge and I was in a full blown panic attack. Had I had to stop on that bridge, I’d have been the idiot you hear about on the nose, screaming and running through traffic trying to get off the bridge.
An aquaintance died when the Port Isabella Causeway collapsed several years ago in South Texas. I had my fear of bridges before that happened, but it’s been steadily worse since then. I guess because all my nightmares came true and touched really close to home. The bridge collapse in Minnesota has made it that much worse.
It really pisses me off to. I know it’s completely irrational. I force myself to drive over bridges regularly, but every now and then, it kicks in and nothing I do or tell myself will make me drive over certain bridges.
in addition to the enclosed spaces and alzheimer’s…
cats
condiments
coffee
birds
of course i think all of those would fall under your common sense theory…
i do have a slight fear of opening closed doors… many times i will get flashes of really bad stuff being behind the door as i go to open it.
Definitely the loss of control. Add my kids to that mix, like the loss of control over something terrible happening to one of them, and not being able to do anything about it — yeah that would be it.
I do have a fear of heights — that was interesting in Basic Training when we had to do Victory Tower with the rappelling and sliding face first down a rope “bridge” and all manner of scaryass activities. My hands/feet sweat just reading about or watching something about heights on TV.
The worst was actually in Germany, going up to see “The Eagle’s Nest” (Kehlsteinhaus). It’s a specially built road on the side of the mountain, closed to cars, and only one lane wide. The busses are timed — one up, one down. If they “meet” there are some pullover spots. Scary as hell — there is just a small normal guardrail, it doesn’t even cover the tires on those busses. The bus windows are up so high, you can’t even SEE the road to the side of you, just air.