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Curious Phobias & Irrational Fears

Swifty, I am a hater of showers too. You don't hear many people admit it because people do indeed just think you're a soap dodger. In fact you are the first person I've heard and it's making me feel less of a freak. Your post has made me think about why I hate them. I hate the changes in temperature I think, you're freezing when you get in, and then one side of you is blasted with hot water but the other side is cold, and then you just get warm but you freeze when you get out again. I wasn't brought up in a house with one, so I always thought it was probably obstinacy, but this is starting to think it might not be just that. I definitely have a problem with the sensations. It's making the front of my neck feel funny just thinking about it. The drumming of water on my neck. Ugh.
 
I think I know the exact moment my friend taught her 3 year old daughter to be afraid of needles (and by extension a wariness of clinics, hospitals, nurses). My friend thought she had bravely hidden her own phobia when given an injection, but her body-language gave the game away and young kids aren't fools.
My nephew has fillings done at the Dentist without anaesthetic, he prefers the drill to the momentary needle jab to the gums.
 
Back to trypophobia -

My summer cycling shoes are Puma RS100 Injex. They are an example of injected footwear. They have lots of holes in which would probably upset someone who doesn't like holes in things.

Here's a page about it -

74FDC Design

Loads of injection-moulded shoes. Mine are like the blue ones halfway down with loads of holes in. Here's a spoilered photo!


puma.jpg

Mine are orange and soooo comfortable. They never rub my feet even when they're wet.
I go for a ride, preferably to the seaside or a lake, and when I take my socks off and paddle/fall in with the shoes on my feet are safe. They soon dry out.
 
I think this is an irrational fear, but am open to other interpretations, perhaps that I am nuts.

For decades I have been afraid of having the sunroof (American term for car roof with an opening) open for fear of having a snake – carried by a bird – drop through the open roof. I was afraid the snake would be venomous and bite me. I know this is weird and had never know anyone who had experienced this. Where else could I confess to this except here?!?

Two years ago, my husband and I were slowly driving along an unpaved road in the Saguaro National Park when a 5 foot snake (I think a king snake but not sure. NOT venomous.) started across the road. Our sunroof was open. A Harris hawk swooped down and grabbed the snake, which started to violently fight the bird. I screamed to my husband to shut the sunroof. Before he could, the bird and snake were over the sunroof - -no more than 10 feet above, so we had a clear view. I thought my last moment on earth had arrived. In my mind, I was already confessing my sins.

The snake had now wrapped itself around the hawk and the hawk had trouble flying. It landed in a tree about 10 feet up, 20 feet from our car where I was still screaming. The hawk, whose body and both legs were now wrapped by the snake, reached down to the snake’s head with his beak, and ripped it off and spit it out. The rest of the snake slowly quit squirming, and the hawk then took off and flew away with the rest of the snake. I quit screaming.

My husband told me he will never again tease me about my irrational fears. :)

Since then, oddly enough, my fear about snakes dropping into the car have faded away. It is as if my fears were to prepare me for this weird event, and now that it has passed, I don’t need to fear it anymore.

ps - no I didn't get a clear photo.
 
Not irrational, rather extremely unlikely. Birds do catch and carry snakes, and snakes are a primal fear in humans. Perhaps it originated in an event you witnessed on television or in a movie.
Given the circumstances, in a Fortean light, perhaps instead you had a premonition...
 
I loved the jelly shoes that were around about 35 years ago - just wash them and they were fresh and new!
Anecdote time.

~~wavy lines~~
When my children were little we were at the seaside one day, all as usual wearing jelly shoes at my insistence in case of glass.

As we walked over a dune Youngest complained that her shoes were too tight. She'd grown out of them that very day!

At the same time I spotted a broken bottle in the sand, and a little girl and her mother approaching.

The girl was barefoot and I warned them about the glass.

We chatted and (long story short) the little girl went off in Youngest's jelly shoes, I pulled out the next size up ones that I'd squirrelled away for this very eventuality, and everyone was happy.
 
I was queuing with my sister at a Tesco checkout behind a quiet young man. The lady cashier was half way through scanning his items on the belt when she got up from her seat and without a word or a glance, left the till and vanished in the crowd. When it became clear she wasn't coming back he must have been wondering if he was at fault in any way. Sister no doubt helped enormously by loudly demanding 'what DID you SAY to her ?!' Within five minutes a different cashier turned up and completed his shop. By the time we'd been served, the original cashier re-appeared and it became apparent she had swapped tills.
Reason ? the gentleman had bought fresh fillets from the Fish Counter which was packed and priced into a thin plastic bag. She wasn't looking at what was on the belt as she scanned and had picked up the wet fish. I guess it must have been the feel and texture of it that had induced the trauma.
 
A friend of mine suffers from globaphobia, fear of balloons and coulraphobia, fear of clowns, one day thete was an event in my local town and outside the old town hall thete was a clown giving out balloons to kids, the club we drank in waa just off of the old town square, a 2 minute walk from the town centre, my friend took a 15 minute detour around the other side of town to approach the club from the rear and avoid going anywhere near the clown with the balloons, i have seen him avoid going into pubs around valentines and halloween if they hace balloons up and leave a pub if a child or anyone else enters holding a balloon, he doesnt mind the foul type balloons as much as it is the bursting of the balloons that he has a phobia of, he puts this down to a childhood trauma where at a party an uncle took down all of the balloons and burst them all,
 
the foul type balloons as much as it is the bursting of the balloons that he has a phobia of, he puts this down to a childhood trauma where at a party an uncle took down all of the balloons and burst them all,

One of my nephews, now aged over 40, has exactly the same fear. When Nephew was a toddler his father thought it was funny to startle him by bursting a load of party balloons near him.

Yes, Brother in Law is indeed a twat.
 
Polystyrene: the sound it makes when two pieces touch. (shudder)
Just typing this while thinking about that sound 'goes right through me'.
That's an intriguing sound. Doesn't scare me, in fact I quite enjoy hearing it.
Each to their own, eh.
 
I used to have not quite a phobia, but an extreme dislike of cockroaches. Absolutely the only thing in the animal kingdom that I couldn't bear, to the extent that I had the screaming ab dabs when I thought we had some in a new house (it was those big black beetles instead). Something about those antennae-things, just made me shudder.

And then, on a visit to my daughter, on Southern Cross railway station in Melbourne, a flying cockroach hit me square in the face. And, for some reason, maybe because it wasn't crawling, I was unaffected. I won't say my fear is totally gone, I still avoid them as much as I can but I no longer have the shuddering revulsions at the thought of cockroaches. They have become just like another beetle.

Odd, the human mind.
 
I am directionally challenged when I drive. to the point where I am afraid to go anywhere new by myself. I try to have a co-pilot with me so they can tell me when to go to my "other left" when I mistakenly start turning right. But since covid, I can't find anyone who would be willing to risk going to all the places I need to go because they have families and don't want to bring home the virus to them. I haven't been out in almost 2 months because I have so much to catch up on that it feels to overwhelming. So I just stay home.
 
I’m a Yorkshire man terrible phobia about spending money or even the feeling of it leaving my wallet.
 
I am directionally challenged when I drive. to the point where I am afraid to go anywhere new by myself. I try to have a co-pilot with me so they can tell me when to go to my "other left" when I mistakenly start turning right. But since covid, I can't find anyone who would be willing to risk going to all the places I need to go because they have families and don't want to bring home the virus to them. I haven't been out in almost 2 months because I have so much to catch up on that it feels to overwhelming. So I just stay home.
Have you tried a satnav? They show you a picture of the next turning. Fantastic things.
 
Have you tried a satnav? They show you a picture of the next turning. Fantastic things.

One of the stores I have to get to is the Best Buy because until I update my software, which includes a new com PC, keyboard, headset, printer/copier/scanner, I can barely get anything to work anymore on the net. I can't even see all these videos posted from twitter or instagram or anything other than youtube and even youtube fights me now since adobe flash is no longer supported. I have the money and the system all picked out. The funny part is that if I had updated software, I could purchase it online and get it delivered.

Any GPS will work and I have it all mapped out from google maps. The thing that holds me back is that nothing, short of a co-pilot is going to stop me from turning right when I was suppose to turn left. Once I'm off track, that''s it. Panic sets in and my brain shuts down. I know it's stupid and I need to get over it. I do try. For example, I have to go to a laundry mat tomorrow. So, around midnight, I am going to load the car and then do a couple dry runs there and back. That way I will know exacltly where to go when I travel there in the morning rush hour traffic because I have to be there for 9am.
 
Polystyrene: the sound it makes when two pieces touch. (shudder)
Just typing this while thinking about that sound 'goes right through me'.
I know what you mean, it has the fingernails down a blackboard feel about it.
My pet hate, not phobia, is people popping bubble-wrap - " ooh I just can't stop myself, it' sooo relaxing". No it is extremely irritating and I will punch you unexpectingly hard.
 
I know what you mean, it has the fingernails down a blackboard feel about it.
My pet hate, not phobia, is people popping bubble-wrap - " ooh I just can't stop myself, it' sooo relaxing". No it is extremely irritating and I will punch you unexpectingly hard.

That's one of my all time favorite things to do is popping bubble wrap. lol

Good thing we don't live close to each other. :D
 
I used to have not quite a phobia, but an extreme dislike of cockroaches. Absolutely the only thing in the animal kingdom that I couldn't bear, to the extent that I had the screaming ab dabs when I thought we had some in a new house (it was those big black beetles instead). Something about those antennae-things, just made me shudder.
My first exposure to cockroaches was in a Biology dissection class where my classmate was taking the guts apart with forceps. The worst bit was that these roaches had been preserved in formaldehyde - it was the combination of guts and the associated smell of formalin that made me gag.
Later at College some African Hissing cockroaches (big buggers) escaped from the delivery package and set up camp behind the Lab freezer. If you entered the lab in the evening and switched the lights on, they didn't scatter from the doorway but reared up and stood their ground. Ugh.
 
My first exposure to cockroaches was in a Biology dissection class where my classmate was taking the guts apart with forceps. The worst bit was that these roaches had been preserved in formaldehyde - it was the combination of guts and the associated smell of formalin that made me gag.
Later at College some African Hissing cockroaches (big buggers) escaped from the delivery package and set up camp behind the Lab freezer. If you entered the lab in the evening and switched the lights on, they didn't scatter from the doorway but reared up and stood their ground. Ugh.
It's odd because I never had the fear about the hissing cockroaches. Somehow the fact that they were 'bigger' made them not scary. I could hold or stroke one of those. I still wouldn't hold an ACTUAL cockroach, but I don't scream the place down if I encounter one in a public toilet (a little episode in Fuertaventura which still haunts me).
 
I know what you mean, it has the fingernails down a blackboard feel about it.
My pet hate, not phobia, is people popping bubble-wrap - " ooh I just can't stop myself, it' sooo relaxing". No it is extremely irritating and I will punch you unexpectingly hard.
One of the jokes in Red Dwarf is that someone watches a friend popping bubblewrap and decides to patent it as a 'Tension Sheet', which earns him squillions!
 
I have this irrational fear that the people around me have lost touch with reality and believe all kinds of crazy paranoid conspiracy theories.

Oh, wait . . .
 
Couple of years ago my sister in Suffolk had a friend stay overnight. Sunday morning at dawn, the two dogs downstairs started kicking off - furiously barking no doubt at the transition from quite dark to not quite dark. Sister went down to let them out into the garden and annoy the neighbours and then waited for them to amble back in again. When she went back upstairs her friend was already dressed and making up the bed. Sister suggested that it was too early and they go back to sleep for a couple of hours, no need to undress, just lie on the bed and pull the covers up. This took a great deal of self-control on the part of her friend apparently. She confided later that it felt bad to lie on the bed fully clothed but the real trauma was raising the covers - she nearly chickened out but managed somehow to get them to shoulder height.
 
I get frighten in groups of people.

I get frighten in small spaces which triggers a strong flight response.

I always have to have an end seat like for example church.

I have never seeked medical help, but I think I was born like this.

At times this has caused me embarrassment over the years.

Now I am so old, I do care what people think about the way I act.
 
Charlie Brown- ike you I don't like groups, knowing to know who is there any a bit of backgroundI helps . I also have to always check out exit routes when I go anywhere that is likely to be longer list. Most people who spot this pt it down to my job/ training, ( I have been caught chewing fire exits out) but I have always been like this . To old to change now and frankly I no longer care i people think I am odd.
 
For decades I have been afraid of having the sunroof (American term for car roof with an opening) open for fear of having a snake – carried by a bird – drop through the open roof

Here in the UK, it's also called a "sunroof", though I'm not sure why. Probably the British sense of irony at work...

Great story with the hawk and the snake, by the way!
 
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