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Curious Phobias & Irrational Fears

I'm not afraid of the dentist, I've been known to have small fillings with no anaesthetic at all, but the mention of an extraction sends me into a blind tearful panic.

I have the exact same thing. What makes it worse is that my dentist - while competent as a dentist - has very little empathy, and can't seem to get her head around the phobia despite having seen me cheerfully breeze through any and all other non-extraction treatment, but cry like a baby during extractions (and on one occasion, actually make a bid for escape).
 
Praying mantises. Anyone who knows me knows that I will die if one comes too close, or god forbid, touches me. Just last night I dreamt my niece held a dead one and chased me through the house with it.

Everyone also knows I'm afraid of statues.

Not sure if either of these fears is irrational or even curious, but to me they are certainly profound.
 
Mantis I get. Specific, but not unusual; although, the dream of a niece chasing you in quite interesting. What type of symbolism do you prefer? Freud, Jung, Egyptian etc

Statues...hmmm....It's late and the brain is tired, but I'm sure I've heard of something like this. I would be interested to know what it is that causes you distress...
 
I've just remembered!

As a child, shop mannequins used to really spook me, especially the ones with the wooden knobby instead of a head.

These days I'm completely over it. But when I was 5, terrifying.
 
Automatonophobia - a fear of any inanimate object that represents a sentient being, eg. statues, dummies, robots, etc. or a fear of unmechanised dolls is called pediophobia.
Possibly delusional thinking...
 
When I was a small child, I was afraid of manniquins too.
Carousels,or merry-go-rounds as they are sometimes called, were terrifying to me. I think it was the clown-like way they were painted and the expressions on the horses faces that creeped me out.
And of course , clowns, who invariably smelled like liquor and body funk.
Sort of like the santas that stood outside stores ringing a bell for donations.
Most of them here are living in shelters for alchoholics and do the christmas gig for extra money.
I used to have nightmares about the manniquins coming to life and walking after me as if chasing me.
I was one screwed up puppy!
 
In next week's Word of Mouth we're going to be talking about word-phobia and meeting people who are so upset by certain particular words that they can't speak them, hear them or read them without getting to feel distressed. If that's anything like something you've experienced yourself, do let us know - we'd love to hear from you

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/wordofmouth.shtml
 
That reminds me of my friend. She can't bear to hear the words 'kidney' and/or 'griddle' being said. If you happen to mention them in passing by accident, she reacts as if you've just thrown up on her or something equally unpleasant. Biology lessons weren't fun if you were sat next to her in class. I can't wait for when her kids to cotton onto this, I can imagine it will be something like:

"Mom! can I have the new Bratz doll?"
"NO!"
"Kidney!! Kidney!! Griddle!!"
"Aargh, take my purse!!"

She also has a pigeon phobia which is made all the worse for the fact her father keeps pigeons and has done since she was young - they're apparently okay if they're kept locked in their pen but not flying about. We were walking up a local market once when all of a sudden she started shrieking and flapping her arms about.

As it was busy and there was a throng of people milling about, we hadn't even noticed what was on the floor in front of us. She'd just walked unwittingly onto the flattened remains of a pigeon (it was like a meaty, feathered pancake). That was really, really bad, it shook her up to the point she began hyperventilating.
 
Does it count as a phobia if you just find something unimaginably gross, rather than scary? I can't abide slugs, for example. Or worms, and I could never touch either thing.
 
barfing_pumpkin said:
Though I'm reminded of an ever weirder phobia, courtesy of my Polish grandfather:

He couldn't abide a kitchen where the back door was left unlocked - even if you were in the house at the time - for fear that 'the gypsies would get in'.

!? :? !?

Sounds very astute to me. If your not careful, they'd have 'got in', nicked everything not nailed down, including the back door, parked a caravan on your lawn and crapped in your flower beds.

or is that just a bit stereotypical. :no-no: :laughing:

witchflame
 
fear of celery isn't irrational
According to Snopes, you can technically die from eating too much celery - so, everyone should be scared of celery o.o
 
If you want to see what a person with a fear of pickles looks like when they're shown them then click the link!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S89Y4shxtE

My mouth's watering at the sight of all those pickles, I think I'll have to go and raid the gherkins in my fridge!!

I found the link via Boing Boing and the girl running away from the platter of pickles reminds me of how my bro' reacts to them.
 
The locked back door sounds good to me. I always lock the back door if I'm alone inside the house, unless I'm actually moving about downstairs. Also the front door, of course.

Years ago one of those serial rapists attacked a woman in a house near here (well, nearly a mile away) and the police knocked on every door for miles, grilling all the men. Which was of course correct, but what frightened me was being told that the offender had walked in through an unlocked back door when the woman was in, alone with her young child.

Which gave me a mental picture of the bastard scaling fences and trying back doors until he found the right one - unlocked, woman at home with baby... :shock:

SLAM!

He was caught, and attacks by strangers in one's home are vanishingly rare, but these things stick in your mind. :lol:
 
TheQuixote said:
If you want to see what a person with a fear of pickles looks like when they're shown them then click the link!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S89Y4shxtE

My mouth's watering at the sight of all those pickles, I think I'll have to go and raid the gherkins in my fridge!!

I found the link via Boing Boing and the girl running away from the platter of pickles reminds me of how my bro' reacts to them.

Wow. That's an extreme reaction. I'll admit I laughed, but it's clearly a real problem for her. :shock:
Damn, Maury's kind of harsh... :lol:
 
Up until a few years ago I was terrified of sailing ships.... the big multi masted ones - whether on TV or for real.

I live in Sydney now and there are loads of them in the Maritime Museum here (real ones)......I walked round a corner a few months ago and found myself surrounded by them...The old run away...beating heart....cold sweat feeling came back for a few seconds and then I wasn't frightened of them any more....which is good because I am 41 now so its about time I stopped being scared of sailing ships. Although I must admit I would not be too happy about spending an afternoon on the Cutty Sark so maybe I am not completely cured.

I am also scared of heights.... but not on mountains(climbing) or even parachuting (which I have done) ..... no worries there. What frightens me is the vertical straight down sort of drop you get on a building or other tall man made structure.....don't like that at all.

Since I was little I have had a recurring dream.... not every night but certainly a few times a year. It always ends with me falling straight down - surrounded by water and crashing into something very hard at which point I wake up. I am usually falling for about 3 seconds.

I also like sailing on yachts......(small sailing boats say upto 10 metres or so).

Do you think someone is trying to tell me something?? Do clumsy sailors get reincarnated ???

J
 
I'm scared of wasps in enclosed spaces, when I'm outside I am fine with them, but as soon I am in a room with one I hate it, I start getting panicky and I just freeze, but like I said outside I have had them crawling over my hand and there's absolutely no reaction.

The fear of wasps in enclosed spaces is probably due to me being stung six times on the inside of my thigh when I was four, I was on a bus at the time when it happened.
 
I'm terrified of horses, despite my name, Philip, being from the Greek 'Horse Lover'...

Maybe this should be in the irony thread?
 
A lady I work with has a phobia with buttons. She doesn't like the feel or sound of them clinking together. Totally bizarre!
 
An interesting page about Dr Watson's Phobia Factory here.
It's a sort of extension to the Pavlovian experiments, except this time using a baby, fluffy toys and a hammer. :shock:
 
A group of us were discussing phobias at work yesterday and I was surprised at how many people would admit having them.

There's just one thing that I fear, to the extent that if faced with it, I'd drop a baby on its head and run off or have a car scrapped rather than drive it again because it was contaminated. :(

But I'd never admit it in a million years. That'd give someone else power over me. I could be mugged at X-point*, and try explaining that to the police. :lol:

*like,
slug-point
ship-point
kidney! griddle!-point
pickle-point
spider-point
snail-point
horse-point
celery-point
button-point
or my favourite,
wasp-point
 
I'm always puzzled or amused about how certain of my friends react towards spiders, but I realised that I wouldn't pick up a slug or worm for love or money.
 
H_James said:
I'm always puzzled or amused about how certain of my friends react towards spiders, but I realised that I wouldn't pick up a slug or worm for love or money.

One of my colleagues girlfriend has such a fear of worms that she cannot even look at cooked spaghetti as she thinks it is alive and wriggles like a worm.
 
One thing which may not be common knowledge is that individuals with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) don't normally have phobias, as such.

Inform us that next June 17th we have to perform some action that we fear and loathe, we'll fret and 'franticize' from now 'til then. And then we'll grouse and grumble for months afterwards how horrible the experience was.

But we'll be there on June 17th.
 
British arachnophobes may wish to avoid branches of Currys for a while. They're selling huge remote controlled spiders, which I yesterday saw displayed out of the box, and even demonstrated. :shock:

There's also a realistic rat. Brrr. Threatened my rat-phobic mate with that for xmas. :lol:
 
-Cotton wool, especially if you have to pull some off a roll

-Corks coming out of bottles.

-The sound of chalk on a blackboard. The feeling of chalk on my skin.

-The feel of wet wool eg having to get washed jumpers out of the machine.

all make the base of my spine tingle and clench in a very uncomfortable way. It was doing it just now as i was writing them down.

Clowns, mannequins, robots i really don't like but the feeling is different being in my head. If i concentrate i can overcome it whereas the feeling i get from wool etc i cannot control no matter how hard i try.

All of this pale into insignificance compared to my sister who has a fear of certain patterns. It's close repeating patterns that she has a problem with. I know what she means and can normally spot a pattern that she will have a problem with as it would make me feel uncomfortable but i dont have the reaction that she has. I think i may have the same thing just not to as big an extent Examples of patterns she would react to are a head of cauliflower (she cannot eat cauliflower for this reason) or the pattern on the grouse on the famous grouse label.
She has such a strong reaction to some patterns she is physically sick if she has to look at them for too long.
My mum years ago changed the units in our kitchen to a dark brown woodgrain effect. My sister could not go into the kitchen without a reaction to them and we had to change them back to a neutral plain colour.
We've has had this as long as we can remember and thought we were the only ones until we found a message board online with about 20 people reporting the same.
 
But I'd never admit it in a million years. That'd give someone else power over me. I could be mugged at X-point*, and try explaining that to the police. Laughing

that's why i don;t tell people what i'm phobic about either.

but i can't help thinking, if you were phobic of points, would you get mugged at point point?

oh, and they have those radio controlled tarantulas in the hawkins bazaar shop too... they had one trotting around the shop in leeds the other week
 
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