Fear

[Archetype]

What do you fear and why?

Simple question, but think about it. Either what you fear most, or something that hasn't been said yet.

[Insomniac]

I'm terrified of being "that guy" and not realizing it.

[Archetype]

I'll throw one: cold reactions. Not negative, but blank, and cold. Negative emotion is one thing, but non-descriptive? That's hell, and awkward.

[VoxAngelikus]

Burning to death. Being in a plane crash.

One hurts a lot. The other, you have a lot of time to wait until you reacquaint yourself with the ground at a high rate of speed. Or, you burn to death. Which brings me full circle.

[Limp]

http://www.me-thinks.com/pix/shark.jpg

[Limp]

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y1/ladyferocious1/16.jpg

[NOTKyle]

Becoming UNC.

Seriously.

[Limp]

The man or the campus?

[NOTKyle]

My vivacious milk chocolateness makes me fear the Duke campus.

[DjAg]

Noticeable fears: Spiders, Fruit (hyper-sensitivity, it makes me throw up).

Less noticeable: Being untrue to myself or others, not being able to accept failure, "Normal" people.

[Pax Britannia]

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o159/ocdropzone/misc%20stuff/SmallfileTarantulaeatinghummingbird.jpg

[DjAg]

I hate you.




Seriously.

[Limp]

I have touched a goliath bird-eating spider, true story. (the picture above)

[Pax Britannia]

I have touched a goliath bird-eating spider, true story. (the picture above)

My fathers friend works for a zoo and he takes animals out to local schools to get them engaged with wildlife. One day he brought a load of insects to a primary school (kids 6-7 years old in the class apparently) which included a bird eating spider. Obviously most of the children were terrified by it but he eventually got them to calm down and pet it.

Then a little girl who was afraid of spiders sat at the other end of the table sneezed. The combination of the sudden noise and movement must have startled the spider because it lept out of it's handlers hands and flew straight at the little girl, pinning itself to her chest.

Apparently she was too terrified to scream.

[Morfin]

Heights. I have no idea where it comes from; I've never had a near-fall or anything like that.

It is so bad that I have trouble even watching this video. My stomach will turn and legs go weak.

8On2k6rtksM

[eightkid]

I am afraid of that video......where is that...so I never go there?

[Tar Heel]

Yeah. I thought that video was cool, but I could never walk on that path. Flying in planes and stuff like that doesn't bother me. It's the cliff/edge stuff that makes my legs weak. Personally, I think being afraid of heights is natural. If you fall, you will die. Being afraid of that is a natural reaction.

[Morfin]

I have seen this video posted a number of places. And, like a car accident, I have to watch it, like I am compelled -- I can't not watch it.

All I know from the description is that it is in Spain, built around 1901, is closed, and there is a 6,000 euro fine for being on it (although there seems to be quite a number of hikers on it when the video was taken).

[DjAg]

Yeah. I thought that video was cool, but I could never walk on that path. Flying in planes and stuff like that doesn't bother me. It's the cliff/edge stuff that makes my legs weak. Personally, I think being afraid of heights is natural. If you fall, you will die. Being afraid of that is a natural reaction.

Yes and no, I think it's a little more than that. I left heights off my list because I forgot about it, but I have been in many life and death situations in which I was afraid, but not terrified. I have been in situations where I am in no danger, see a height that I am 100% protected from, and I become absolutely terrified.

[Morfin]

Here's mine. When I was dating my wife, she lived on the 8th floor of an apartment building, with the typical small balcony. There was a metal railing higher than my waist, so no way was I going to fall. I could barely bring myself to look over the edge to see the sidewalk below, even if I held myself away from the railing so I wasn't even leaning on it. Scared me shitless. A skydiver, I will never be.

[halfabubbleoff]

I'll add my two big ones.

I love heights, I am terrified of falling. I think it is a control thing. When you are falling, you are at the mercy of gravity. I don't like that feeling of helplessness.

Here is the major one. I loathe, fear, despise and avoid needles. I have been known to cut myself open with a pocket-knife and perform minor "surgeries" on others (I was a licensed EMT for a short while). Seeing a needle pierce skin on myself or anyone else (even in movies where I know it is an effect) is terrifying. Needless to say, I am not a big fan of body piercing and could NEVER get a tattoo.

[TylerDurden]

admittedly, that video made my butthole pucker more than a few times. but i'm not too afraid of heights. i can rock driving over tall bridges, flying, etc. but the shit in that video was not my friend.

i'm a bit of an arachnophobic, but it's not enough to make me go frigid in my shoes on the spot.

i'm scared shitless of car accidents. i've been in more than ten accidents, none of which was i the driver, some severe, others not. i race in the scca, but i figure that's my way of getting over it. nonetheless there's something to be said for having your head slammed through a windshield up to the neck and a tight seal all the way around.

[Tar Heel]

MOTHERFUCKING SNAKES!

[zillionaire]

This wasn't exactly a story about what I'm afraid of, but of a moment of fear I experienced 20 years ago.

I grew up in a small town in the mountains of West Virginia. It was perched between two rivers, and had seen a lot of action during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. And it was a strange town in its own right. We referred to it as a hillbilly Twin Peaks. There was a creepiness about it that I can't explain. They found my school bus driver in the school bus, sans head, deep in the woods by the river. When I was 15, there was someone going around killing brown haired, brown eyed 15 year old girls. A girl in my homeroom and the only girl I'd ever fought with over a boy were both found dead, one of them in the local car wash. It was a spooky place to grow up.

There was a Revolutionary war fort a short dirt road walk from my house, with it's two graveyards and restored pine walls. In the other direction was a field that had been home to the poor farm. Two separate anthologies of local ghost lore were gathered and published, to be eagerly collected and devoured and endlessly discussed by our gang of neighborhood children. The crumbling yellow house slowly being reclaimed by the weed-choked field was the home of a headless ghost who reportedly spent its nights searching for its head, which had been dropped down the well by his rival. As children, we dared each other to drop stones down the well trying to stir the ghost into appearing in the daylight.

We even had our own graveyard, in the corner lot of our neighborhood on the hill. It stood along our path into the woods, with the readable gravestones spanning pre-revolution to WWII. Along the edge of the wood were several unmarked stones, nothing more than slabs of river rock stood upright to mark the bodies buried there. This was where one night, barefoot in my nightgown in the moonlight, I saw my first and only 'real' ghost. All my little girlfriends, having dared each other to cross through the hedges into the graveyard during a slumber party, swore they saw the same thing. Maybe they did, maybe they were feeding off of the feverish thrill of my fear, the first one through the hedges, but I know what I saw. Standing along the edge of the woods in the sudden chill of a July night was a woman dressed in a long blue gown. There was no eery glow, no otherworldly light. Only a sudden icy chill on a hot night, and the shape of a woman who should not have been there among the moon-cast shadows.

I always thought that the desperate poverty, the broken backs of the miners underground and the soldiers by the rivers, had put such an imprint of tragedy over the area that even today there's an echo of haunting that shadows the whole town. We could have been dreamt up in a Nick Cave song.

[Morfin]

Interesting sig, based on your post. I think you dun it.

[zillionaire]

O the ironing! Did I mention I am not one to be crossed?

I edit:
This is a topic I think about quite a bit, the nature of fear. A friend of mine told me about what she called the fangora complex. I've tried to research it, but with no luck. Apparently your mind will invent things for you to be afraid of. It will come up with these horrific scenarios, in a sort of dress rehearsal, so that when faced with what you fear you will ready. I remember after having my daughter being absolutely terrified of the most ridiculous things: a plane crashing into my house, monsters under the bed, zombies, etc. I thought I was losing my mind.

In truth, my greatest fear is human monsters.

[Mustard]

my biggest fear is running out of food.

[Pax Britannia]

I love heights. I find something very calming about standing on the edge of large drops.

http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/ii85/Raptor08_2008/IMG_0699-1.jpg

[Archangel]

So are we talking about phobias or more personal fears here?

[Pax Britannia]

Phobias are more interesting I think. Personal fears are just depressing shit like hoping nothing horrible happens to your friends and loved ones.

[Archangel]

Well, I've said this before, but I used to be deathly afraid of question marks.


A shrink would have a field day with that.

[Archetype]

Well, I've said this before, but I used to be deathly afraid of question marks.


A shrink would have a field day with that.
You would be a terrible Batman.

[freegood]

An even worse Riddler

[Pax Britannia]

An even worse Riddler

Arch would never get into the outfit.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh91/gothamprofiles/Villians/Riddler/150858-riddler_400.jpg

[Claydon]

Arch would never get into the outfit.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh91/gothamprofiles/Villians/Riddler/150858-riddler_400.jpg

i smell a PS coming.

I fear cancer.

I have seen many of my family members experience long, horrible, miserable, painful deaths from this insidious disease.

[ElvisWong]

Die by electrocution or by an avalange !!!

[slore]

dead bodies

[Okie Medicvet]

okay, phobias..there is no rhyme or reason to it, but sometimes I open the door and it is the biggness of it, the everything is out there, and everything is going to fast, that gets to me, so I shut the door and stay inside. But on good days, I can allow my jitters to be thre, but just go out anyways..not for long..to do stuff like grocery shopping or paying the bills, but by the time I get back to my house, I am drained from all the panic i was holding back. I don't want to be afraid to leave, and am concerned it mgiht be a 'self fullfilling' prophecy of sorts, but my shrink says that there is more to it than that, but I am making headway in my thought processes...unless he's just blowin smoke up my ass, lol.

I a defnitely phobic about the VA everytime I go there for any kind of treatment I get the runaround and get treated like shit, so I get all my medical care these days through the choctaw nation, which is some better.

I am utterly convince that the only reason my service connection hasn't been made permanent yet is becase they want me to die before my case is even finished..God knows they have done it to far too many soldiers and sailors..for instance, those exposed to radiation when the nuclear tests were going on, for just one example. And don't forget that the Tuskegee Airman experiments whre they were exposed to syphilis, but never given proper treatment, but placebos, and the effects of long term syphilis were recorded..this went on right before, during and even after WWII, but it wasn't unitl the press kicked the story wide open in the late 70's, did the men finally get what treatment was available, but only after many decades had gone by.

Given that, I think maybe my opinion about the VA is so much phobic, as it is a healthy fear of a govt institution with not th greatest of track records.