After reading yours, C3D, I may have to change mine! LOL That is just freaky! No pics, please. :D

Until I meet one of those things, though, I have plenty of fears, but for a phobia, nothing gets me all clammy and my heart racing like walking into a room full of strangers. It's worse if they're all seated in a large, well-lit room [think cafeteria, restaurant...funeral procession :(] but it's not good even in small rooms with small crowds.

Luckily, DH is a doll and usually walks in front of me, so I can just follow him with my head down, casually looking at the back of his Wranglers. :D

Yeah, I know, I'm a weirdo. LOL

Brenda

Snakes - don't frighten me anymore. Much...
Insects: well, I'm helping a handful of hornets to the great outdoors every morning. They must have hibernated in the insulation in the tubroom.
Creepies: they fascinate me. I might not touch them, but I can look at them without racing heart.
Crowds: Brenda, I can give presentations to them now. Practice, practice, practice... I get nervous, but not upset. Tall DH comes in handy when entering the room though.

My biggie is standing up for myself in a conflict. Mouth goes dry, heart pounds in my ears, words leave my brain, throat chokes. I know something is wrong but I can't find words to go with it.

Of course I can always think of lots of things to say afterwards!

:) Mary

Rollercoasters.
Can't do it. My husband tricked me into going on the HULK at Islands of Adventure and ever since then, well, no more rollercoasters. EVER. (hurl)

Hey Mary -- Being practiced and confident at debate and having a valid point of view don't always go hand-in-hand. The winner in a debate isn't always right, they're just good at debate. Learn to say, "I'll think about that. Let me get back to you." And then do get back to them when you've decided how you feel about the issue, what you're willing to give and what you want from them.

I still feel the way you describe sometimes, but this practice helps a lot. Plus it saves a lot of burned bridges. :)

Phobia: Undercooked chicken or (egads) pork. brr. Cutting boards used to cut bacon left unwashed, where I am making salad. eeeesh. And mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is just plain gross.

I've heard that, about learning to say, "I'll think about it," before making a commitment that you'd wished you'd not made. It's really good advice, ZC! I have that problem, too, though....remembering to take a time out before rushing in to please everyone.

And thinking of all the good things to say AFTER the fact. :D

Brenda

Spiders! I was pregnant and having to make frequent trips to the bathroom every night. On one trip I stepped on a spider and smashed it. I couldn't sleep the rest of the night thinking that it had a mate that was just waiting on me to step onto the floor and chew my leg off. The next time I had to make a trip, I climbed across the bed..onto the dresser and across to the lighted hallway. Anyway...he didn't get me ;-)
Cathy

See thru stairs...like going up a circular staircase to the top of a church steeple on metal stairs where you can see 6 flights below you....scares the palms sweating, heart racing bejeebies out me.

And snakes.... pictures of them too.

Bridges, crossing bridges especially the Macanaw bridge. I can cross as a passenger, but make be drive it and I have to take the middle lane.....didn't know that it was all grate....and then drive real slow and hold up traffic.

In my last year in school, one of my favorites profs. asked us to write a short essay about ourselves and our goals in life. Based on this he would recommend a different book for each one of us to read for a later report. The book that was recommended to me was an EXCELLENT autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy called WILL. In it Liddy writes in detail about his youth and how he had many phobias and how he overcame them in order to mold himself to go beyond his physical and mental limitations. He used the immersion technique to overcome his fears. For example, he knew he was afraid of thunder and lightning so he climbed a tree during a major thunderstorm and tied himself to the tree while lightning was hitting all around him (kids don't try this at home!!!). The ole' saying "What doesn't kill you make you stronger" applies here.

I used to hate heights. After reading that book and knowing what Uncle Sam had in store for me, I started to do a lot of rock climbing, repelling, and even climbing radio towers at night (kids PLEASSSSSE don't try this at home). It worked with some success. I was even able to jump out of a perfectly good airplane ONCE (though the Gunny's boot on my gluteus maximus was also a big help. LOL!)

So think immersion! C3D, how about keeping a bottle of centipedes and hand feeding them? Youreit, how about running into a crowded room and screaming "I've got worms"? Bonz, a pet snake?

OK, any takers??? ANYONE?!

Yeah, I know, I'm a weirdo. LOL

I'm afraid of neekid male models.... Immersion method please!!!

LOL!! If I could edit mine, I'd explain my intense fear of anything military, but especially those frightening men in uniform! :D

Seriously, every time I walk into a crowded room full of strangers, I do have to make myself behave normally. If I started screaming and grabbing my face, falling to my knees, that sort of thing, I'd have no choice but to agree to the terms of the divorce. Immersion is GREAT, unless you're phobic to the point of insanity & paralysis. :D

See-through stairs & bridges, creepy critters, ill-prepared food, & heights all make sense to me as phobias, I just had to mention. Been scared of all of those things at least once in my life!

Brenda

"I'm afraid of neekid male models.... Immersion method please!!!"

Be afraid....be VERY afraid.

New phobia here! What's Semper going to find and post next? :-)

Mike

LOL!! Ahhh, I sure miss that big ol' drug addict.

Brenda

As for those see-through stairs... ummmmmmm, YEP!

I must have vertigo, because heights get me downright DIZZY if I'm close enough that I can fall, or if it LOOKS like I could fall... and the one time we visited the lighthouse at Kitty Hawk (supposedly the tallest in the country -- my brother and I were teenagers), my mom went up to the first level, my dad and brother went to the top, and TWICE I tried climbing those steps that go around and around and are metal grates you can see through ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM and BOTH TIMES I got to step No. 15 and I COULD NOT control the shaking in my legs or the pounding in my chest any more and could not push myself to go any further, and went back down...

Yet I've flown in a jet with no problem, and enjoyed looking out the window.

Go figure.

Oh, as an aside, I think I heard somewhere there's supposed to be some kind of cyclical "epidemic" of centipedes in the Southern Lake Erie area this year... supposedly attracted to any small areas of fresh water, as they like to feed on the insects and whatnot that live around small streams, ponds and bogs.

Interesting, huh?

which reminds me, i have never, never, nver like escalators. i am sure this is common. when i was a kid, getting onthem didn'tbother me. getting off did, afraid i would misstep and get sucked in. funny, i know better now, but i still get nervous when it is time to step off. maybe it is just the realization that i am a clutz!

And snakes.... pictures of them too.>>

Me too! I cannot go near glass sided stairs, escalators, elevators, with or without see through steps. The London Eye was a no no as the pods are glass!

Luckily most snakes in the UK are pets, so I do not see any,if I can help it.

To this day, I still wobble like an infant when it's time to dismount an escalator! (Hmm, maybe because you're not supposed to MOUNT one to begin with, but still....)

My stomach flippity flops whenever there's a scene on TV or at the movies where they show a steep, deep drop...or rollercoasters. I can only imagine how it would feel to see it in person...or walk up many stories on see-through steps. Or (the worst for me) looking over the spillway of a dam ({{gwi:168042}}, to be exact). Whew! Kind of a rush, but kind of scary, too!

Brenda

yep, glassed in elevators make me dizzy. otherwise, no problem.
i think of lord of hte rings when i think of the london eye. i am going tohave to look that one up. sorry, sheltered life in the flat midwest corn and bean field.

I think it's Mt. LeConte in the Smokies where there's a stretch of shale -- slick, spring-wet, piecey slates of shale slipping and sloping away down a face of shale below, another face of wet shale above with no handholds, and you're supposed to walk across this. It is the path, and you're five miles in and your "D" H is striding ahead and calling you a whiner. I don't mind heights, it's heights where my feet are slipping and there's nothing to grab onto and I have a 20-pound pack teetering high on my back... that I mind.

And THIS place -- in the Flattop Wilderness in Colorado -- we actually hiked up there and then chickened out and could not go across. We were humiliated when we saw a speck in the distance, which became a hiker, which became a young woman with an enormous pack who strode across this abyss as if she were crossing the street, smiled and said "Hi" as she passed us sitting there and kept on hiking. We hoped she thought we were just resting, perhaps had even hiked across and were resting, but we knew she knew we were yellow.

This is a description from an online journal from someone named Mitchell:
We ascended to the mesa via the astonishing Devil's Causeway. The "trail" (really a clump of boulders) narrows to little more than a yard wide and falls off 1500 feet on either side to the valley below. The official topo doesn't draw a trail here and now we know why...its very dangerous. Knowing what I do now I wouldn't attempt a crossing again, especially with a full pack. We crossed the causeway on our hands and knees and kissed the earth when we reached the other side. There are other ways around that are less risky. Its probably a lot easier without a pack and is a popular destination.

{{gwi:168044}}

Oh man, I found this thread interesting reading 'til the visual. That picture makes me light-headed and want to throw up, I guess I've got a phobia too. I also DON'T do rollercoasters. I don't mind heights so much when I know I won't DIE if I fall, breaking an arm is not so bad.

Glad to know I'm normal...like the rest of you :o)

Ugh!! I think if I was made to cross that "causeway", I'd have to pull the same trick that I pulled when I was 9 - when my dad took us 4-wheelin' in the snow-filled mountains of Idaho, and we started sliding backwards down a steep embankment - crying and screaming, "I don't wanna die!"

Brenda

i have stood on the edge of bluffs, but that is a no go. i can't even walk rafters on house construction.

back to the eye! so cool. i had to mail a link to mysister...she is in england right now on company time! so exciting. anway, she emailed back and told me she rode the eye on monday!

oh yeah, *scratch, scratch* poison ivy!

Having gone down a shale slope, mostly on my rear end, that photo and description bring back memories I wish I didn't have. And that was just 25 feet or so. My clothes were shredded and I had more gashes and scrapes than you could imagine. I still get chills.
Other than that, I mostly manage to get past my phobias by ignoring them but I still feel panic when a spider is between me and my only way out. LOL. Sandy

I admire anyone that could walk across that - I might be able to crawl if there was a warbler on the other side :^)

Ahem, Jean, that's WAY TOO ROCKY to crawl -- my knees would NEVER make it... and for a warbler??? I'm sorry, the ONLY WAY I'd be crossing that would be RUNNING AT FULL STEAM, with an angry, or hungry GRIZZLY BEAR right behind me!!!

:)

Phobias? Where shall I start? It all began with my childhood...
I am really claustrophobic. I think it came from my sister locking my in the closet when I was 4 or 5 yrs old.
I HATE elevators (glass ones aren't as bad for me) and I will NOT fly ever again if I can help it! I'm not afraid of heights really. It's the closed in feeling. As I age, it seems the phobia has gotten worse.
I feel like we are in therapy here. Anyone else willing to expose themselves??? Oops, I may have just invited someone to post a picture of their naked butt!!! Please refrain, although it would be a hoot! :)