fear | Super-Sexy-but-Stressed Trio

Posts Tagged ‘fear’

Phobias

Posted in Life in General, Stresz, tagged acrophobia, autophobia, claustrophobia, fear, phobia on December 8, 2008| 1 Comment »

Since young, I knew I have the fear of heights. There were just uncountable signs that had doubled or tripled confirmed that I am very much afraid of the distance between my feet and the ground (or so my eyes & brain interprets). I could not and still cannot tolerate:-

riding on a bike excluding mini-bikes (yes..that mini-bike I used to ride to school)
climbing ladders (but I recently made it up a 3 steps ladder)
standing at railings/walls/dividers which is below waist level and looking down (when I say down, it could be any height!)
looking at the bottom of a pool (especially those Olympic size pools that goes down 11ft deep)
and more..

Yes, pathetic. I know. This is call acrophobia. It has been rather restricting cos I find hiking quite a challenge when it comes to descending. Biking becomes difficult because I can never ride on a racer or a mountain bike because the sitting position enables my eyes to capture the sight of the distance between my body and the ground where my feet is not touching. Swimming across an Olympic pool or any open sea becomes traumatic because I literally go frantic and completely freak out – I almost drown myself in the pool when I initially made my way across to the 11ft end. No, I’m not exaggerating. There are more details that I’m leaving out for the sake of my reputation. In a way, I’m thankful for only growing up to a 5ft 5″

As I grew older, I noticed I have more than just the heights to worry about. Have you ever walk into a crowd and suddenly feel your chest cramping up and you struggle to breathe? Ever get into an elevator and suddenly it stopped and you completely panicked and start losing control over your reactions and speech? Well, that’s me (almost). I definitely cannot endure:-

small rooms especially those without windows (even if it’s too small) and doors which are not big enough (for me size at least)
enclosed areas which I have no idea/sight/knowledge of the existence of the exits (I MUST know the exits or at least feel comforted that I am capable of getting out of the means-of-escape. I.e. if I think the sewage pipe is LARGE enough to crawl through and BRIGHT enough to see the end of it..then, I’m OK. It’s not too much to ask for right?)
crowded areas – I used to freak out at restaurants, PC Fairs, anywhere which has too many people! I especially hate it when there are too many people who are obviously taller than me and all I see are just backs & chests (ok, part of it is because I’m plain jealous of their heights).
prolong duration in enclosed areas – flights & elevators are my most hated places. Once I traveled on econ seats to US, I felt like screaming and breaking the glass so that they would stop the darn flight and let me out. If an elevator light goes off and suddenly stops moving, or it takes a bit too long to get to the supposed level – I’ll start to have panic attacks and run out of breath
long distance driving. It took me many years to realize why I kept falling asleep when I’m in the car. I only realized it of late. It was plainly because I hated traveling by car when I was young and the feeling of being trapped inside was so overwhelming that I often get car sick (bus, plane, ship..whatever you can think of, name it and you’ve got it!). In order to get over the fear, I just sleep..sleep…and sleep…
and more..

Yes, very pathetic. I am beginning to accept the fact that my life is revolving around this fear. And it is called claustrophobic.

Just in case you are convinced that I’m a little insane, hold your horses. There is a little bit more to this list that I have recently discovered. I have my 3rd major fear – autophobia. Too big of a word? Let me help you understand.

This was how my messengers looked like on Saturday night. Don’t worry if you are not familiar with these messengers. It doesn’t need Einstein to figure out the meaning of these two screen captures. Do you realized that:-

4 out of 5 people on my Y! Messenger list are Stepped Out (which means they are just NOT there)? That 1 person who is online..happens to have the same status message as I do (doh!).. Oh! Almost forgot to include that one same person who is also in my Y! Mobile Messenger (double doh!)
there is NO ONE in the Google Talk window – NIL
there is “0” emails indicated next to the red envelop at Google Talk (yes, I cleared everything off and have nothing else to clear)

Are you beginning to figure out what I’m trying to tell you? I had a miserable Saturday evening because there was no one online! And this is a horrendous torture for an Internet freak! I felt so lonely I had to chat with myself alter-ego. I kept clicking on the red envelope just to make sure Gmail didn’t screw up. That’s when it dawned me that I am plainly just afraid of loneliness *gasp*

So tonight, while waiting for my dad to fix the toilet so that I can go pee & poo…I decided to just Google up “fear of loneliness“. True enough, I’m not alone in this. And guess what? I found this. I read it, and I felt comforted that:-