dork wrote on Feb 18
th, 2010 at 12:55pm:
Does anyone here have any phobias?
For me it is tight spaces. I even hate to watch movie scenes when someone has to crawl through the air ducts. When I hear or see news of some idiot caught in a chimney or a kid in a well I almost feel like I will be sick. I very rarely sleep with any covers at all and if I do they don't stay on very long. I can handle spaces only as small as elbow to elbow stretched. The idea of a straight jacket terrifies me. If I had to wear one I think I would have a heartattack from the mental stress.
I also don't care for deep water, like when you are left floating in a lake alone after wiping out skiing while you wait for the boat to come back.
I don't think I suffer from anything remotely like a "phobia."
I understand what you're saying about crawling through tight spaces, though--and I do get apprehensive about the idea of that. Like that pitiable man who died stuck on a downward slant in a cave recently, where he was wedged into a bend and could not be drawn back out... That was an absolutely
hideous way to die, in my view. (I've read of similar things happening to burglars who tried to gain entry to a business through a duct and ended up jammed upside-down into a vertical shaft and were found dead there the next day. I have no compassion for
them.) My difficulty with the tight-spaces thing would be the tightness-of-breath thing; the reason I don't believe it's a "phobia" is because I think we all have an instinct to kinda freak out when we feel we're being denied breath!
I love heights, but at the same time, heights have always challenged me. Ledges, to be more specific. Like walking to the edge of a roof. At times in my life, I've actually endeavored to make myself get used to ledges, and met with great success. But it is something that has to be maintained or it lapses.
Ironically, I hold licenses to fly and to skydive.
Altitudes are nothing to be afraid of at all. But if I were to stand inside a skydive plane near the open door without a skydive rig on, I'd freeze up. I have to have the knowledge that
if I fall, I can save myself even after falling. That's why I have problems with cliffs and ledges and roofs--the understanding that there's no saving myself
if I fall from them.
But as I said, I have been able, at times, to condition myself to being close to ledges (I used to work on it when I was in college, for example, because the campus had places where one could stand on ledges), so I can't consider it a phobia, or even really a serious fear.
And I don't have particular fears of water, or crowds, or germs, or darkness, or animals...