On Fear And Phobias

I have a fear of bridges. Sometimes when I drive across them, my knuckles turn white as I grip the wheel. I've been known to snap at someone for not watching the road close enough while crossing a bridge.

I have an even bigger fear of flying. Actually, I don't fear flying so much as I do crashing. It's simply something I don't want to experience. I've jumped off the high dive at the public pool twice in my life. I didn't like it. Somehow I view flying (and conscequintly crashing) as a really, really big high dive. No thanks.

These (barring any tragic thoughts of something to do with my children) are my great fears. And as great as they are, as gut wrenching and heart pounding as I find them, they are nothing - nothing to my phobias. And I have two of them.

I don't have any great fear of spiders. I spare no love for them, but no exceptional fear either. Bugs? Bugs are another issue altogether. Fear truly is not a powerful enough word for the emotion I have towards bugs. I don't have any levels for how frightening a certain type of bug is over another. Nope, I give them all the benefit of the doubt and rate them all at extreme. In my area the June bug is most prevelant so perhaps I loath them more but pretty much any bug will elicit the same response. And that response is panic. Sheer, unadulterated, mindless terror. And when I say mindless, I mean mindless. I once tried to exit a moving vehicle when I found myself sharing automotive space. My door was open and my body was in full flight. Only the seat belt held me in. Which is bad enough in itself except that I also happened to be the driver of the vehicle.

Absolute mindless terror. For a bug. Though I can admit to that reaction as being extreme, it simply is beyond control. All thought seems to exit my mind. Why else would I leap from a moving vehicle, willing to let my own car careen on driverless?

This weekend my sister-in-law was driving her vehicle when I noticed a bug on the inside of my window. Again, the seat belt held me from moving too far and I was crying out about a bug and the window. Unfortunately my initial plea didn't make much sense (again the mindless thing) and it took her a minute to realize what was going on. Then, finding humor in my terror, she told me to roll down my own window. Desperate to get as far away from the bug as possible, I finally was able to release the catch on my seat belt and in my haste nearly sent the buckle through the window pane while I flung myself toward the back seat. Needless to say my sister-in-law didn't find that quite so funny.

This however is what seperates fear from phobia. My fears may be a bit unreasonable but my phobias? I become unreasonable. I simply lose ability to reason. I don't know why I experience this over bugs but bugs definitely do it.

The other thing that does me in is guns. Now don't get all up in arm (ha ha), I'm not into the politics of gun control in the least. I simply become mindless when around guns. My husband thought to break me of this one time and took me out where he target practices, stood me in place and put his shotgun in my hands. I became so terrified I started crying. For a moment he wouldn't take the gun from me and for me, it felt like an eternity. I was absolutely terrified to move. I stood stock still bawling my head off.

I didn't realize that it is standard safety for policemen to have their hand readily over their gun when they approach a car that they've pulled over at night. Thankfully my husband was driving cause when I saw the cops hand on his gun I was so terrified I could neither move nor speak for some time. Then I started bawling and felt like I'd run a marathon.

My husband is an avid hunter but the guns had never been in our house. For years they stayed at his parent's. Then when I had my major surgery and wouldn't be able to go downstairs in our house for over a year, he moved them (at his parent's insistance) into our basement. It was nearly 2 years later that I discovered them. They are still here but locked in a cabinet and each has a large trigger lock and all ammunition is stored outside of the house. I still don't look at the cabinet though, just knowing they are in there. I have no issue with my husband hunting or his use of guns but they simply terrify me. I also believe they have no business in a house with children but we've taken about as many steps as we can to make them uneasily useable.

So. Those are my deepseated fears and phobias. I'm just wondering how common phobias are. Right now I know no one with a real phobia like I experience. None of my friends or family experience anything like it. Surely it can't be all that rare though.

So what makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck?