2020-09-30 16:33:39

Hi all. This was happening for years now but thought posting it here so maybe I could get help or something. I am scared of everything that has even if a little possibility to hurt me or kill me. I never sleep directly under a ceiling fan or in a reach of  ceiling fan. I never stay in a room like a kitchen or any room that has a gas canister or more inside it without freaking out and staying at the Farist distance from the canister as possible. I rarely enter a room in my house because it have things hangd all over the ceiling like fans and light bulbs. I am not scared of light bulbs but the room have a massive number of them and they are kind of heavy because they are hanged on a secondary ceiling or whatever you call it, That plastic decoration that hangs from the ceiling all over the room. And lots of other things. I don't know if this is even a phobia or something that has a name. I am getting rather tired of this and if anyone could direct me to something to get rid of this it will be amazing

2020-09-30 17:10:09

Fear is a healthy sign that you're alive and properly feeling; it's when that fear becomes fright and controls you that you have an issue.  You're going to get a lot of posts on here that will tell you to get help... I will not discount that advice, and you probably need it, but that's not for me to say.  What I do know is that when it's me I always try to trace back anything that concerns me to its roots if and when I can.
For instance... I have a secret fear of cold, running water.  I guess that's not so secret anymore.  why do I fear cold running water?  Because I have a frightful memory of being in a bathtub at the age of 4.  The water was running cold and things were fun.  I was playing with the intensity of the water and was fascinated by how I could change it with the knob.  Then, I noticed a little piece on the top you could obviously pull out and wondered what it did.  Being the curious child that I was, I pulled it, and water was suddenly falling on me from above; COLD WATER!
Had I known there was such a thing as showerheads and that people used them all the time, I never would have given it a second thought.  As it is, being blind, not knowing that was even a possibility, and the fact that the water was cold which would startle anyone... I'm sure you get the point.  Obviously, I've faced it and owned it for what it is.  I go swimming, fishing, have ridden a few boats and so on.  That having been said, I do not like turning my back on the ocean, and I also dislike walking in the rain.
So, has a light fixture ever fallen on you?  Does your ceiling fan make funny noises that are possibly upseting you?  Have you ever touched the thing?  does it seem unstable for some odd reason?  Perhaps none of these are true, but these are all things I'd be asking myself if it were me in your shoes.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2020-09-30 18:10:27

If it's not specific phobias, at the risk of slowly developing the "but there's a doctor for that" reputation(though that ship has already sailed) see a qualified physician or psychiatrist or something.

If it's specific phobias then you can probably work on them, and to be honest it's not unreasonable to just avoid the thing you're afraid of, but judging from the first post this is general fear, not fear of a specific thing, and if that comes from life experiences then it's going to be some damned complicated ones and if it comes from an actual psychiatric problems no one here is equipped to make that judgement.

Also, for what it's worth: mine is plants.  Any plant.  Grass is kinda okay.  Trees are kinda...less so.  I don't do well with objects that can't be modeled or predicted, and plants literally change every day, and that's unsettling to say the least.  Plus that time when I was 5 when the family thought it'd be an amazing idea to drag the blind kid through a nature trail that was more of a nature tangle taller than I was for hours, which definitely didn't help.  I think everyone has at least one weird one.

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2020-09-30 18:16:59 (edited by moaddye 2020-09-30 18:19:10)

any insect, bird on my shoulder(I freaked out one once sort of clamped onto my right shoulder. Not a good time) and animals, though I'm petting cats and all that so Not all anymore. I was really skittish
because all of the cats here are not housecats but streetcats We havent taken one in though
edit, technically not street cats since they don't live in the street. they live on rooves and make small houses for themselves occasionaly.

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2020-09-30 18:27:05

Hey, mine's jellyfish.

Advice given so far is good. If they are specific fears and can be traced back to something weird/scary that happened to you, maybe try and take that apart. But yeah, if it's just a generalized anxiety about stuff that might fall on you? That might need the help of a psychiatrist.

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2020-09-30 18:38:08

Insects, all but mostly flying ones. But everyone says, "Oh they won't hurt you", Bro that isn't the issue. I've taken bee stings and hornet stings. I don't care about that. I care about the fact that they are in my fucking house, buzzing around my head. I don't like them outside either but I can deal with them. Especially big ones or ones that make a really low buzz  like beetles, cicadas, and locusts. I don't like it when bees circle around my head either. It has nothing to do with a sting though. Bees are mostly chill and won't bother you unless you're coming at them. Wasps and hornets though are a different matter.

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2020-09-30 18:47:26

I hate flies. They're annoying. BUZZZ and coming at you every 10 seconds.
Also yeah maybe it envolves an old memory of somethintg happening you don't remember. agree with other advice

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2020-09-30 19:22:22

I'm fucking terrified of any buzzing insects. I think this comes from a time I stepped on a bee in the grass barefoot when I was young... I'm not sure though, and I've not really gotten over it, just learned to hide it. Which is close enough for the general public, so...

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2020-09-30 20:04:23

Same as ironcross, though I particularly think there's a special place in hell for those tiny mosquito things that you don't hear until they're almost literally in your ear. I hated them way more when I was tiny though.

2020-09-30 20:14:18

One of these days I'm gonna have to go deliberately get stung by a bee, or a wasp, or a hornet, or something.  Reason?  It has yet to happen to me, and while I don't exactly want it to happen to me, I honestly believe the reality is not as bad as what I'm imagining.  Like my cousins used to try to freak me out when I was four or five years old... "It's a bee!  It's a bee!"  Being blind, I think we're all prone to be at least a little concerned about flying objects we can't see... I still flinch when people start throwing around anything as big as, or bigger than a tenis ball.  Something that flys and has a mind of it's own though, and sounds menacing on top of that?  Like a little biplane getting ready to dive bomb you and... Yeah, I'm not in to all that, but I think if I could feel that at least once in my life it won't be as bad as imagining it happen anymore.
And the sad thing is, I've been super, super close!  So close, in fact, that the stupid things have flown right underneath my hands, touched my feet, into my hair, around a can of coke I was holding... I've been so close it's not funny!

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2020-09-30 20:19:44

@10
I have been, as someone who is very much qualified to rate pain, it is bad.  You get over it pretty quickly, few hours later and it's okay, but...

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2020-09-30 20:22:33

I'm not super fond of buzzing insects either, though for me it's a risk of harm. If I know the buzzing insect is a fly, can be absolutely certain of it, I'm just annoyed. The anxiety comes from not knowing what it is.

A couple of weeks back, I went downstairs to put a bag of trash out back in the dumpster, which has a closed lid. It was warm outside, and as I approached, I heard a couple of buzzing insects. Thought nothing of it. Reached up to open the dumpster's lid, sorta slammed my hand down on it to grab it, and bang@! Yellow-jacket nailed me just below my right thumb. Fucker got me good, too, and I probably crushed it. That stinger drove in pretty deep. Needless to say, I wasn't happy.

Nocturnis, two things.
First, a beesting is less painful than a hornet or wasp sting, by and large. It's a hot, sharp, bright pain that settles into a throb eventually. You can help ease it by various means. My hornet sting didn't go away, pain-wise, for hours, but it wasn't debilitating.
Second, if you ever want to get stung, make absolutely sure you're not allergic.

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2020-09-30 20:44:43

lol @12, guess I won't know until it happens, and knowing me, it'll happen and I won't even know it was any of the above, so if I end up feeling funny or whatever I'll just assume it was something I ate or something else altogether.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2020-09-30 21:17:59 (edited by Quin 2020-09-30 21:22:07)

Mine is potted plants. Fake ones
Why?
Well, when I was about 4 or 5, I loved playing with trains. I had this little train table next to this fake potted plant. I still to this day have no fucking idea what caused this, but it would shake. Constantly, back and forth. And it scared the living hell out of me. Someone had also lifted me up because I wanted to feel the top of it once, and the stem at the top actually felt like a straw, and I was afraid it was going to swallow me. I even gave it a name. It was Nick. big_smile. It would even give me nightmares.
Aaah, even thinking about it is making the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I still do fear them, but it's pretty easy to hide for me, it's not something you come across very offen.
Edit: Apparently, I can't type.

2020-09-30 22:15:46 (edited by Agent47 2020-09-30 22:23:05)

Jayde wrote:

I'm not super fond of buzzing insects either, though for me it's a risk of harm. If I know the buzzing insect is a fly, can be absolutely certain of it, I'm just annoyed. The anxiety comes from not knowing what it is.

A couple of weeks back, I went downstairs to put a bag of trash out back in the dumpster, which has a closed lid. It was warm outside, and as I approached, I heard a couple of buzzing insects. Thought nothing of it. Reached up to open the dumpster's lid, sorta slammed my hand down on it to grab it, and bang@! Yellow-jacket nailed me just below my right thumb. Fucker got me good, too, and I probably crushed it. That stinger drove in pretty deep. Needless to say, I wasn't happy.

Nocturnis, two things.
First, a beesting is less painful than a hornet or wasp sting, by and large. It's a hot, sharp, bright pain that settles into a throb eventually. You can help ease it by various means. My hornet sting didn't go away, pain-wise, for hours, but it wasn't debilitating.
Second, if you ever want to get stung, make absolutely sure you're not allergic.

lol, just this part, grab it, and bang@! Yellow-jacket nailed me just below my right thumb. Fucker got me good,
looooooooool fucker got me good,
never herd that,
loooooooooooool'l'l'l'l'l'l

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2020-09-30 22:25:31

lol,   my family doesn't understand why i am scared of buzzing bugs, like i take out the trash and there would be flys or what ever, and i don't even no what it is. and i no   there just flys, or something  i no there not dangerous, but that, buzzing is just lol.     the low sounding wons wen they fly past your head, omg lol, and then wen flys  fly into your hear, lol.

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2020-09-30 22:45:09

It is normal to have fears.  For quite a while I was a little afraid of being left alone with fans and stuff like that.  I think one day I just showed myself that it's just a fan.  I'm not sure what caused the fear or for that matter what stopped it.  What might help is take some calming breaths which will lower anxiety.

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2020-09-30 23:09:25

for some reason, i can just see jayde in my head, walking down from his house, opening up his garbig cans to smash a insect, and then start screaming and cursing as the insect bites him, no offence or anything, but this just popped into my head

Suffering's what keeps me alive.
If one never suffers, one doesn't live propperly.
So embrace the pain, the suffering life has brought you and will bring you in the future

2020-09-30 23:26:00

I'm not nervous around fans except ceiling fans when they are old and start wobbling because I feel like they could let loose and fall on me. Statistically not likely, especially because not only would the fan have to break loose, the entire fixture would have to rip from its wiring as well.

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2020-09-30 23:30:07 (edited by defender 2020-09-30 23:48:20)

I have a problem with plants as well actually, especially big waxy leaves near my face.
Haven't found anyone else with this problem before Camlorn even in the blind community, so that's interesting.
I've mostly learned to tamp down on the sudden, visceral cringe I get when running into certain plants I don't expect, but it's like I just touched a giant insect, incredibly alien and very much alive, or if it's a dead leaf, as if I touched an unexpected animal skeleton or a big scab or something, incredibly dead.
I'm not exactly sure why this is (maybe it has to do with over active empathy?) and while I don't think I'll ever feel comfortable enough to walk barefoot in the grass or on dead leaves (since even now the thought makes my toes curl and my whole body shudder and not in a good way either) I can now detach enough to examine the types of plants that gave me the worst reactions as a kid for a time before having to step away at least...

2020-09-30 23:47:07

Perhaps this is just me, or the fact that I'm total unlike a lot of people on here, but I've never been able to tell, say, a fly apart from a bee from a wasp. They all just sound the same to me. I really don't know until or unless the sting comes.
As for me, I've always, for as long as I can remember, though it intensified when I learned to cook, had a fear of burning. It would even trigger itself in the most random of situations, I remember when I was about 11 / 12, in the bath, I had this constant, irrational feeling that the water would just, turn into flames and I'd be effectively stuck, since getting out with half my body on fire would be a miracle and a half. This was of course made all the worse when the water was hot, all I could ever think to myself was, just a little more heat, just a little more.

2020-09-30 23:55:45

@20
there's sighted people with the phobia, I forget the name of it.  Plants are just kind of creepy when you think about it some. But a lot of that comes from really just in general not being so great at upredictable things: my adaptation to stimuli is that there's like a 1 second window or less where it needs to be identified, otherwise anxiety.  Run your hand along a plant and you can't identify what's coming up.  People love to say o biology is very mathematical and, well, yes, but not mathematical enough that there can be a plant-model like I have a dog-model or a spoon-model or whatever.

The knock-on effect being that I can't convince myself they don't move, down at some lizard brain level.  Obviously it doesn't, we all know that, but it's a thing that makes unpredictable noises and has unpredictable textures and if you lave it alone for a week it's entirely different.  I know what a dog is going to do, or a bug, or whatever: they have constrained shapes and behaviors.  So whatever I've got running all the time, if the dog sticks its nose on me, it just goes "yay, dog, pet" in the stimulus identification window and it's all good, I know where the rest of the dog is at, etc.

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2020-10-01 00:04:26

Interesting that you say that about dogs, Canlorn, because while you're right about the dog's form, I feel like you're dead wrong about the dog's behaviour, and it's behaviour that's problematic.
I am absolutely not mocking your fear, by the way, I'm just really at a loss to explain it.
For instance, I know some people who are afraid of dogs. Not in the abstract - a picture of a dog isn't scary - but in the here and now. If a big dog comes bounding toward them, they worry they might be bitten or tackled, and some dogs are big and strong enough to straight-up kill you.
There is no plant in the world, I don't think, that can straight-up kill you just by touching it. I mean, if you ran full-tilt boogie into a saguaro cactus and got impaled in the throat or something, that would be extremely messy and you'd probably die, but just brushing most plants isn't enough to cause serious harm in most cases.
So yeah, as far as shape and size and what to expect, I get it. Dogs have four legs, fur of some variety, a snout, usually a tail of some kind. Plants are all over the place. But in the behavioural sense, plants just sit there, absorb nutrients and grow. Some of them move slowly to catch bugs, but they can't hurt people. Some have spines and could poke you, and some may have poisonous sap or berries or whatever, so eating them is a bad idea...but a plant isn't ever going to hop out of its pot to strangle you. Not unless you're reading a John Wyndham novel. Pro-tip: really, really don't do that.

When I was stung the other week, by the way, I think the only thing I did was sort of suck in a sharp breath and then mutter, "Ow! Son of a bitch!"

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2020-10-01 00:05:40 (edited by defender 2020-10-01 00:15:48)

@Camlorn
Sounds similar to the problem I have with insects, especially moths.  I don't know what they will do next or why, I can't predict them and I don't know what they look like, how big they are, their exact location ETC.
So it's both a fear of the unknown and the anticipation of what they may do next, like flying into me.  I think of them, and many other creatures as well, as being almost like robots with orders I'm not privy to.  I just don't get how they think.
But with dogs and cats, even though they do things I don't understand sometimes, they have enough reactions to stimuli that are similar to mine on a base level that I can sorta parse it, and it's much easier to form a two way bond of familiarity and trust with them.


@Jade
For me at least, it's that the plant is very much obviously alive, and yet I can't make any meaningful connection with it, and I think that's why I get a form of this with insects, reptiles, birds, sea creatures ETC.  A lack of control over the situation.  Sure for the briefist instant my mind probably screams at me subconsciously that it could move, but that's not the root of the fear for me.
It's also much worse when I don't expect to come in contact with it.  It sorta dominates my awareness with it's presents when I touch it without knowing, particularly big plants.  It's existence is just, too alien, like an extreme form of the uncanny valley effect.
I'm still perfectly willing to talk and learn about plants and animals, and I actually think snakes are pretty cool, but I don't think I could ever own one.

2020-10-01 00:44:47

@23
Let me start off by saying, for those who need to hear it, that if any of the following sounds like I believe in spiritual mystic psychic blindness powers, I don't.  It's just hard to talk about this properly because most people never need to, so we never invented good words for it.

We hack around our blindness in different ways, there almost seems to be a taxonomy to it even, though that's a different discussion.  Mine is by modeling everything.  If something can't be modeled at all, it's not necessarily causing fear, but it's at least causing unease.  A dog can be modeled: you know the general shape, you know that a given dog stays the same shape, you know certain things about it like if you give it food it will eat the food or if you get all aggressive it might bite you.  Both in the aspect of the pure physical world and in the aspect of the higher order mental/philosophical/whatever world, you can concretely say and predict useful things about a dog.  This is orders of magnitude more true about inanimate, fixed objects.  I never had full vision, but as I lost what I had, this modeling became linked to sight: I still "see" the world, in that I process information and my surroundings visually, based off these models of what should be there.  It links into everything: I can close my physical eyes, but if I close my mental eyes I can't function.  How I chop stuff in the kitchen links up to this, for instance.  I never actually had enough vision to know what chopping stuff really looked like, but I had enough that the visual cortex was online and could just generally learn to do things a visual cortex does, then somewhere along the way that plus whatever else turned into this thing where I always have and function off a 3-dimensional map of my surroundings to some level of accuracy.  Then, because that was what I was already doing, that general "model the thing" approach went out and said "this kind of works for figuring out what people are feeling without seeing them", and though I don't use visual metaphors for that, it's the same idea: there's a model of them and their mental state in my head, a reflection of what they might/should be feeling/reacting to what I'm saying, that's perpetually re calibrating to physical reality in order to make up for the lack.  Repeat ad infinitum over the years for basically everything.

This isn't unique to me.  I have other blind friends who are like this to some extent or another, and that day I confessed that I realized I was "seeing" the tv even though it was off and also I shouldn't be able to do that anymore, and "seeing" people in the dark, I expected to get "huh that's weird" but mostly just got "yeah, me too".  SO maybe unique to lebers? I dunno.  But nonetheless.

But what's the point?  Well, I don't like flying insects: you don't know what they are.  I don't worry about earthquakes because of the earthquake--though that part is really scary too--but because after, there's literally no rule that can be applied to the environment.  Now go out on a nature walk sometime, you never, ever know what's going to touch you when.  Grab a branch and run your hand along it, likewise.  Take a plant and wave it around, it's not going to make the same sound.  It's a big blank.  If you gave me a shapeshifting blob and a shrub, perceptually and through models, they're actually mostly the same.  Sort of, holes in the world.

Effectively, lots and lots of other things are perceptually the same and I deal with them, but couple it with a bad childhood experience of being dragged through a bunch of plants for a couple hours when they're all taller than you and it's thick enough that the adults were taking turns clearing a path, and you're not really old enough to understand, and they won't let you go back--there you go.  Standard phobia.  Then add a dose of "let's give our child exposure therapy" while I was, likewise, not really old enough to understand, and certainly not old enough that it was voluntary, yeah, great plan.  Exposure therapy can work, but not when it's involuntary, I promise.

It's not "this is going to kill me fuck fuck fuck" fear, though.  I don't think about plants and go "wow that's dangerous".  it's just very, very unsettling sensations, plus the fact that they definitely change unpredictably over time, and then add a bad experience and my parents' great ideas on how to "help", and you end at nature walks or whatever being this really apprehensive thing I will never do voluntarily, and forget yardwork.  If this sounds like autism, I know: it's on my "am I autistic or just blind" list.

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