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Irrational (childhood) fears?


kani

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Disclaimer: Fun topic, don't blame me for any paranoia that this might cause. I already have to deal with mine. :D

 

A lot of these 'fears' are a result of an adult imagining a horrible freak accident scenario (you know how parents are, or at least my dad is, doesn't help that my two sisters were pretty wild) and then warning the kids to be careful regardless of how unlikely it is to happen. Thanks, dad.

 

For example, pointy and/or sharp objects don't go together with running (or going up the stairs), in case you'd stumble and the pointy thing would stab you. Or having a lollipop in your mouth and then it would get stuck in your throat.

 

Or going to the sauna, where the floor is slippery and the stove is very hot. Does seem like the ingredients for a disaster, doesn't it?

Or running in the swimming hall. Or rocking a chair in class, walking under a ladder or over the manhole cover.

 

Anything similar that would come to mind? Even just something smaller like fearing you'd drop your phone into the water or into the sewers.

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I used to be scared that a ghost would come up the U bend in the toilet and pull me in. 

 

This was before I read Harry Potter - that actually got me over that fear. 

 

I panicked really badly on the Jaws ride at Disney World. When I returned home, on the doormat was a shark postcard written by Jaws (coughmydadcould) saying he was going to eat me. 

 

I have a long standing fear of parasites since my dad tickled me and shouted Scarabs! During the scarab scene in the Mummy. 

 

 

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Elftober Country

Hmm, how long before someone says "clowns"

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8 minutes ago, October Country said:

Hmm, how long before someone says "clowns"

I don't know, I'm still waiting for that...... :D

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Elftober Country

I was always worried about things crawling into my ears :( Especially when we would sleep in a tent in the garden :blink:

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there was a while where I thought obviously squirrels are going to run up to me and bite me... 

 

I thought a robber was going to climb up to my window, enter the house that way (despite so many easier ways to get into the house) and steal my stuff... or something... 

 

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I ate an apple pip and thought a tree would grow out of me :( 

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1 minute ago, XYZ96 said:

I thought a robber was going to climb up to my window, enter the house that way (despite so many easier ways to get into the house) and steal my stuff... or something... 

I still don't like looking out the windows late at night in case someone's out there just looking at me. Luckily now I live in the third floor.

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Elftober Country

 

5 minutes ago, arokani said:

I still don't like looking out the windows late at night in case someone's out there just looking at me. Luckily now I live in the third floor.

If you do see someone 3 floors up, your fear is justified :o

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1 minute ago, October Country said:

If you do see someone 3 floors up, your fear is justified :o

I blame Roald Dahl and The Big Friendly Giant :wacko: creeping into children's bedrooms and kidnapping the ones that happen to be awake and see it.

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darkstreamers252

Mine were being abducted, hurt, or killed in the middle of the night, heights, the dark, clowns, bugs in my head, and swarming insects.

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Elftober Country
4 minutes ago, arokani said:

I blame Roald Dahl and The Big Friendly Giant :wacko: creeping into children's bedrooms and kidnapping the ones that happen to be awake and see it.

I was thinking vampires, "Lost Boys" style...

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Being alone in the dark. 

 

Y'all might laugh at me, but I had constant intense nightmares all the way till I was 16. One of my most common dream senarios was simply darkness. Nothing visibly scary, but the outer parts of the dream enviroment would grow darker and darker towards me. If I ran, it sped up. If I did nothing and let it get me, I felt intense unbareable sensations of pain, vulnerability, and invasion of my consciousness. So as a kid, the moment I realized I was alone in the dark. I felt the same fear in the dreams. I would usually freeze up and curl into the fetal position, and closed my eyes to not see my enviroment. I'd usually stay like that till someone came and got me, or I'd muster up the courage to full adrenalin run back into some lit area 

 

By the time I was 16, I had learned to lucid dream. I could eventually overpower these specific nightmares by forcing the dreams to change. But they still happen to this day.

 

I got over my fear properly, when I was 20 I believe. Via constant exposure and a suicidal death wish.

 

The symbolism in my dreams mutated after learning to lucid dream. The darkness included. It began to take the shape of plants, quicksand, earthquakes, monsters, and even as a doppelganger and humans. 

 

I am a firm believer in dreams having meaning too, just not prophetic. They reflect mental state.

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3 minutes ago, Maou-sama said:

Being alone in the dark.

That was my living nightmare for a big part of my life.

 

I was used to go to sleep with lights on, but I couldn't really fall asleep because I knew my parents would turn them off sooner or later.  Then, surrounded by darkness, I was too afraid to move or even breathe - I believed there was someone else with me in the room. And the fact that I suffered nightmares wasn't helpful at all. As a child, I regularly dreamed of my mum trying to kill me or I watched how my close family members dying. I have to say there wasn't any rational reason to have these lovely dreams - I think I was a pretty happy kid.

 

By the time I was 16, I wasn't able to control my dreams (I tried), but I was able to slowly turn my fear of darkness to more neutral feelings.   

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When I was a kid, there was a girl in her early teens who got a kick out scaring us younger kids with stories about Bloody Mary*. This girl claimed to be able to call and direct Bloody Mary through the mirrors and promised that if any of us told on her she would send the ghost to get us in in the middle of the night. It's been close to forty years now and I still cannot have a mirror in the bedroom and I do not look in the mirror in the bathroom with the lights out. Nope, nope. Yet, I love 'real' ghost stories and will watch shows like "Haunted History" and the like constantly.

 

Clowns and dolls are my other irrational fears/dislikes.

 

*Yes, the Bloody Mary you go into a bathroom with a candle and call for.

The fascinating thing about this story is that there is a generational divide - ask someone from the Baby-Boomer group if they ever heard these stories and you'll get a blank look (I've tried), or they assume you're referring Queen Mary Tudor (who earned the title quite vividly). However, most people from Gen-X on down the line will know who you're talking about.

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when i was younger i was very scared of needles, and i mean, they needed three people to get a needle in me.
I probably had a trauma when I was very little but whenever i saw a needle all rational thought left me completely and i couldn't do anything about it. I just got blinded by fear, it's not really better now but i've learned to deal with it. 

I.e. before needles come into play I explain to the doctor what happens, I close my eyes or focus on something else and explain that i shouldn't be warned about when they're actually planning on giving the shot, the less i know the better it seems.

It does sadden me how some doctors handled it, i remember being maybe 10 and getting strapped to a bed in the hospital for my hep A/B shots, i still don't understand anyone deemed that okay, I was so scared and they took away any freedom of movement, making matters only worse.

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My bedroom in my childhood house was the one where the entrance to the attic was located. Most night when I went to bed, I'd hear scratching coming from above me. What I realize now was that this scratching was the wind brushing tree branches against the roof, but to my young brain it sounded like claws on wood. So every night I'd have the fear in the back of my head that a hungry feral possum or raccoon or some other ne'er do well angry rodent would somehow scratch its way through the entrance panel from the attic to my room, and rain down angry death from above.

 

Also, as a kid in New York, I'd often ride the subway with my parents. Sometimes when the subway was already in the station as we were going down the stairs to catch it, I'd make sure to run ahead, as I was young and spry and my parents were not, and hold the doors, so we wouldn't have to wait for the next train. I was constantly afraid that the doors would close anyway, and I'd be stuck on a subway without my parents and with no plan what to do if we got separated. In my mind, I'd be forever lost wandering the New York City Subway lines, trying to somehow, by lucky happenstance, cross paths with my parents again. Somehow, at this young age, I wasn't bright enough to realize, if worst came to worst "Go Home, Stupid" was a valid option.

 

Lastly, along a similar vein, there was the fear that on leaving the subway to go to school, a zipper or strap or other piece of fabric from my backpack would get caught in the closing doors, and I'd be dragged along the platform as the train got up to speed, before being slammed into the wall at the end of the platform at 55 mph, presumably liquefying my bones and turning my body into chunky spaghetti sauce. 

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It wasn't a fear fear, but I was always disgusted by seeing rocks stuck in sidewalk cracks. It reminded me of getting rocks stuck in your skin. I was also afraid of seeing my reflection at night(I still am to a degree). Sometimes I would be afraid to leave my bed at night because I would worry there were tiny monsters on the ground that I couldn't see. 

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Anthracite_Impreza

I think the only childhood fear I haven't carried with me to adulthood is batteries. I wouldn't so much as touch a battery because I thought the acid would seep out and burn my fingers off.

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For some reason I was scared to death of water fountains. I was also afraid to go to the deep end of swimming pools eventhough I knew how to swim. Even as an adult I have thalassophobia.

 

I was also scared of escalators. I thought they would skin me alive if I didn't step off in time.

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I was afraid of going into swimming pools by myself even though I could swim. I thought a shark would somehow materialize if I was alone. If given the chance I probably still wouldn't swim alone, though for completely different reasons.

 

I had to sleep with everything but my head under blankets/sheets or else Bigfoot would get me. :lol: Now it's just uncomfortable sleeping without something covering me.

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Grumpy Alien

I was terrified of tornado warnings... still am, actually. I was also afraid a telephone pole or tree would fall on my house during a storm and crush us to death.

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2 hours ago, Ms. Wrench said:

I was afraid of going into swimming pools by myself even though I could swim. I thought a shark would somehow materialize if I was alone. If given the chance I probably still wouldn't swim alone, though for completely different reasons.

Yeah, part of the reason I was afraid of the deep end was because I thought a shark or a crocodile would appear there.

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2 hours ago, Graceful said:

I was terrified of tornado warnings... still am, actually. I was also afraid a telephone pole or tree would fall on my house during a storm and crush us to death.

You would hate living where I am. :D I get tornado warnings all the time, sirens and everything. 

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Anthracite_Impreza
11 hours ago, Graceful said:

I was terrified of tornado warnings... still am, actually. I was also afraid a telephone pole or tree would fall on my house during a storm and crush us to death.

I'd say that's fairly rational in an area with tornadoes tbf...

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I remember being afraid of getting lost or separated from my parents.  I was also afraid of some strangers, though based on experiences that was a fairly rational fear.

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My childhood fear was stupid and unusual.

Mushrooms.

Yes, I was afraid of mushrooms, especially the dangerous ones. Like, why was I afraid of these sponge-like organisms? I blame for that that one time when I went to search some mushrooms with my family in the forest, when I saw a giant toadstool and got scared, like, this event traumatized me to this point that I couldn't look at the mushrooms on the photos. I got weird nightmares containing these... things, too.

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WobblyWallaby

Escalators and snuggle bear

Screen-Shot-2015-06-23-at-2.22.40-PM-450

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MiraMeyneth

Running water and bathrooms. I hated showers and toilets, as I thought the showers would randomly start spewing acid if I used it, and toilets (especially automatic ones) I always hated as I thought they would suck me into them. It was worse if somebody turned the lights off, haha.

 

Another one was that I would sleep with my head underneath a pillow because I was scared that others could see and steal my thoughts while I sleep. I still sleep with my head underneath the pillow, but for a different reason. Just one of the habits that stuck with me, I guess.

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A shard of glass

I had an irrational fear that my bedroom would flood and I'd drown in it while I slept....

 

I also had an irrational fear that after I flushed a toilet, something would come out of it and chase me... I literally RAN away from a toilet after flushing when I was a child...

 

PRETTY WEIRD RIGHT?! XD

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