Roaches and
Feeling trapped

I greatly fear being stung by a bee (or related flying-stinging insect) as well. My phobia is greatly due to the fact that I've never been stung before (knock on wood!!). I used to get really freaked out if a bee got near me. More recently, I've calmed down quite a bit and don't pay much attention. But I'm still pretty scared!

Snakes, ever since I was struck at by a rattlesnake as I was jumping rocks at the river. (I will never be the third person again.)

I swear I jump up a foot while in mid air. Snakes creep me out, even though I know they do good things...

Okay, this is weird. I just now remembered a dream I had last night. In the dream, there was a huge, HUGE bumblebee sitting on a trash can in my yard. DD and I were looking at it and kind of laughing and pointing. All of a sudden the bee came right at us, flying superfast, at our heads. It was SO scary in the dream, and I woke up thrashing! Forgot all about it until I read this.

So I guess I'm afraid of giant bumblebees.

I also really, really can't stand the sight of blood especially in relation to my kids. Fortunately (knock on wood) we haven't had any major incidents but several years ago we were at a friend's house and DS and his friend were jumping on the bed -- DS fell off and hit his head on the corner of the closet door. The blood was everywhere even though the injury was fairly minor... my friend had to deal with poor DS because I had to sit with my head between my knees! Once I cut my finger with a knife and it wouldn't stop bleeding and my friend from down the street had to come over and bandage it for me. I also can't look when I have blood drawn. I could never work in a doctor's office or hospital!

I also have dental phobia. I need mind-altering drugs to have a cavity filled or, God forbid, a crown or root canal. I can't even talk about dental work without breaking into a sweat. Fortunately, my dentist understands. :)

Bears . . . and dead mice and rats. Snakes and bugs don't scare me. I pick up bugs and even tarantulas and move them gently outside when they wander into our house or porches, but if I see a dead mouse or rat in a trap, I can barely keep a scream in. As for bears, they flat out scare the bejeebers out of me. As stinky as big dogs can get, my dobie sleeps in our bedroom, so that he can let me know if a bear comes close to our house. We live in the mountains and I know that our many screened doors won't keep out bears . . . but an adult doberman will.
I know, this probably sounds silly, but it's my phobia. What can I say?
Lynn

bees!!!!! To tell you how bad my fear is......

Many years ago, around 1961, I was sitting in the front passenger seat of a car while my DH was driving. The car windows were open and I was leaning my head against the open window frame. I thought I heard a buzzing sound near my left ear.

I leanded forward and saw a huge wasp in the felt of the window track right where my head had been.

I let out a blood curdling scream, jumped across my boyfriend (now my DH) and proceeded to attempt to get out of the open driver's window. I was screaming and hollering loudly as I was doing this. Really, I was not in control of my actions.

The car was moving and he didn't know what was going on, but knew he needed to pull over...and fast.

He did, and so did about 4 other cars. The drivers all came running over to help me because they thought I was being taken against my will and that my boyfriend was trying to kidnap me.

After much explaining about my phobia, we got back in the car and I've never ridden in a car again with the windows down.. NEVER!!!

And bless him, he stayed around and we've been married since 1963. He just puts up with my crazies!

Ya' just gotta love a guy like him.

Sorry to hear about the sting, oakley! Yellow jackets creep me out too because they don't die when they sting and they're flat out nasty, not just defensive like other bees. On the other hand, now that you've been stung, you know that that's all there is to fear. Except for...

multiple stings if you come upon a yellow jacket nest...that scares that bejeezus out of me, that idea. TV shows have shown people getting practically stung to death while out hiking because they unwittingly come within 25 feet of a y.j. nest and then the y.j.s aren't just nasty, they're defensive *too*...UGH...shivers...

My personal worst phobia is cougars, which is ironic because I have done work to protect them and educate people about them, although maybe not ironic because they have become much more 'real' to me than they were before I learned about them enough to understand why they're important. The image of a big hungry cat just feels prehistoric to me; it generates a visceral fear from the fact that we're simply inferior to them physically. Without a gun we don't win that fight.

NOT that I recommend killing them--they *need* to be here for the good of the entire food chain and ecosystem, but that doesn't mean I would not be very happy if I never saw one in the wild in my entire life. Unless I'm in a car (with the windows UP, mona!) and I see one bounding across the road, as some folks have told me has happened to them.

Flying. Flying. Flying. And dentists.

Our son moved to Australia.
He met a wonderful Australian girl.
Proposed to her.
And is getting married.
In Australia.
And he expects us to be there.
In Australia.
A 20 hour flight over the ocean.

My worst phobia used to be dentists.
I never thought I would be asked to fly.
I'd rather have all my teeth pulled without anesthetics than get on a plane and sit there for 20 hours over an ocean.

I don't like bees, but they don't freak me out.
I really don't like feeling trapped/being in small enclosed spaces. I don't even like being on the inside seat of a restaurant booth. I start to get panicky when I feel like I can't get out.

centipedes, mice, moths and skunks.

Lynne, I don't blame you for being afraid of bears. Our big dog sleeps with us simply because we live in the country and she will bark at anything.

Mona, LOL about your experience!

Lowspark, my phobia was the same way, I had never been stung by a wasp before. And just a couple of years ago a local man died from one wasp sting, and they never knew he was allergic to them because he'd never been stung before.

Last summer while working in my new bed, the yellow jackets were all over the place going from flower to flower, or just drinking water next to the plants. They didn't bother me at ALL. I thought I had overcome my fear of them. But I guess today I was way too close to it's nest.

Gold, what happened to you after you got bit? I would have fainted on the spot!

Cougars? you have them nearby? Yikes! I saw a bobcat in our yard a few years ago and my husband shot his gun in the air to scare it. I haven't seen it come back but I know they're everywhere.

Mice? LOL!!! We get one or two in the house every winter, and when my cats have them cornered or are chasing them, I have been known to stand on the coffee table. :)

I don't have any real honest to gosh phobias,but if I had to name a fear it would be tornadoes. Thanks, Wizard of Oz. But now one of my favorite movies is Twister. The first time I saw it there had been tornado watches that day and we were at the drive in way out in the country watching the tornado in the movie wreck the drive in.Yes I did watch the skies around me..
Oh and grizzlies- when we were out west hiking in some nat'l parks I had a bear bell- I almost broke it I think!
Okay here is a dumb one- parallel parking. Big thing here in the city. I avoid it. I would rather fly in a plane than parallel park my car. seriously. love flying in helicopters- but dont make me parallel park.

Mine are the dentist and heights!

Sueb20, please forgive me but I have to ask...if you can't stand the sight of blood how did you deal with/handle menstruation? One of my daughter's friends from high school a few years ago, was also faint at the sight of blood and I always wanted to ask her about that, but never did. Now she is an ER nurse....go figure! Please forgive me if it's too nosey of a question....I've just always wondered how women handle that!

Major phobias:

1. Birds - love to watch them, but don't want them near me or as a pet. DH takes great pleasure in dropping small bits of bread around my chair as I am peacefully sitting on the beach trying to read my book. Totally freaks me out having seagulls sitting all around me;

2. Grasshoppers along with all things that jump, frogs, etc. A very close second to birds;

3. Bats - A few years ago, while getting ready for an afternoon birthday party that DD planned for me, I turned around and there was a bat in the tub with our then new kitten which hadn't yet been vaccinated for rabies.

DH captured the bat and took it to the County Animal Control to be sent to the State for rabies testing. All of this going on about 15 minutes prior to our guests arriving. After a looonnngg two day wait, we learned that it wasn't rabid. Our exterminator came the day following the party to check the entire house for evidence of family or friends (of the bat), but thankfully, found none. He opined that more than likely, the bat entered when someone opened a door at night. Told us it is very common. The bat will hide somewhere out of sight (behind a picture frame, even) but will come out when it is time for feeding. They get disoriented, hit the wall, and ours landed in our upstairs tub. For more than a week we slept with our bedroom lit up like the Vegas strip. Very unsettling as bats are usually rabid in our State.

Don't have any problem with bees per se, but when I am stung I always wonder if I will have a reaction. I always pop 2 Benedryl. I've been told that a reaction to a bee sting often occurs after your first bee sting. Rather, a subsequent sting will result in an adverse reaction. DSIL is very allergic and carries an epi pen. She has gone through the series of shots to prevent an anaphylactic episode in the event she suffers a bee sting.

Those are the phobias that immediately come to mind. I may have others, but none as disturbing as the aforementioned.

Fish. Alive in the ocean or a fish tank, dead - washed up on the beach or on somebody's dinner plate -- doesn't matter. They freak me out so badly that even turning a page and suddenly seeing a photo of one in a magazine can startle me into momentary panic. I've been trying little by little to overcome this phobia, but I don't know if it's something I'll ever fully beat.

I'm also freaked out by June bugs and crickets. June bugs stick to your skin - my friend's little brother used to chase us around the front yard when we were kids and put them down our shirts. It was horrifying. I've also lived through a few cricket infestations - they invaded my house in the Philippines in Biblical plague fashion, and I still get a shiver down my spine remembering that.

Had to laugh at some of these...not because they're funny but because I have similar reactions!

Mine are moths....SHUDDER...can barely say the word. Oh how I detest them. They terrify me.

Caterpillars. And grasshoppers. DO NOT GET THEM NEAR ME. I will cry.

Flying. Ok, well, I can get thru it with valium, but I'm not a fan. I don't know when it started, I used to have no problems, but after my Dad died, I couldn't handle it. No reason...just can't fly without being drugged.

Train tracks. I drive over them very fast, and cannot walk on them. When the arms come down I stop back at least 2 car lengths. The moment those lights start blinking I either punch it FAST to get over those tracks, or I lock up my brakes well ahead of the arms...even before they start to come down. I am terrified that if I stop too close to the arms, some car will come up behind me and push me into the oncomming train. I'm serious..train tracks make me break out in a cold sweat.

Flapping - as in birds, bats

I'll tolerate birds at a distance, but not close and not in the house even if dead. (One got in and the cats killed it.) I appreciate that bats eat mosquitoes, but the flapping terrifies me.

Needles: Way too may shots as a small child. Oddly enough, to have to give shots to my oldest cat. She has always rejected oral medications, but she tolerates shots. As you can imagine, she's a puzzle to me!

Work, you're right, the more a person is stung the higher chance they become allergic. My dh gets stung almost every year. A couple of years ago he got it on his thigh and the whole thing turned red.

Good grief, now I'm afraid of bats. I know they're here because our neighbors had problems with them a few years ago.

Grasshoppers, they will cut your skin! I picked one up years ago to get it out of the house, and that little you know what sliced my finger!

June bugs used to freak me out because they stick, but now I'm used to them. One time we had a puppy and when she went outside a junebug stuck to her nose. Watching her turn in circles was hilarious!

My girlfriend used to paint Junebug wings and wore them as earrings! They were sooo pretty!

Cooper, I have never parallel parked in my life!! I have been in a couple of situations where I really had to do it, but I had friends in the car and one of them had to get in the driver's seat and do it for me.

imsoconfused... I have no idea why, but menstrual blood is different somehow. Maybe it's not so much the blood that freaks me out in the other situations, but the injury itself? Anyway, I took care of that other blood a few months ago with an endometrial ablation. Supposed to alleviate heavy periods but it eliminated mine! Yahoo! Best thing ever.

LIZARDS!! Ever since 4th grade, when my older brother let a lizard bite his ear lobe and I saw it dangling from his ear. They jump, bite and have creepy little fingers. Just last year, one got in the house. I tried desperately to shoo it out the door with a broom. He was not having it. After chasing it for about an hour (5 min) I found myself screaming "get out of my house! Don't make me kill you!" I had to laugh when I realized my front door was still open and wondered when the police were going to arrive!

Roaches. EWE... When I was younger, I lived in a another country and they'd fly at you day or night. I'm so freaked out by them that I've got chills at I write this. LOL.

All bugs really, I'll wake my husband up in the middle of the night to kill a bug. And yes, he knew this when he married me! :c) LOL...

Programs with any kind of violence especially if it's domestic.

I can parallel park with the best. My big phobia is flying; I'm actually ashamed of myself I can't seem to get over it.....usually a few glasses of liquid courage helps out in certain scary situations, not sure about the flying one.

Sueb20 thanks for answering my question! I too have had an endometrial ablation...and same thing...NO more periods...PERIOD!!!! woohoo!!! Going on two years in June for mine. Best thing I ever did for myself!!!

I don't like roaches either...especially when they fly...they tend to make me let out some really weird sounding screams! lol

The only thing close to a phobia I've had is drowning--when I was a child my swim coach promised to jump off the diving board in the deep end with me--held my hand as I looked into his lying eyes. We counted to three, he jerked his hand from mine, put it on my back and pushed. I can still feel the burning in my throat, not being able to breathe, and the frantic dog paddling to safety.

I've never really taken to the water since then.

Nope, no phobias, not afraid of the Devil. :)

demifloyd, I'm sorry that happened to you! Look at all the fun you've missed because of some AH. I'm under 5 ft, but can guarantee you, some one did that to my child and I would have decked him!

The more irrational ones? The ones that aren't based upon some real possibility of injury?

Don't like to have my arms pinned down or feeling trapped even by heavy covers.

Don't like to talk on the phone to people I don't know.

Hate merging.

Social isolation. I need to have people around me, friends, strangers, anyone. Being alone creeps me out.

I'm looking to move but can't find many affordable homes that are as on-the-crossroads as where I live now. I look at real-estate ads and every time I see "surrounded by trees" or "large two-acre lot" or "on quiet cul-de-sac", I cross it off my list. I'm looking for "located on crowded intersection, surrounded by vibrant nightlife", but that evidently isn't considered a selling point for most people. Where can I find a haven for the wildly extroverted that isn't in NYC or other unaffordable cities?

If I had to live in a mansion in the middle of a 5 acre lot, I'd go nuts....

I don't consider fear of wasps or bees to be a phobia - of course I'm uncomfortable when they're around, because they sometimes sting you and it hurts like #@&%. Not at all irrational IMO.

The only bugs that really creep me out (besides those that bite or sting me) are grain beetles. I used to live in an apartment that was infested with those things, tiny little black bugs that are only about 1/8" long, but they get in your FOOD and are too often only noticed after I've already had a bite or two. I learned not to leave anything edible in my cabinets that wasn't in a hermetically sealed container. Anything in paper bags or cardboard boxes was a goner. Apparently their seeds are sometimes already in the cereals and cookies you buy, and if you leave them in your cabinet for a few years (you can tell how often I eat at home), the eggs may hatch and the bugs grow and start crawling around your food. Yuk!

Work in Progress:Very unsettling as bats are usually rabid in our State.

For WIP or anyone else with worries, this is just a myth. From Bat Conservation Intl.:

Bats are one of the most misunderstood animals in the world. One such misconception about bats is that they are all rabid. Bats can contract rabies, but they also suffer the symptoms of the disease and eventually die from it. Bats are not unaffected carriers of rabies. So if all bats had rabies, there would be no bats in the world. When bat specimens are sent into state laboratories for testing, the number of bats with rabies is around 5-10%. This figure is highly inflated because only those bats that are suspected of having rabies are brought in to be tested. Past research indicates that the actual incidence of rabies in bat populations is less than 0.5% in most areas.

Here is a link that might be useful: Bats and Rabies Misconceptions

Right on about rats. In our community we have more problems with rabid raccoons, nutria and squirrels than bats. We don't have bats in our n'borhood, but I wish we did. They're amazing mosquito eaters. I do wonder, however, if possums carry rabies? We tend to get infested with those overgrown rats and I had one charge me one time.

I worked with a guy who did his thesis on bats! I learned a lot from him about them. They ARE creepy looking, I have to admit.

Dentists here too - I have to be sedated or have an all-out panic attack (the screaming, barfing, peeing-yourself kind). Good thing about that, though, is that I can have 4 hours of dental work done in one sitting rather than having to go to multiple appointments. My dentist is a double-doc, he's also an MD in anesthesiology. Sadly, he's also hideously expensive, so I don't keep up as well with my dental work as I ought (medical insurance won't cover the anesthesia - which is the pricey part - since it's for dental work, and DH's employer's dental plan is a pathetic joke).

Heights... I still have cold sweats remembering driving through the mountains in PA and the high, high, HIGH bridges I had to cross. Really peeved other drivers because I could only go about 35mph with my flashers on. I had this terror that if I went any faster I would go over the guard rail. Oh, and did I mention that it was windy, and that I was driving a Suzuki Samurai with a u-drag-it trailer - NOT what one would call a stable vehicle!

Odd one - vomit. Seeing (even on TV or movie - when did it become so acceptable to show this in detail? they wouldn't show someone having a bowel movement...) or hearing someone throw up, or smelling vomit, is enough to send me right over the edge.

Add me to the list of claustrophobes, too. I had my first head MRI back before open or partially-open MRIs were common, and I screamed nonstop through clamped-shut jaws during the whole 45 minutes. (Being, shall we say, horizontally gifted, I was in physical contact with nearly the whole tube, and then they put this cage thing over your face... *shudder*) They gave me ONE puny little Xanax. DH was on the microphone repeating "if you touch that button or move an inch, you're going to have to start over from the beginning" in a very stern voice. Now pretty much all the MRI machines around here are open or semi-open and it's a piece of cake.

Escalators
Cats
Deep water
Snakes

A three foot rat snake got into my house and changed my personality, two years ago. I didn't scream or go nuts, I froze. When I went to bed that night I was shaking so hard my bed was moving. Every night in the summer now I look under my bed. I dream about it often and I can hardly talk about it. AND I LIVE ALONE!

Centipedes -- Nothing else. Just centipedes. My ex. lived in a basement-level apartment during college, and I spent most of one summer at his place. We were watching TV one evening and I got up to go to the kitchen for something and saw this huge centipede on the wall right where my head had been. Ugh! Creepiest looking thing I'd ever seen!

I have lots of fears - and it is good to be afraid of dangerous situations. I am afraid of heights, deep water (like pools), snakes, bees, fire ants, roaches, rats, flying baseballs, guns, criminals, thieves, rapists, killers. Now because of my health situation I am afraid of eating the wrong food or being out of my anti-diarrhea medicine and having something really icky happen to me when I least expect it or am prepared to deal with it. I am also afraid of being homeless, losing my job, having my cancer come back and losing my pets to dangers like cars. I lost my 1st cat to a car and then a dog to running away or being stolen. The fact that my father or mother never kept the pet inside is what caused the problem. In fact, I was so angry at my father when a different favorite dog was hit by a car and he was not going to take him to the vet. A kind woman stepped in and paid for the entire treatment. Maybe those memories make me what I am today. I spent my last penny paying for the surgery for one of the black feral cats' surgery for her dislocated ankle. I turned those 2 black feral cats into dear pets who sometimes sleep with me and co-exist with other cats and my Border Collie Duncan. I rent a house just so I have a yard for my elderly dog and enough room for the cats.
I am not really afraid of bugs I can squash or kill before they get me. It does creep me out thinking of bugs crawling in the house when I am sleeping.