Acrophobia- Fear of heights

Kath, I had the same fear in Hawaii. I enjoy body surfing but could not get myself to relax enough to snorkel. I grew up in the country where the only place to swim were neighborhood pools. I could dive and swim just fine and never realized that there was a psychological crutch in knowing I could go to the side of the pool whenever I wanted to stop. In the Pacific, there was no "side of the pool" to touch for security. DH had to snorkle without me.

Respect for the ocean..yes, Fear...never.
I love swimming in natural bodies of water. I was a river rat as a kid and later lakes and ocean.

I do fear heights but only uncontained ones. I love driving mountain roads, bridges and roller coasters. I'd happily fly in a small plane or take a ballooon ride. But I cannot stand at an overlook and enjoy the view, mountain climb or cross a footbridge without railing.

I only have one real fear,,,,"Ex Wives"

Fear of heights for me too. I have regular nightmares about being forced to climb and jump off slippery diving boards! I have climbed to the top of St. Peter's in Rome and Notre Dame in Paris and then been almost too afraid to look down.

Kathsgrdn.....I also have the fear of deep dark water, be it an ocean or one of our lakes here in Minnesota. I have gone out on boats (small out-board) but I wear a big life jacket. It does get hot in our humid steamy summers. To those that enjoy the cruises...I applaud you, it just wouldn't be my thing. I don't like heights or real tall bldgs. I once went in one of the upper stories in the IDS bldg in Minneapolis, I seem to remember it having almost floor to ceiling windows. I don't think I ventured away fro the center of the room.

I'm not fond of height either, and scorpions give me the hebie jebies.

Being in an elevator by myself!!! Don't like that.

I won't swim in water if I can't see the bottom. And I'm deathly afraid of spiders. Not only spiders, but even their webs. I hate (fear) walking thru webs outside of my hpuse-all that sticky gunk!

I also have a fear of heights. Once in Home Ec Sewing we girls made A-line skirts. When it came time to do the hems, we stood on a desk and the teacher pinned the hem. I felt very nervous when I looked down. And once, when driving my car over a bridge in Long Island I got a nosebleed. Every time after that, when driving home I felt nervous till my car was fully over the bridge. If you know Long Island, it was Robert Moses Bridge.

One of my dad's cousins and her friend drowned when he was a kid. I think the girls were 11 and 13. They were swimming in the lake. One girl started drowning. The friend went to help and pulled the other one under. As a result of this incident, my dad always freaked out when we went near large bodies of water. We were only allowed to go in up to our waist. If we went out past that, my dad would dunk us so we wouldn't be tempted again.

I've had swimming lessons and know how to swim, but I don't like my head in the water and I don't like to swim in large bodies of water. Dh and I went to St. Thomas a couple of years ago. It was my first time snorkling. I hated it. I like to swim with a flotation device like a noodle or something. There was no place to put my feet down when I tired of the water. To top it off, I realized that neither the boat captain or anyone else was paying attention to the swimmers.

Heights here as well. I can be atop most any building or structure and look out across a city or site, but I dare not look straight down, even if inside a protected area. That glass floored projectory over the grand canyon would bring me to my knees.

Fear of height. Or more precisely, falling for heights. LOL!

I have a fear of being in any kind of enclosure. That means I don't like elevators, and like Bigack, especially if I am by myself.

Sometimes in bed at night when I am dosing off, I feel like I'm enclosed in something, and I have to get up and walk around to shake the feeling away.

The sight of a live mouse can really freak me out!

Sue

I'm exactly the same as Wildchild. I don't like unprotected heights. My friend was driving in Yosemite and I made her pull over and let me drive because my view was over the edge down 1000 feet with no guardrails. yikes!

Spiders and heights. Spiders because the first day I was in Okinawa I went into check on my sleeping baby and there was a tarantula in her crib. Thank heavens her father was home! Now I keep several cans of Spider Fighter on hand to zap those suckers if I see one.

Lynn, I'm like you about heights. I can fly and love small planes, but when I went to the top of the Sears Tower I literally hugged the wall, which is a good distance from the windows.

Can you believe escalators? I've never really liked them, but since getting hip and knee replacements, they truly make me take an elevator or stairway.

Okay, this is ridiculous but I am afraid of going to jail. Believe me, I am now and always have been a law-abiding citizen, but I have had horrible dreams that bring on near-panic attacks about being in jail!

I'm sad that you folks have these feelings and fears that put something of a limit on your full enjoyment of life.

ole joyful

Well, OJ, I could say that you have a phobia about spending
money......which I believe puts something of a limit on your
full enjoyment of life. Think about it.

I don't like bugs, even non poisonous ones. Scorpions either.
I have a healthy respect for snakes, but if I know one is harmless I will hold it without fear.
My DH knows which are which, I would never just pick one up myself.
I was going to add I'm afraid of the dark, but actually I'm
afraid I'll trip and hurt myself, not really of the darkness itself.

Flying. I still make myself do it...I don't let it stop be, but it scares the crap outta me. I just found out I'm going to Alaska next month, and although I'm still going, I already have a nervous stomach about the flight.

Luckily, it's a big plane, and the small ones scare me more. I'll just have a few cocktails first and put on my brave face. :)

I don't like unrestrained heights either. I can't get anywhere near the edge of anything high up.

Snakes & Heights!

This is not a phobia but the sight of a hair anywhere near my food or in the kitchen makes me sick. Heaven forbid if one gets in my mouth...OMG! GROSS!

I'm not afraid of snakes or spiders, I have a pet spider that lives in the basement, has been hanging there eating bugs since we moved here over two years ago. I just clean up his left overs and leave him be...HA!! He used to have his web in front of the freezer and I'd accidently stick my shoe in it but then he wised up and moved it over to the side of the freezer out of harms way!

Some heights and water. That is one reason I will not take a cruise. Planes are ok. Once I go up on something like the Space Needle, I am ok--it is just the first time--unless it is a swinging bridge NO NO.
I don't like bears either. Or going outside when it is very dark.

I'm not sure it's a phobia for me, but I absolutely cannot stand spiders. Can't even look at pictures of them. Hate, hate, hate them. I don't care if they do eat other pests. I hate them. And I hate their webs, too.

I like snakes, lizards, pretty much most of those things.

I also don't like heights and get dizzy when I look down. Not sure it's a phobia. Just crazy, perhaps! :-)

An absolute fear of heights. If I get on a step stool to clean the tops of cupboards, I'm shaking.

Still, I was a class D skydiving jumpmaster....threw a lot of Marines out of planes who wanted their Mommy at 1,500 feet. I've jumped out of a lot of things that weren't even legal per FAA. I have trophies.

Give me a step stool that's 3 feet above the ground? I guess it's that "the last half inch hurts the worse".

Spiders: Yuma AZ. Come home from work, DH in the field for 3 weeks, there is a tarantula in my living room. The MP's wouldn't help me. I destroyed one room of base housing. I paid for it.

I do not have a fear of heights exactly I am fine up high on a ferris wheel or in an open glass elevator or up on a sky scraper but what I can not do is climb up a ladder or anything like that, when I was young I would climb the super tall ladder to the high dive board and jump off no problem. I now could not even climb the ladder that is to the attic, I go into a full blown panic attack, no idea why this started. I also can not walk a plank or pier or wharf with out having hand rails to hold onto I just can not do it. Now I have been running up and down wharfs and piers at our beach houses and lake houses since I could walk but today nope can not do it.

I am also very scared of tight enclosed spaces that I might get stuck in or trapped in, and again when young I went cave spelunking into uncharted caves with a friend that was hired to plot all the caves. I went through spaces that my hard hat would barely fit through. He taught us if our hard hat would fit we could make ourselves fit. Now I would just freaking die in there period.

I am not fond of snakes either, and I absolutely hate those giant flying roaches that live in the trees around here. Having been bit by a brown recluse I don't care much for spiders either.

BIG spiders and any size snake!!!

My fear is water. I don't know how to swim & never wanted to learn. The funny thing is I was born in CT on the coast line where there are so many beaches. I would never go on a cruise

I'd be right along with Ravencajun, dead of frignt if stuck in a crevice.

I *think* this is residual memory of being operated upon as an infant (pyloric stenosis). They wrapped me to keep me still -- no anesthesia beyond a whiskey-soaked sugar cube. (There was no known safe dosage for anesthesia for an infant before WWII.)

OMG, Raven. I could not even think of doing that. That's even worse than jail. Heights and water don't bother me but the thought of being stuck somewhere where I can't get out on my own makes my saliva dry up.

My feet freeze when it comes to escalators. I have to find the nearest elevator.

Motel rooms!! The thought of sleeping in a bed where thousands of others have slept just grosses me out beyond belief. And a really weird one, I have a doll phobia. I do okay with fabric dolls or wooden dolls, but the ones which look like infants or children totally repulse me.

snakes and elevators. I try to NEVER ride an elevator alone. I went to see my cardiologist last week and climbed 3 flights of stairs to get to his office--being short of breath, this was a challenge. Course, coming down was easy.

Don't laugh...I get uncomfortable around clowns. I traced it back to a circus I went to as a kid and a mime scared me/plus I was sick at the time. My cousin was talked into dragging me along and was furious we had to leave early.
I guess I am not alone in my fear - ever see the Steven King movie "It"?

My fear is traffic jams. I'm ok if doing the driving but I'm not ok when others are doing the driving. For some strange reason, I think when I do the driving, I'm in control. I'm not, whom I trying to kid but that's my fear. Strange, I know.

can't stand bridges (like the biggies), and getting so i don't like elevators (and dh and my dad sell/sold them)

I have claustrophobia. I said the other day no wonder I wasnt good at hide and seek. I could never stay under anything long enough. I just saw yesterday a commercial of this girl who climbed one of those skinny pinnacles in Utah I think and then stood on top of it. I said what an idiot. Maybe it was just made to look like she did it.

Ok, dear people. I totally understand phobias, having suffered for all of my younger years with arachnophobia and acrophobia. Thanks to my mother. Phobias are IRRATIONAL fears that can become debilitating, as some of you have expressed.

My acrophobia had risen to a serious level while I was at college, making it stressful for me to walk up all of the stairs required to navigate some of those big, old buildings on campus. And the little house I was renting didn't have railings on the stairs to the basement!

Believe me, I felt like a wreck most of the time because of this stupid fear. So I visited the student health department at the university to see if there might not be someone on staff that could help me. Lo and behold, one of the of the psychologists specialized in different techniques to treat people like me.

He taught me self-hypnosis methods and visualization, which I still use today. He also practiced some de-sensitization techniques on me which were very interesting. In the beginning, I couldn't even close my eyes and PICTURE me walking over a narrow pathway without railings. I mean, just sitting there in his office, I would begin to panic.

In about 6 visits, I felt reborn. Reborn. And much of the work was done on my own, by practicing some simple exercises.

With what I learned with the de-sensitization methods, I was able to overcome on my own (for the most part) my terrible arachnophobia....and a good thing, since I soon moved to semi-tropical SC, where the spiders seemed to come only in XX and XXX sizes, lol.

So, what I'm saying is: you don't need to let your life be encumbered by an irrational fear. They can be 'cured' in an incredibly short time.

My phobia is extremely high winds. I don't mind storms so much but when I hear the wind blowing hard I freak out.

Also mice and rats. It scares me to even see one on TV
I think the mouse phobia started at 11 years old when a huge prarie rat ran over my body...yuck they kinda cling on ya when they touch ya. My hair is standing on end just thinking about it.

I have others also, but these are the ones that take my breath away from fear

I can't go get gas for the lawn mower and drive with the gas tank in the car. Years ago a man did that then got rear ended and his car exploded. I don''t like getting the propane tank filled either, but I will do that. Hate the way it pings on the way home! Can't think of anything else. I used to be afraid of lightning (if outside), but after moving to FL-not so much. I don't purposely go out in it, but sometimes have to get from the car to the house.

Lots of things creep me out but I don't have any full-blown phobias.

As a child I had a bout of agoraphobia. I was still able to leave the house but it was uncomfortable. I probably only got over it because staying home from school just wasn't an option for me - my parents didn't roll that way. You had to be dying to stay home from school. And once you got there, you were there for good since my mom worked and didn't drive and my dad worked and he wasn't the kind of dad that left work to pick up a sick child.

Bats. Used to think they were cool and interesting and I thought of buying a bat house to help control insects in my yard.

But when they're flying around your living room or bedroom, something changes.:)

This is strange... I do not have a fear of heights, but I freak out on mountain roads that are on cliffs... only if there is a body of water, and no guard rail..I have this fear of driving off a cliff into water... have had nightmares of this since I was a kid. And Mice.... really cannot stand them..gives me the creeps..

Snakes of any kind.
Heights
Beach and lake water....snakes and wiggly things live in there!
Enclosed spaces. Not like elevator sized but coffin size!

Thank God I don't encounter any of these on a daily basis.

Joann, how would you like to be at a hospital and have one flying around your room? We supposedly had one on night shift, they called animal control and never found it. Guess it went up in the ceiling tiles and was never seen again. Made for an exciting day and probably even more exciting night before.

In my late 30's, went back to college to get my degree. My normally pleasant instructor reacted to a question I'd asked in a totally unexpected verbal attack. (Later, I realized he, himself, was being audited that day.) Heart began beating rapidly, found it hard to breathe, felt dizzy. Rushed out of class early and went to the base emergency room. Thought I was dying. The doctor was not helpful, but a physician's assistant was wonderful and his calm and caring demeanor helped considerably. Began a very long search for answers about why I started having panic attacks that would last for a hour at a time. It took a year or so before the diagnosis of agoraphobia was finally made, then a long process of finding out which drug worked. (And I was never one to run to or even want drugs to solve my ailments.)
Had to quit work for 5 years, but took 'baby steps' toward returning to the land of the living. Was back to normal, eventually.
Now, in the past few recent years, have slipped somewhat back into the past. Am anxious most days, shoulders ache almost every day from tension, too uptight to drive for this past year.
Well, what a downer I'm posting. Sorry about dumping. Guess I feel 'safe' enough here to vent. Kat Black