I have only one real fear: wasps. I can stand on the roof ledge of a seventy story building without my palms sweating, jump off a monstrous cliff into water, ride the scariest roller coaster imaginable. But if a yellow jacket flies near me I run like a little sissy girl. I'm not even allergic, I just HATE the fucking things.
Seconded. Because I DID almost die from this. Normally, my fears are mostly confined to little things like needles and poisonous snakes and heights and such. But nowadays, I am so fucking afraid of my soon-to-be-born son will be born sick or unhealthy or with a handicap, even though I have no reason to believe this will be the case. I also fear that I will never be as good a father to my son as my dad was to me. ... Big-boy fears suck. Gimme the heights any day over this shit.
This probably isn't quite paralyzing enough for this thread, but it's the best I can do. Going under water in lakes/oceans. (Mostly lakes just because I almost never get the chance to swim in the ocean.) I'm fine jumping off the dock and swimming around, but if I go a few feet under water my chest tightens up and my body screams at me to go back to the surface. I swim 10 km/week at the pool, I was a lifeguard for three years, and I'm well aware that there is literally nothing remotely dangerous in the lake I usually swim in. No idea where this fear comes from. Honestly though, you never know when trout might develop a taste for blood. My fear is legit.
I'm frightened of any bird duck-size or larger. Though a bizarre set of coincidences, I had several very traumatic bird-related experiences as a kid, and I've never really shaken it off. I was slashed open at the midsection by a rooster, bitten and kicked by some geese, and trampled by six emus my aunt bought from a fair for no fucking reason. And every night, it was my job to go out and catch the chickens and put them in the shed, while listening to coyotes and rustling noises and all manner of forest sounds. This chore would often take me upwards of an hour, because the fucking chickens, when they weren't actively attacking me, did NOT want to be caught. Fuck birds.
Failure. Life in general, women, jobs. I'm terrified of going after something and not getting it, and this is crippling. Bugs. Spiders, centipedes, roaches, if it's smaller than a kitten and has more legs, I fucking loathe and fear it. Especially bees - because of those bastards, I'm afraid to walk barefoot in grass and if I do I have to watch every step carefully. People. This is one that makes me more upset at myself than anything, but I'm genuinely afraid of people. If I'm walking in public, I'm tense as hell because I feel as if everyone is staring at me. In social situations, I'm generally quiet for fear of the reactions if I say something stupid. (Unless of course, I'm just speaking bluntly, in which case I don't give a shit). I guess the bigger part of this is trust, something I'm afraid to offer to anyone for fear that I'll end up with a knife in my back. As paranoid as that is, I'm only living what I've learned the hard way. Dark Water. Yes, you read that right. If I'm in a pool, I'm happier than a clam in mud. Put me in a body of water where I cannot see everything underwater around me, and I become about as happy as a priest in a whorehouse. I don't know where this stems from. When I was 5, my grandfather dunked me under in a pool a bit too long, but if that were the driving factor, I wouldn't exactly be happy in a fucking pool. Aren't irrational fears fun?
I have a fear of giving blood. Whether that be at the red cross, or in my doctors office for some sort of test, I freak out. I used to donate blood to the red cross because it got me a free day off from work. The panic attacks I went through with it eventually became too much. I wouldn't sleep the night before. I passed out several times in the donation center. I used to puke before it. I have no clue why I'm scared of this. Shots don't bother. Just blood draws. And I can't watch them on TV or in real life. Ugh. Typing this made me queezy I also have a fear of birds. I used to love them, then I made an interesting progression. First we had to read The Birds in English class. Then we watch the Hitchcock classic of the same title. It had never occurred to me that birds were the ultimate death machine. Some are huge. They can fly. They have sharp beaks. I played golf that weekend and hit a ball into the woods. While searching for it, I got too close to some sort of birds nest, and it attacked me while I was hunting for my ball. It dive bombed me a good 10 times. And hit me a few of those times. If you saw me come out of those woods, you would have assumed I was an Olympic sprinter. That bird kept up with me no matter how fast I ran. Because of this I now knew birds were the ultimate death machine. The following weekend we went to the zoo and they had a bird show. The bird show ended by having a giant condor fly out of a box behind the audience. It flew over the audience, close enough I could feel air coming off of it. The combo of the story, movie, and bird attack made me have a panic attack when I saw it. I screamed and ran out of the show area with my parents following me wondering what was up. Now if birds get too close to me I freak the fuck out. Mom and Dad had a pet cockateil they had to get rid of because I didn't like being in the same room as it. I don't even like reading ToyToy88's posts because he may mention that dumb pet parrot he has. But I must to see if he is still sleeping with his cousin. In short- FUCK BIRDS
I believe it was someone on RMMB that said something along the lines of: "A trained falconer is trying to attack you: rational fear. Any other situation involving birds: irrational fear."
Public speaking. Make me the center of attention of a group with 15 or more people and I get a serious case of mush mouth.
Pussy. Edit: not to mention everyone gets at minimum nervous doing it..its general Parkinsons: Took care of my grandma through high school who died of it early senior year, I would get to come home and help her go to the bathroom, open bottles, hold a pen, do generally everything needed. Fuck. That. I freak myself out when I get the beer shakes in the morning thinking I have early stages at 23 years old.
Tornados- Rare here in our area in Upstate NY, ( although the news confirms an F2 touched down 5 miles from here last night.. I slept through it ). When I was a kid 20+ years ago one hit very close to here and it scared the shit out of me. Want to see me pace ? Tell me there's a tornado warning. I'll be staring out the window like Karl Childers. Intubation- The thought of waking up with that fucking breathing tube in my mouth freaks me out. I recently thought I had a hernia, thus requiring surgery and sent myself into a full blown panic attack, almost passing out at the thought of it. Turned out to be a sore nut from a pulled groin muscle, thank God. I also hate rats and spiders, but don't get too worked up over them.
Spiders and other creepy crawlies, heights, and basements. Yes, fucking basements. It's not all the time but every once in awhile when I go into a basement I get creeped out for no reason.
Indeed, that is The Satanic Prothonotary Warbler you speak of. The prophecy foretold that one day, a yellow, feathered being borne from the blood of Lucifer himself would reign the Earth. And, lo, 'twas but a solitary coonass, built of Bayou crawfish and enhanced with SEC speed and alcohol intake, who could rid the lands of this one wretched warbler. With an insatiable taste for warbler blood, y su esposa at his side, the man that some call Le Chien Bleu searches the land far and wide for these vicious devil-creatures; blowtorch in his right hand, Coors Light can in his left.
Sorry to break from the 'birds-are-scary-as-shit' theme, but I'm gonna have to second of fifth or whatever heights. I do airplanes and roller coasters just fine, and generally do fine in like high-up office buildings or hotel rooms. I climbed this motherfucker outside the Duomo in Florence, Italy this summer: Spoiler and HOLY FUCK. It's not even THAT tall. I've hung out on top of mountains and shit way higher. But I almost shit my pants when we got to the top. The wall is about 3 feet tall (maybe, the terror distorts it), and there's a nice chain-link fence on top of the stone part, but I couldn't even get CLOSE to the edge. The 2 people I was with both took pictures against the fence with the cool Duomo in the background. Not this guy. I stayed as far away from the edge as I could while not being a total pussy and going back downstairs. I've had a recurring nightmare of being on top of tall things and them falling for as long as I can remember, and it is terrifying, and somewhere deep down when I was on top of this thing my subconscious was saying "it's been here for 500 years no problem but TODAY COULD BE THE DAY!" Also, one of my friends that I was on that tower with just had a fucking stroke as a result of a pretty minor (seeming, initially) rugby injury. At age 21. Random, horrible catastrophe like that had never been a fear of mine before, but I'll be fucked if it isn't now. It's insane what a complete and total life-changer that is, especially so young. It's also amazing that he lived - the doctor said if the tear in his artery that caused it had been a quarter of an inch higher he would have died immediately. So yeah. Scary fucking shit. For the longest time I was just hyper-sensitive to scary stuff, movies in particular, because my friends irresponsible ass parents took him and I into the Six Flags grownup haunted house when we were 4 or 5 years old. I remember vividly going in, looking left, and seeing a fat guy about to get his belly cut open with a chainsaw and I closed my eyes and fucking screamed the whole way out. There was a ball pit (like McDonalds) at the other end. Didn't motherfucking help.