465 days ago, thenewgreen asked "What are you afraid of?" The comments were wide ranging, and included many things that haunt all of us - fear of the unknown, fear of a wasted life, rejection, spiders, the works!
I'm interested in Irrational fears. The totally illogical, the things you know are totally impossible but still make you break out in a cold sweat.
I have two that I can think of, both of which are the byproduct of a wild imagination. The first involves swimming in deep lakes, where I am convinced that a large fish is going to mistake my foot for a smaller fish, and pull me down.
The other, however, is extra strange. while driving, I often stretch my neck like this:
I have a reoccurring fear that when I crack my neck, my neck will go limp and i will be unable to control my head's motions. I will have to not only hold my head in such a way that my spinal cord doesn't sever, but also drive myself to the hospital (I'm in the car anyways, you know).
So hubski, what are your irrational fears? your ridiculous brain crack that causes you anxiety?
Okay, I swear this is true. I have an irrational fear of sliced bread. Only when it's sliced, and only when it's bread. If it's a loaf, I'm fine. If it's toast, I'm fine. But if it's a slice of bread, I feel physically ill and have to extract myself from the region. I don't know if you can classify it as a fear per se, but if you associate fear with "generates extreme discomfort" I think it would be.
This is the first one in the list that made sense to me. It's something I'm handling in therapy right now.
I am constantly afraid that my appendix is going to burst. I think I read too many Victorian books as a child where this was clearly a common occurrence, and by "clearly a common occurrence" I mean "makes for good, pseudo-reasonable story-drama-fodder." When I moved out of Delaware and lived away from my parents & support network for the first time, I became convinced I was dying or accidentally killing myself a lot. For instance I also became kind of obsessed with the idea that I would choke myself to death on food I was eating, and no one would necessary find me for days. I had roommmates but the house was often empty. - To be fair, I love it when the house is empty. It just also means that if you do fuck yourself up in some physical way, no one is there to help out.
I can relate to your fear of choking on food alone. I almost choked on macaroni once and the fear stuck with me for a long time after. I think it would be undignified to be found dead with a giant bowl of macaroni in front of me and a single piece lodged in my throat.
The Big Freeze scares the hell out of me. It almost certainly won't happen in my lifetime, unless scientists everywhere are wrong, but it still scares me. There have been days where I just looked up universe-ending theories, and while fun, they creep me out, make me wonder, and make me worry. For no logical reason.
Perhaps yours is the most rational fear. Freeman Dyson's 1979 paper Time Without End: Physics and Biology in an Open Universe gave me the willies when I first encountered it, but also had some reassuring words of comfort for those who consider the long game.
I really dislike being stuck at a traffic light or in traffic under highway overpasses. My irrational fear as that some material or section will fail, the pass will collapse and fall onto my car and I die stuck in the middle of a sea of people miserable because they are also in traffic.
irrational fears brings this to mind: http://www.ulillillia.us/aboutme/majorfears.shtml not my own fears, but there are some really bizarre hangups here. there's queuing, stairs, and chairs of all things. these would make my everyday life impossible. it's interesting to consider.
I think that's the same Ulillillia I follow on youtube. Dude has a lot of smarts, but I can't imagine how his life really works, from my POV. He seems like a good hearted fellow though, and documents pretty much everything he does. Powerlevels characters in RPGs, creating his own platforming game, physically moving to a different city, his sisters dog, etc.
I'm afraid that if I am out of the country, a robber will break into my house, find my car keys and steal my car (after first putting all my valuables in the car). Consequently I always take my car keys with me when I travel. Irrational? Maybe not, since that exact thing happened. He smashed up my car too.
I feel like if your keys hadn't been there, they would have hot-wired your car instead. I in for a penny, in for a pound, right?
I'm not that irrational. As for hot-wiring the car as coffeesp00ns suggests -- yes, maybe (can you hotwire a Prius?) -- and if they want to work that hard, fine. I just don't want to make it easy for them.
I found a discussion page on this question: http://priuschat.com/threads/hot-wiring-a-prius.3353/In a nutshell - the only way this car is leaving without you is if it's towed or if someone steals your key (or if a dealer/mechanic secretly programs an additional key while working on yours).
Prii are cool but I can't stand to drive them really and the 2006 model had terrible noise canceling on the highway. Took one around Yellowstone Nat'l Park where there aren't many gas stations and it was incredibly helpful, though. I'd like to try a new one sometime.
I used to have the deep-lake-foot fear as well. I bet there is an entire class of irrational fears that have an almost universal quality. Foot-off-bed-in-dark is probably pretty common. My current only irrational fear is that I don't want my wife to ride the bike I bought her to work because I'm afraid she'll get in an accident. Chances are so low, and I have no problem with taking her on the back of my motorcycle or her driving. I think this one stems from the fact that she won't wear a bike helmet. Anyway, the amount if preoccupation I feel is greater than any real risk, but there you go. When I'm not actively dreading her biking to work, I'm asking her why she's not biking to work because it's so close by. Yeah.
Turbulence on airplanes, even though super heavy turbulence is even pretty safe.
I have this crazy nightmare that I'm in a long tunnel with no light and you can't stand up. you're on your hands and knees. and there are thousands of people ahead of you and behind you in a single file line and you can't move any faster than the whole line. not sure what that says about me!
Oof, when you mentioned the thousands of people I got the willies. Let me breathe
It sounds like you're feeling trapped or constrained. Maybe you feel that you're in the dark about things. or maybe you feel your life is proceeding at a crawl (along with everyone else's) and there's no exit, detour, faster track, back door, or escape hatch. d'ya think?
Pears. Seriously. Pears. I cannot touch them, the sensation and texture causes shots of adrenaline up my spine and my fingers instinctively curl up. Even thinking about biting into one makes me shudder. I have no idea why, and I can even remember enjoying pears when I was a child (And they still taste great) but I cannot handle them whatsoever. I have a similar reaction to paper cups (The coke ones you get in McDonalds or whereever) and to smooth stones you find at the beach. Thinking about touching either makes me agitated and skittish. But luckily I can avoid both those things in my day to day. However, I work in a supermarket, and I have to handle pears on a regular basis, which is terrifying. Usually I try to grab them by the stem to move them, and if there is no stem, Ill use some other item to push them across my scanner. Its totally unbearable, and every time I have to explain to confused (And slightly terrified!) customers why I am acting so strangely. I hate pears, but I hate my fear of them more.
I have the usual one about huge holes. I just can't explain it, but it scares me.
That's one of the Lake Berryessa when it's draining.
Any huge holes like that just freak me out. Also, random plumbing stuff for some reason. Mainly big boiler rooms. I think it's because I'm worried they'll explode for some reason while I'm there.
I get the Image from the Jaws movie poster in my head, as well as the beginning of the 4th mvt of Dvorak 9 (Thanks John Williams, you asshole).
I just played this at my school's final concert. Epic as FUCK.