Crippling phobias

[HayStack44]

Literally crippling fear of heights here.

Literally in the sense that when I am somewhere high I cannot move and just want to lie down to be as close to the ground as possible.

Also can't look up from ground level at other people in high places, regardless of how secure they may be. I feel the need to go and 'save' them. Hell my palms are getting sweaty just having to type this out.

Weird thing is travelling on planes isn't a problem. Maybe it's the fact that I'm enclosed. Except that I find cable cars utterly terrifying.

[ZeronosVega]

Literally crippling fear of heights here.

Literally in the sense that when I am somewhere high I cannot move and just want to lie down to be as close to the ground as possible.

Also can't look up from ground level at other people in high places, regardless of how secure they may be. I feel the need to go and 'save' them. Hell my palms are getting sweaty just having to type this out.

Weird thing is travelling on planes isn't a problem. Maybe it's the fact that I'm enclosed. Except that I find cable cars utterly terrifying.

This is my mother in a nutshell, although she cannot and will not travel by air.

[Atario]

Well I have photophobia

[snip]

Also the dark is scary as hell.

Can't stand the light, can't stand the dark. Jeez!

[Forever_ambivalent]

Well I have photophobia

[snip]

Also the dark is scary as hell.

Can't stand the light, can't stand the dark. Jeez!

Such is my biggest problem in life It's less of me being scared of the dark and more scared of what can happen in the dark. So if I am with somebody I trust I am mostly fine.

It's mostly just somewhat extreme levels of the two right now. My nyctophobia isn't that bad unless it's completely dark and I am not with anybody who I trust (which is very rare). It's mostly strong light (such as sunlight) that triggers extremely painful reactions from my photophobia. I deal with it by just staying indoors all the time or (reluctantly) wearing sunglasses when I have to go outside. My eyes are improving now and they are a lot less sensitive. Soon I should be able to get rid of my sunglasses.

I wonder if anybody here has/had OCD. That's a kind of extreme fear in some cases.

[YutoTheOrc]

In small doses from a shower to a large pond I'm fine, but as soon as that pond becomes a lake or another large body of water, I slightly panic. Nothing big, just hyperventilation and a crippling fear of untimely demise. Doesn't help that I'm not that great of a swimmer, I wouldn't call myself hydrophobic, but I definitely do not like being in large bodies of water. I'm fine as long as my neck is above water, if its not well I'm getting the hell out of there.

[Potato]

I'm fine as long as my neck is above water, if its not well I'm getting the hell out of there.

That's not really a phobia as much as a rational precaution taken by a large chunk of the human race.

[YutoTheOrc]

I'm fine as long as my neck is above water, if its not well I'm getting the hell out of there.

That's not really a phobia as much as a rational precaution taken by a large chunk of the human race.

Yeah, I guess you're right. We have feet for a reason not flippers.

[bhtooefr]

I have a crippling fear of romantic rejection.

Like, Hanako-level anxiety about it. Except mine doesn't manifest as a flight response, it manifests as dancing around the situation, then changing the subject because I can't get myself to broach the subject of my romantic interest in someone, and hating myself for not being able to get it out. With a side of nausea mixed in there somewhere.

To the point that I try to avoid situations in which I could possibly get my hopes up enough to trigger the anxiety.

[YutoTheOrc]

I have a crippling fear of romantic rejection.

Like, Hanako-level anxiety about it. Except mine doesn't manifest as a flight response, it manifests as dancing around the situation, then changing the subject because I can't get myself to broach the subject of my romantic interest in someone, and hating myself for not being able to get it out. With a side of nausea mixed in there somewhere.

To the point that I try to avoid situations in which I could possibly get my hopes up enough to trigger the anxiety.

That's rough :/. Did it manifest due to something?

[bhtooefr]

It certainly didn't help that I went to a school that was 25 mi away from home (and then we had a house fire (nobody was home at the time, though) and I moved to 45 mi away), that was (because of its specialties) mostly male, and students were bussed in from all over the region. And, I was in a rural area in both places, isolated from everything else, so the only way I was getting somewhere was if my parents took me somewhere.

Upshot, during high school, there'd maybe be 10 girls out of 45-50 students in the whole high school part in a given year, and the ratios were similar when I was in middle school. And maybe four of them were interesting at all (and even that required drastically lowering my standards on intellect, typically - most of the students were quite, ah, learning disabled, whereas I was kinda the opposite). So, the stakes of failure were quite high, and I wasn't exactly the most attractive, so I had (still do, actually) trouble believing that the interesting ones were attracted to me.

[Potato]

learning disabled

Learning disabled or dumb?

[bhtooefr]

Yeeeeeeessssssssss... well, OK, some of them were legitimately just learning disabled but reasonable people, but quite a few were fuckin' stupid.

So the school I went to, when they started, they started by specializing in tutoring for learning disabilities, then expanded to a full school for learning disabled and behaviorally handicapped students (I fit into the latter category). Most of the students by the time I went there, fit into both categories, especially in my high school years. (A lot of these kids were the kind that got absolutely shitty parenting, and the worst were the ones whose parents turned on the teachers that were trying to help them...) After I graduated, they actually expanded into being an actual certified mental health treatment facility, too...

[Potato]

Ah, well. Usually when lowering intellect standards comes up in romantic context, it's exclusively to get with chicks who traded brains for tits. My bad...

[YutoTheOrc]

So, the stakes of failure were quite high, and I wasn't exactly the most attractive, so I had (still do, actually) trouble believing that the interesting ones were attracted to me.

You said yourself that most didn't meet your expectations and were a little "slow" for lack of a better word(Apologies for any offense), maybe they wanted someone more their speed. You said you were smart, so maybe they felt threatened or something? Who can understand people anyway? You're in the vast world now and there are more girls than you could ever hope to meet . So you'll find your lucky girl, it will just take a bit of time searching around. Just step out of your comfort zone and conquer your feelings. You seem like a good guy( From what I know from your post), so keep moving forward. We all have our bad days, and fears of rejection(guy or girl) . Its getting over that anxiety that allows us to be so much more than we already are! Keep being strong friend!

[bhtooefr]

Yeah, no, it wasn't trading brains for tits. (Although in my adolescent years, they were SOMEWHAT fungible... now, I'd rather go the other way around.)

My 13-17 year old logic essentially worked like, "let's start with the entire female population of this school that's anywhere near my age (preferably older), applying my actual standards... and there's one girl in my dating pool, and she doesn't even acknowledge my existence. OK, let's keep lowering the standards, until the pool is populated by at least one girl that I have a snowball's chance in hell with".

And then I'd decide that she was my only hope, and latch on, and scare her off because I would just hang around and never spit it out because I was too afraid she'd say no and there'd be nobody else and I'd die forever alone.

And occasionally someone who I had ruled out as being out of my league (even if they were below my standards) would start hitting on me, and it'd take me months to notice. Then I'd actually notice, but I wouldn't believe it, and suspect it was a prank, and fall into the same anxiety mess. Or, then, my senior year (the year that my school hired me), there was the (smoking hot AND intelligent - the one I've described as Akira but in an Emi-like body) close friend/coworker of mine that I suddenly realized was interested in me, but she already had a boyfriend, and neither of us seemed to be able to actually get it out in the open until a couple years later and things were WAY too late (and she had already gotten stuck with a kid)... and then I went into a spiral of depression and anxiety that nearly killed me (despite her best efforts to pull me out of it - in fact, they just made it worse). As her parents were my boss, and his boss (and ex-wife, talk about an interesting business dynamic)... I one day simply realized that I couldn't work there any more, wrote up documentation for all the systems I supported and put it in my boss's mailbox, dropped by her office and turned in my company property and said goodbye (figuring I had burned all my bridges already, I didn't bother telling anyone else), then left. (They ended up calling me and convincing me to come back for long enough to more smoothly transition things, and then laid me off, which made me eligible for unemployment compensation... which I essentially needed for 2 years.)

During that time that I was unemployed, I tried a couple other times... once I was led on and that was pretty nasty (and really it was trying the "get under one girl to get over another" thing and failed miserably), the other time (and that time I actually managed to get the confession out) I was ignoring the obvious signs that the woman in question was probably a closeted lesbian, but at least she managed to help me move on from the last clusterfuck.

Now I avoid relationships altogether, and try to avoid getting too close to women that I could see myself being attracted to (and risking unlocking the emotional connection bit), because frankly I can't fucking deal with that shit any more, especially not after how it nearly killed me, and I'd rather be forever alone, and live vicariously through Hanako fucking Ikezawa of all people.

Yeah, I'd say it's pretty fucking crippling.

...and this post is coming off as more angry than I actually am about it...