YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Anyone else here on the boards struggling with a specific phobia? Not social or general anxiety, but a phobia of a specific trigger?

Sure, I'll start!

I have phobias of wrists (where seeing wrists or people touching wrists or people touching mine) which makes me feel queasy/uneasy/skin crawling. Unless it's like someone grabbing someone firmly. It's more light touches that are blech.

Heights, planes, and obvious things like that.

Elevators and closed spaces.

Getting stuck somewhere without food or water.

Pregnancy/birth things. Any time I have visited someone who just had a baby, it makes me extremely dizzy where I have to leave. Pregnant bellies also upset me. Also umbilical cords or when baby's have that little bit still instead of a belly button uggghhhhhhh. I don't know how I will ever have a child. Maybe TMI, but the thoughts just make it feel like my ovaries want to shrivel up, you know?

Cockroaches and such. I don't know why. Looking at images make me queasy. The other day I wanted to find what kind of spider was in my house, so I was googling and wanting to vomit. Maybe that's normal? Haha. But I don't hate insects, I think they're great, just something about maybe how delicate they are is uncomfortable. Also wasps like I am five.

Oh, and weed or the smell of weed. Walking down the street I have to hold my breathe to go passed it if I smell it. No one is allowed to in my house. I had a bad trip, tho, so I know why that one is.

That's all I can think offffff. Who's next?

Germs. I constantly wash my hands/use hand sanitizer. No one can drink or eat after me (or vice versa). I like to rewash dishes before I eat at other ppl's houses (usually I can't bc it's rude if they see). I won't touch my own bathroom doorknob. Definitely nothing public facility wise if I don't have to. It's hard to watch my food be made. I myself can't even make it. I need it to appear on the table or like be able to be ready to eat without being cooked such as a sandwich but even that is hard because I have to touch the meat and I know others have touched the meat in the bag. Eating leftovers is terribly difficult to choke down. And anything that looks weird. Everyone makes fun of me. Especially because I chew my nails which is a dirty habit and doesn't make sense with my germ phobia. Sometimes I want the phobia to go away but more so I want the world to be safe and clean so I can breathe without wondering what disease I'm getting (slight hypochondriac).

Cockroaches. Not all bugs, just cockroaches. Even typing cockroaches I feel my blood pressure rising and my chest tightening. Annnnd now I'm visualizing cockroaches. This alone is causing me a slight panic reaction. When I actually see a cockroach I immediately dissociate from myself. I don't feel like I have any control over my body. I can't really hear or talk or react. I usually just start crying and heaving. Killing them is even worse. When I hear that crunch and watch that white stuff pour out of them I some times think that I am going to die of a heart attack and that they will find me dead with my face inches from the squished guts of the thing I hate the most.

I can pinpoint where this phobia comes from. As a very small child I was raised by my grandparents, but when I was eight I was taken back by my Mother and my Biological Father. My Mother was a workaholic and lived at work. When she was home she was so depressed that she would just sleep the entire time. My Father was emotionally abusive and incredibly neglectful. No one was cleaning the house ever. It was in constant filth. Me and my younger sister made our own food, but we weren't great at getting the dishes clean so they would build up in our rooms. This would of course attract the cockroaches. We lived in Texas, so they were the really big ones. I remember laying in bed and hearing the sounds of cockroaches skittering around under my bed. That scritch scritch scritch noise used to turn my stomach. I imagined them coming out from under the bed at night when I was asleep and crawling all over my body. One night I had gotten myself a glass of juice and left it on my bedside table. I had woken up and was thirsty and reached for it. When I turned on the light I found a huge cockroach floating right in the center of it. To this day I only every keep water beside my bed now.

I have to say that was kinda eye opening to type that out. I have thought of this before, but never written it out or really ever told anyone. Being a guy being afraid of bugs is usually not something I share. Not that I really believe that guys can't be afraid, just a really drilled in social message. Reading that paragraph back no wonder I have this reaction to cockroaches. It would be crazier if I DIDN'T have a fear of cockroaches.

I can definitely understand the cockroach thing even though I do not have a fear of them myself (more of an intense hatred). I grew up in a filthy house, also in Texas, we were a single mother with two kids household and my mom had undiagnosed depression. Most days she'd come home from work exhausted and sleep. Needless to say, we rarely cleaned, and our house was INCREDIBLY infested. I'd go into detail, but I wouldn't want to trigger any more panics for people. I will say I relate to laying in bed hearing cockroaches. Luckily I don't have a fear of the roaches themselves, I just fear them spreading, fear of my house being infested. So I obsessively keep my house clean and if I EVER see one I instantly kill it. I'm actually one that will save bugs and put them outside, but not roaches. After reading your story and thinking back, I'm now remembering more and more about our infestation and it's turning my stomach. Ugh, maybe I just mask my fear with hatred, because just thinking about it... uggghhh.

I have an intense irrational fear of guns, though. Some people have told me it's not irrational to fear guns, and that may be true, but my fear is irrational. We live in Texas, and my husband's father has guns and wanted to teach his son to shoot. My husband and I are introverted computer nerds, and while he is not a gun person, he doesn't have a fear of them. I would never keep my husband from spending time with his father just because I had a huge fear of guns, so when we were over at his dad's house and his dad asked him if he wanted to go out shooting, I didn't say anything against it. My husband knew of my fear and made sure if it was ok, and I was definitely fine with him doing it. Then, in the house alone, I heard them shooting. Instantly I was in a panic with tears pouring out of my eyes. I wanted to hide, crawl in a dark hole in fetal position, I couldn't concentrate. I started my normal panic routine, scratching my arms without noticing, pulling my hair. They stopped long enough before coming back in so I could calm down and look normal, then his dad asked me if I wanted to try. I was like "NO THANK YOU."

The fear started when I was really young (maybe 5?) and we went on an old train ride. My father didn't tell me they were going to do a staged robbery shootout on the train because my father is an ass. When the robbery happened I literally thought I was going to die. 5ish years old, thought this was the end, everything was over, these robbers are going to kill us. One of the most terrifying moments of my life, even though it was staged. The fear I felt doesn't go away being older and knowing it was all fake. Anytime there is a staged gun shootout event (this is Texas, after all) I refuse to go because I know I revert back to how I felt that moment on the train ride. Adding in my verbally abusive father who would scream at me, I'm pretty hypersensitive to loud sounds. That doesn't help my gun fears.