[I wanted to write a serious piece on fears and phobias but the more I wrote the more comical it became, mainly because I was writing about myself. So what started off as a serious piece of writing, has now become a bit of a rant]...
First of all let me start by revealing my own fears and phobias. I have two main fears... The fear of clowns (Coulrophobia) and the fear of moths (Musophobia). Urgh, even writing the word Moth makes my skin crawl! These are two common fears that a lot of people suffer from. Not many people like clowns and not many people like moths. Although they are somewhat common, I believe our fears are created from past experiences, I know that mine stem from actual incidents I encountered when I was a child.
CLOWNS... This one I’ve had since age from 14 when I was randomly attacked by a man and a woman who were wearing clown masks. When I say attacked I do mean in a very vicious and gruesome nature (there are some crazy people in this world). It’s only a certain type of clown that scares me, I watched ‘ IT’ and it didn’t scare me for the simple fact that I had encountered scarier clowns than ‘IT’ so he to me was ridiculous, plus it’s only a film whereas my experience was real. Orange curly hair, flower squirting clowns don’t seem to scare me as much as the silent porcelain type faced ones, come to think of it, there was once a documentary on BBC FOUR about clowns, I was flicking through channels and I felt sick when I’d come across it. I decided to tweet and express my feelings about clowns and, a few minutes later i received a tweet from one of the clowns featured in the series ‘Tommy Tickles’ and it read ‘I love you miss brown’.. I did not find this funny at all; I was really anxious and felt sick. He may have just been being friendly, but I’m sure he was mocking me.
The second is MOTHS I’ve had this fear since about age 6 when we had a giant moth in our kitchen. I’m not exaggerating when I say giant, it was the size of a bird and that sucker would not die, it survived against many kitchen objects as well as several hits from a broom and an attack from our Doberman Lucy. After many more hits with the broom it fell into the bin but about a minute later it came flying out, in what seemed slow zombie like motion! I don’t remember what happened after that but I do know it wasn’t a happy ending for the killer moth (okay so it wasn’t a killer moth but at age 6 it definitely was a giant super killer moth). Apparently you can get moths of this size in England (rare I should imagine). You will have to Google it for yourselves because there is no way I will Google it to give you some information, I know for a fact images will come up and I’ll probably faint or puke on my keyboard at the site of a giant moth.
So they are my two biggest fears, I do have others too but they are just fears and not phobias like the above.
THE DARK -Simply because I have an over active imagination, I have to have enough light (usually the hallway light on with the bedroom door shut) so that I can see every corner of my room, if there is a black spot I will imagine all sorts and for me I can’t have any sort of fear before I go to bed because I suffer from . sleep paralysis (Click on that link and read all about my sleep paralysis experience).
SLUGS AND SNAILS- Because I never kill any animals or insects, even spiders, I gently remove them from my home using the classic ‘glass and sheet of paper’ method and then throw the glass away after (I’m not one of these people that will gladly drink out of a glass that’s had a spider running around it). Slugs and snails however are much harder to avoid killing, the one time I heard CRUNCH under my shoe on a rainy day I was mortified, I dug a little hole in the garden and buried poor slugsy before saying sorry and a prayer (okay so that last part was a lie but nether less I did feel mortified).
ANTS - Ants worry me because when I was little I sat on ants nest and literally had ants in my pants. Red ants’ biting around my private areas is an experience I’ll never forget. (Thank the lord for chamomile lotion)
BREAD- Yes, my most stupid fear has to be the fear of bread hahaha (I did laugh as I typed that). It’s the consistency. Soft doughy bread makes me feel sick. There are two reasons why bread makes me anxious... When I was little my friend was eating a sandwich and his tooth was bleeding, he continued to eat the sandwich even though it was sopping with blood, and the image of that still grosses me out! Also when I was little some bread got stuck in the roof of my mouth and I chocked on it for ages, I was gagging, eyes watering, I actually thought I was going to die (the more I relive these moments the more I realise I’m a bit of a drama queen).
That’s it. All my fears, phobias and anxieties laid bare. Let’s move swiftly on to
SUPERSTITIONS:
I don’t really have many of these as I believe that we create our own luck, for example if you step over 3 drains and then strongly believe that, that action will bring you bad luck then it probably will. I’m quite a spiritual person and I believe that what we give out is what we get back, if we believe strongly and certain something will happen then it’s likely to, for example, if I wake in the morning in a bad mood and swear today is going to be a rubbish day, one bad things after another, then that’s what’s likely to happen. …with that being said, I do follow the great mag-pie superstition (if you see a lone magpie you salute it) I will do this anywhere, even on a bus which can be quite embarrassing on a long journey when you see a few loners and have to keep saluting which probably makes me look like a total weirdo.
11:11 is another superstition of mine. I’m not one of these folk that make a wish on 11:11 but I do believe in the 11 11 phenomenon. The reason being is a few years back I kept seeing 11:11 everywhere, on the clock, TV, my phone, laptop, I would happen to look at the clock at that time, of course it could have been a coincidence, as in my body knew the time so I would subconsciously know to look at the clock at that time, but I would see it in other forms rather than time. When I told my friend about this she explained to me there are many different beliefs of 11.11, one of them being that 11:11 is when the spirit world can pass into ours, an open portal if you like. Still sceptical but intrigued never the less, anyway I seemed to be seeing 11.11 more around important times in life, one of those being before and during my pregnancy. My son was conceived on Halloween (said to be the day spirits can enter our world) and then during my labour, and exactly 11:11pm the midwife said “he’s ready to enter the world” (I was fully dilated), and then a few minutes later he did.
I’m not saying my son is some kind of spirit, I just know that a few too many 11 11 experiences occurred that day. My sons father even said “imagine if you had him at 11:11”, because even he agreed that 11 11 was prominent during my pregnancy. I just believe there is something going on, so much so that I got it tattooed on my arm…
FEAR AND SUPERSTITIONS- We are all guilty of categorising people/animals/object, for example, a lot of us will get our heart broken and then will subconsciously punish our next lover for the last ones mistakes. I had an evil step-dad as a child, just the worse kind you could imagine, pure evil. He was large, middle aged, white and had a skin head and now I feel uncomfortable around overweight white men with skin heads, it’s not their fault and I’m sure they’re lovely but I think it must be true what some people say when they say things like ‘his face haunts me’ because I do put his face on anyone similar to him. I once told my friend (the wise and spiritual woman who informed me about 11 11) that I kept seeing his face everywhere and she told me about one of the theories of reincarnation which is that someone who does very bad in this life will be reincarnated as something such as an insect and will not be of full body, so that one person could be reincarnated as a group of flies or heard of cows. So now whenever I think of him I picture him to be a heard of miserable cows or a group of flies flying around the manure the cow has dropped. It does work, so I think I can cross him off my fear list.
I probably sound to you like such a baby but the crazy thing is I am actually a really strong individual, I will easily jump out of a plane, or do a bungee jump, I don’t fear any person or situation (unless of course it involves moths, or clowns) and I have overcome a very, very dark and depressive child-hood to now be a happy strong, positive mother and youth worker who runs a charity (not sure if I added that for the readers benefit or for my own self-reassurance ha-ha).
So anyway, I have now revealed my fears to you, and I’m sure you have one or two of your own, maybe you’re thinking back to see if anything from your past could relate to your current fear? With that in mind... How do we undo these fears? We can’t travel back in time, so if our fear is born from an experience, how can we defeat that? Many people believe that in order to conquer your fears, you must face them. I do believe this may work in some cases, for example, the fear of clowns may be conquered in this way, but the fear of moths I have is extreme. I know people who have literally just taught themselves out of their fear, just taught themselves to not fear the thing they did. I believe this to be the best way as fear is created by ourselves in our own minds right?
You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn't exist anywhere except in the mind. ~Dale Carnegie~
Whatever the solution, I haven’t quite grasped it yet and as you can see, some of my fears are ridiculous, but there are people with all sorts of odd phobias and superstitions. Here are a few...
Alliumphobia - Fear of garlic (probably most common in vampires)
Anablephobia- Fear of looking up
Arithmophobia- Fear of numbers
Aulophobia- Fear of flutes
Bibliophobia- Fear of books
Cathisophobia- Fear of sitting
Consecotaleophobia- Fear of chopsticks.
Dikephobia- Fear of justice
Epistemophobia- Fear of knowledge
Euphobia- Fear of hearing good news
Geniophobia- Fear of chins
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia- Fear of long words - (how ironic)
Ideophobia- Fear of ideas
Myrmecophobia- Fear of ants
Octophobia - Fear of the figure 8
A bee flying into your house is lucky, whereas a bee dying in your house is unlucky
“Knife falls, gentleman calls,
Fork falls, lady calls.
Spoon falls, baby squalls”
Fork falls, lady calls.
Spoon falls, baby squalls”
If your right eye itches that’s lucky, if your left eye itches, disappointment is to come.
So there you have it, my (what turned out to be a very long) rant about fears/phobias/superstitions. I hope you have found this interesting, maybe had a little giggle along the way. I know I certainly did.
