c4countdown

As part of my assignment, I need to find out about peoples phobias! I thought there is no place better than asking forumites about their phobias!! This is a serious test so please give honest answers. The more weird but wonderful, the better

Dentists.
Closely followed by flying.

Deep Water - Lifejackets as well come to think of it.
The Dark

I'm terrified of needles, so much so that I won't even give blood, much to my shame

When I was little and my mum was trying to educate me about the majesty of the universe she made the mistake of telling me about black holes. I didn't quite grasp the astronomical scale of what she was saying and spent the next year or so poking my head round various corners to check for black holes, and squealed like a baby if we had to go anywhere dark.

This is a really boring one but wasps. In more general terms, animals - particularly dogs.

Spiders, wasps, the dark, heights etc don't bother me in the slightest. Nails, me.

However, inflated balloons terrify me. Particularly when there is imminent danger of them bursting.

I have a friend who is afraid of stickers.

Cockroaches. I cannot bear to see them running about outside e.g. in warm countries (Thailand and Australia, for example). I won't go there again.

This is a weird one but unpleasant frictionous sounds: Nails on a blackboard, nail files, sweeping brushes. Hate.

Then there are general ones such as death, terrorists and public nudity.

Dentists - I faint, throw up and generally turn very vicious unless i'm heavily sedated. Stems from an incident when I was 11, which will remain in my memory forever.
Closely followed by spiders, although 8 years living in Australia did teach me some degree of tolerance for them.

Snakes.

Not that I'm deathly afraid of them or anything, but in Bristol I was looking around that natural gardens thing with the giant metal sphere outside, saw a snake, then ran as fast as I could along the path. Only after I turned back to make sure it wasn't following me did I realise it was a rather crude concrete snake.

Needles make me nervous, but it's a long way short of a phobia.

Jon O'Neill wrote:I have a friend who is afraid of stickers.

Really? I hate the fuckers!

Paul Howe wrote:I'm terrified of needles, so much so that I won't even give blood, much to my shame

.

Yay, I have something in common with Paul!

(I only wish it was the ability to play Countdown)

Heights and small dogs for example, Highland Terriers, which to me are more vicious than big dogs which I love such as St. Bernard dogs and that big dog that was on Sesame Street.

Stewart Scott wrote:Heights and small dogs for example, Highland Terriers, which to me are more vicious than big dogs which I love such as St. Bernard dogs and that big dog that was on Sesame Street.

i know what you mean about small dogs. My granny used to have a peke called Gussy (little more than a hairy mosquito, really), and it was a real ankle biter. I still have scars from the rotten little s**t.

I have a fear of heights. But as my dad says, it's the ground that's scary. That's what hurts when you hit it.

I have a phobia of 11 year old boys.

They tend to make up stories about me that are totally untrue.


usually

I used to have phobias, mostly about the fear of falling. In particular, (a) falling off railway platforms, especially the London underground, (b) falling on escalators, again especially on the London underground, and (c) falling off bridges or walls into rivers and the sea.

I thought I'd overcome all of these until very recently when I took two of my grandsons on the London underground, and they just came flooding back.

Howard Somerset wrote:I used to have phobias..... falling off bridges or walls into rivers and the sea.

I thought I'd overcome all of these until very recently............................. and they just came flooding back.

Brilliant prose Howard.

Probably the reason you have a phobia about falling in front of trains though is because you are old and doddery






like me

I have nightmares about losing my front teeth or a limb or not being able to walk.

Presumably they have to be the not very rational kind, I guess the rational kind are a bit universal... off to the undertakers if not.

I don't have much of a heights issue in general but I don't like being on tall ladders all that much (anything beyond most people's guttering is a bit wearing). I'm quite happy attached to climbing gear well beyond that or up a tree.

I shouldn't like to go anywhere near big snakes without the presence of an expert... though that's probably pretty rational thinking of it.

Have never gone beyond 3 metres on a diving board.. there's something not natural about jumping down that far and angling things up to land head first.

One or two of my martial arts companions are a bit on the scary side... but that's probably rational again.

Here's ladders and jumping off stuff taken to a certain extreme..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R3-YwDZ ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uHkyMh9 ... re=related - skip the first 2 minutes.

DC

Spiders. I've always hated them. The prospect of being in a room filled to the brim with corpses sounds more appealing than touching a spider.

Howard Somerset wrote:I used to have phobias, mostly about the fear of falling. In particular, (a) falling off railway platforms, especially the London underground

This actually happened to me on my third birthday; I fell onto the tracks at Euston (mainline, not underground) and smashed my head up. Coincidentally this is also my first memory. A few years ago some of us decided drunken head shaving would be a fun activity, it turns out I still have a pretty meaty scar up there and for a couple of weeks I actually looked hard (as long as I kept my mouth shut), definitely a new experience for me.