Strange phobias

Dudess

Buttons is quite a famous one I think. I've also heard of baked beans, string and dolls. One particular one of interest for me is emetophobia - a fear of vomiting: http://www.emetophobia.com/.

I suppose it's more understandable to have a fear of this often miserable experience, than of buttons. But what a crap existence! It means no meals out, no drinking (I'm not talking about getting pissed, but just a few jars), no having kids due to the fear of morning sickness. My fear of rats and mice doesn't particularly restrict me, but something like the above - what a thing to be afflicted with.

watna

Even weirder..... there are people who get sexual pleasure from vomiting and seeing other people vomit! :eek:

I saw a programme about phobias recently. A man was terrified of baked beans.. I mean really terrifed but he worked in a greasy spoon cafe where they cooked big frys! He had to stay down one end of the kitchen away from the baked beans being cooked. It was actually kind of funny but it was affecting him. His colleagues got really annoyed that he worked less to stay away from the beans.

Crumble Froo

i know a dude who's terrified of mayonnaise. he freaks out in restaurants hwen local tables have mayonnaise...

LadyJ

A friend of mine can't touch small copper change. She'd drop it if it was handed to her in a shop. She frequently bins it.

Fajitas!

I know a person terrified of tomatoes and anything tomato related.

And a person terrified of stickers, and particularly removing stickers!

Kurumba

LadyJ wrote: »

A friend of mine can't touch small copper change. She'd drop it if it was handed to her in a shop. She frequently bins it.

I work with a girl exactly like this, if i'm out getting her a sandwich she will only hand me a fiver and won't take the change back! I just leave it on her desk and it stays there.
Like your friend, she takes it when it's dropped into her hand in the shop but i'm pretty sure it gets thrown on the ground after!

watna

Fajitas! wrote: »

I know a person terrified of tomatoes and anything tomato related.

And a person terrified of stickers, and particularly removing stickers!

I'm terrified of tomatoes. They are evil.

Gauge

Note: I apologise for this puke-centric post

I'm mildly emetophobic- I wouldn't drink at all until I was 19 which made things quite awkward socially as I was entering college. I have overcome it slightly and I'm able to drink now. I have gotten drunk a few times to the point where I should have been vomiting but I have a complete mental block when it comes to it. No matter how bad I feel I can't bring myself to throw up- if I have a stomach bug (thankfully I haven't had one in 5 years) I will lock myself in the bathroom for hours on end until I can't stop myself from vomiting- it's really stupid, as I end up with really bad stomach cramps from not letting myself vomit. It's not as bad as it used to be, thank God, but it still affects me badly sometimes- if I get a pain in my stomach I'll refuse to eat anything for the rest of the day so I won't have anything inside me to puke up if I do end up getting sick! My sister suffers from this phobia too- initially she was worse than me but alcohol has made her less afraid.

I do wonder about the future if I end up having kids- the thought of morning sickness has me absolutely terrified!

I have a friend who is terrified of balloons- she can't be around them at all.

snorlax

One of my friends is terrified of ballons!

Dudess

Gauge wrote: »

I'm mildly emetophobic- I wouldn't drink at all until I was 19 which made things quite awkward socially as I was entering college. I have overcome it slightly and I'm able to drink now. I have gotten drunk a few times to the point where I should have been vomiting but I have a complete mental block when it comes to it. No matter how bad I feel I can't bring myself to throw up- if I have a stomach bug (thankfully I haven't had one in 5 years) I will lock myself in the bathroom for hours on end until I can't stop myself from vomiting- it's really stupid, as I end up with really bad stomach cramps from not letting myself vomit. It's not as bad as it used to be, thank God, but it still affects me badly sometimes- if I get a pain in my stomach I'll refuse to eat anything for the rest of the day so I won't have anything inside me to puke up if I do end up getting sick! My sister suffers from this phobia too- initially she was worse than me but alcohol has made her less afraid.

Yeah I actually didn't vomit between the ages of 4 and 18 - only a handful of very mild stomach bugs during that time, and no food poisoning. I have a fairly hardy stomach when it comes to organisms. Then when I finally did get a severe stomach bug at 18, it freaked me out big time. It had been nearly 14 years so it was bound to. But around the same time, I discovered the joys of booze so vomiting became a far more regular part of life. While my stomach is tolerant of bugs, it's not so tolerant of excess alcohol...

As for the morning sickness thing, well if you do get pregnant you've just gotta keep telling yourself it's the norm to vomit during pregnancy and therefore nothing bad is gonna happen to you. I know though, easier said than done.

Mr.Mister

Ice pop sticks!

Eeww... Can't even touch them.

The guy

I used to have a fear of porcelain doll head appearing my corn flakes.

LadyJ

The guy wrote: »

I used to have a fear of porcelain doll head appearing my corn flakes.

Well......I guess you win the thread.

star-pants

A friend of mine has a fear of sponges, velvet and spiders.
Honestly if you go near her with velvet/sponges she freaks, or if you touch her with them she'll vomit.

My mother has a fear of vomiting, she thinks she'll choke and die.

I have a fear of falling, a fear of large bodies of water, drowning, ants, and can't stand some manmade materials, or touching them/people scratching them, like if someones scratching jeans or something.. AHHHH ...

summer_ina_bowl

can't bear moths - one touches me, i cry - stuck in a room with one, i cry

just the thought, *shudder!

Bottle_of_Smoke

When I was younger, around 6 or seven I think, I was terrified of bombs. Mainly down to hearing about the IRA bombings. THis would have been early 90s. When the radiator ticked in my room I'd be petrified that it was a bomb.

It just faded away gradually I think, perhaps when I realised the IRA had goals & bombing me would be pointless. THough I remember being really relieved when someone explained why radiators tick/

jptk

Im an emetophobe, have been all my life. It controls my life on a daily basis. I dont eat nearly enough, dont drink alcohol.
I spent the last 5 years or so unemployed and barely leaving the house and its all down to this phobia.

Weidii

I've got a phobia of things under the water. Don't get me wrong, it's not a fear of the water itself, I love to swim and I do lots of water sports. It's just, if I see something while I'm swimming, even a brick at the bottom of the pool/on the sea bed I'll panic. There's footage of me as a child in Australia swimming on the barrier reef, I was swimming along beside my mam and sis and all of a sudden I start splashing and make a bee-line for the boat. (I think I'd been scared by a piece of coral or something silly like that)

I couldn't watch the start of the film titanic because of the view you get of the sunken ship. I can't watch documentaries where they're investigating a sunken ship.

I think I made a bit of progress a couple of years ago, I was snorkelling with my sister and she forced me to swim to a buoy (although I refused to touch the chain dangling underneath it)

Fad

i fear kidney stones over anything! nothing scares me more

Jay P

New things, ie. major changes in my life. I am absolutely terrified of going to college because that will mean I will be on my own, I know I will make friends and all but the prospect of being on my own terrifies me, especially because I never know what to say to people I don't know

NoQuarter

well im terrified of NEEDLES! aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh even the thoughts of them! its fairly common i reckon, but (next words may disgust) its the thought of the needle going throught the muscle as in like going through my bicep.....AAAA JESUS!!


the only other 1 i have is blood! dont mind being cut or even seeing a big pool of blood but the thoughts of blood going through my veins and arteries kills me!! thats why every time i get pins & needles(like when ya fall asleep on your arm or something) i feel horrible because you can feel the blood going back into it!!!


well actually i have a fear of the noise a rooster makes in the morning, the cockadoodle doo!! but i know where that one comes from, its from hearing my phone alarm every morning and i hate getting up, but even if i hear a rooster during the day i get a little shudder!!


ive just established in 1 post that im a freak!:rolleyes:

Peyton Manning

Cardboard.

I f*cking hate cardboard.

Just the thought of rubbing cardboard or even worse, my nails scraping off it, makes me shudder. I dont know why.

I also have a fear of drinking of mugs because I was home alone when i was about 7 once, and I noticed one of our goldfish had died. I rang my brother and he said I had to scoop it out with a mug. I now associate mugs with dead fish *shudder*

Black_Knight

Phobophobia is quite a strange one. The fear of phobias!

A common one IMO is feet! I know alot of girls only who hate feet. Absolutely hate them.
Id like to see them put on socks every morning!

clownbait

One of my biggest fears is of slugs.....:eek: snails i can handle, even tho they're essentially just a slug with a little house on their back! i can even touch a snail, which makes my fear of slugs all the more confusing, when i see slugs i break out in a cold sweat and completely lose it!

Another weird fear of mine is of escalators i cant stand them! i try to avoid them at all costs cos i was injured as a child on one and now the fear has stayed with me:mad:

o1s1n

I'm one of those baked beans people

Can't eat them. Can't even look at them. Mash them up with potatoes and I'll start to gag. Actually, I'm gagging at the thought right now. If a film or television show comes on with beans I'll change the channel. There's a scene in Blazing Salddles which is turned off every time.

Haven't eaten them since I was a very small child. Must have undergone some traumatic bean related experience which I have long since blanked out of my mind.

I also freak out if anyone tries to push back my cuticles. Something my girlfriend takes great glee in now trying to do.

Andrewf20

Jay P wrote: »

New things, ie. major changes in my life. I am absolutely terrified of going to college because that will mean I will be on my own, I know I will make friends and all but the prospect of being on my own terrifies me, especially because I never know what to say to people I don't know

Jay P, there will be loads in the same boat. I had the same anxiousness as well before college. 3-4 weeks into college we all found a group to mingle with.

Quadrinity1

Hey Weidii, I can't believe I've come across somebody with a similar weird phobia to mine. All my life I've been terrified of things under the water, especially anything large, metal and rusted. Old, half sunk boats or buoys completely freak me out, shipyards and junkyards are brutal - I think I'd rather die than be close to anything like that and when I have been in the past I've been gripped by an appalling icy cold terror. I have the same horror of underwater footage of wrecks, especially the Titanic stuff because it's so dark down there. At the same time, even though it's horrific for me, I sort of feel compelled to look at that stuff - why?? By the way, the whole underwater thing majorly includes sharks too - I'm completely horrified by them but feel compelled to look at programmes/read books about them (although I can't do that on my own).
I also am terrified of the dark, am claustrophobic, find even the smallest height unbearable (my vertigo is so bad I've even fallen out of bed just from lying there thinking about heights), don't like going too fast and have a fear of flying. Does anyone think that some people are inclined to have loads of phobias and others seem to have none at all? Is this just the luck of the draw or something else? Plus, I lived for 33 years with not a shred of claustrophobia (even having been stuck like a sardine in a lift once until the oxygen ran out and I started to suffocate and fainted and pissed my pants before the fire brigade came and axed the door in and not panicking or being afraid at all!!), or with any real fear of flying, sailing, crowds etc and now since I started having panic attacks last year, I have a whole new range of phobias to add onto the others. Anybody have any real success in phobia/panic reduction? And I don't mean using Xanax, but resolving the issue for good.

clownbait

The best thing for dealing with panic attacks ( which I still have) is to constantly distract yourself, all of those breathing techniques and anti anxiety pills dont work, the only way i can deal with it is to sit down and either listen to music, read or pretend im going to sleep.
I do this even when im in a very public place like in an airport or something. I dont care if i look like a complete tool if it helps overcome the panic attack. Sorry if its of no help but its the only advice i can give:)

Ruddy Jimbo

I have a massive phobia of sandles...they remind me of Arabs and they freak the s**te outta me too!!!Especially the ones that dont shave and can hide batteries in their beards!!:eek:

Crumble Froo

oh man, my lil sister is terrified of needles. even wehn i got a blood test, she almost passed out,a nd absolutely flipped when the blood bank were in the school.

o1s1n

Crumble Froo wrote: »

oh man, my lil sister is terrified of needles. even wehn i got a blood test, she almost passed out,a nd absolutely flipped when the blood bank were in the school.

I regularly passed out when having needles and blood taken. All the time in fact. Was diagnosed with an illness a year ago which involves me having to get regular injections and blood taken.

I knew I was over my needle phobia last year after a hospital visit. I'd had so much blood taken out of the one vein that it collapsed and spurted blood all over the sheet.

The nurse yelped. Funny stuff.

StinkerbelleSix

I'm terrified of balloons. I'll cross the street if I see someone approaching with one....I won't go to children's parties and I'll carefully vet any other events that I go to. If I see a balloon I get panicky and I'm outta there. I'd say it affects my life, I've lost count of the number of parties that I had to leave early because I was getting a panic attack. 28 now, been this way since I was 4.

I once knew a guy that had a phobia of peaches.. he said it was the fluffy skin and smell that did it for him.

nachos

Hate cotton wool myself. It's evil stuff. Can't bear to look at it never mind have it go near me. I think it's the texture of it that throws me more than anything else, just horrible. And I keep imagining it in my mouth and it makes me feel ill. Like now. Urgghhh. I dread going to the dentist, not because of the drill or anything but because I know I'm going to have those cotton buds in my mouth and I'll feel them between my teeth. I'm going to be sick....

snowdaze

I know someone who can't deal with barcodes - they are everywhere though - so he is constantly moving products so that the ***code is not facing him:eek:

dlofnep

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote: »

When I was younger, around 6 or seven I think, I was terrified of bombs. Mainly down to hearing about the IRA bombings. THis would have been early 90s. When the radiator ticked in my room I'd be petrified that it was a bomb.

It just faded away gradually I think, perhaps when I realised the IRA had goals & bombing me would be pointless. THough I remember being really relieved when someone explained why radiators tick/

After 9/11, I went into a really weird mood for about a year. I couldn't sleep properly as I was expecting a world war to kick off. It was naive, but when I was trying to sleep, hearing planes flying over the house or any loud noise would scare the bejesus out of me. A little bit after, I was living over in Michigan for a bit and I'd always look at the sky, at dusk when it turned red - I kept thinking it was a nuclear bomb going off lighting the sky up red. True story. It was awful.

Crumble Froo

ha, was just talking to a mate back home about her thesis... had forgotten her phobia of paper... now that one is just plain unfortuante.

like... i can get trough most of life without having to encounter spiders etc... but paper...

i think i'd die.

Susannahmia

king-stew wrote: »

the thoughts of blood going through my veins and arteries kills me!!

+1 But strangely enough I don't really mind needles.

I have a terrible fear of veins in wrists especially. I cant even look at my own wrists or anyone else's. I cant wear watches or bracelets and freak out if anyone touches them.:o

I am almost as bad with ankles and temples, I can't bear anyone touching me there or even touching them myself. I think its the thought of something going through that bit of skin where there is no bone underneath.

DubLegs

I've a fear of descending escalators! The ones that are like moving steps not the flat ones!

Gradually being coaxed onto them by OH but i'm terrified to do it on my own. I'm always searching for stairs or lifts in shops before going upstairs.

Enii

Fajitas! wrote: »

And a person terrified of stickers, and particularly removing stickers!

I have this phobia!!! I thought I was the only one!!!!

bogwalrus

i met a girl last weekend who is terrified of stickers. its a mad one indeed

aahuwill

Cotton wool - just the thought of feeling it sends shivers down my spine

Nails on a blackboard - makes me want to vomit

Polystyrene foam - I can't bear to touch it or hear it being broken up or rubbed off anything


I also dislike the feeling of balloons and sponges

:eek:...........how weird do I sound......:(

TheDriver

Bale Lorries, absolutely frightened when I see one and must overtake it or else stop, can't bear to be near one at all.

Feral Mutant

aahuwill wrote: »

Polystyrene foam - I can't bear to touch it or hear it being broken up or rubbed off anything

Yes, horrible horrible styrofoam. I wouldn't call it a phobia though; I'm not afraid of it, I just hate it, the feel of it, the squeaky sound it makes when it touches something. *shudder*

watna

TheDriver wrote: »

Bale Lorries, absolutely frightened when I see one and must overtake it or else stop, can't bear to be near one at all.

What's a bale lorry? Is that a big lorry with hay on the back of it!

I drove behind one of those once and it is very freaky. They just look really unsecured or something!

TheDriver

Yep, those overloaded bale lorries, absolutely frightened sh*tless of them, Nearly pee myself if out walking and one is coming along the road

watna

TheDriver wrote: »

Yep, those overloaded bale lorries, absolutely frightened sh*tless of them, Nearly pee myself if out walking and one is coming along the road

Even if you're out walking? Wow, that's definitely a phobia. I can understand being scared to drive behind them but no walking!

I think that's the strangest one yet. You can have a prize (not hay bales though )

LadyJ

Have to say I get freaked out by those lorries too. Always feel like they're going to knock me over or crush the car I'm in.

Friend of mine hates plumbing. Won't go into a room if the pipes are exposed (like if a bathroom sink is getting fixed etc.)

watna

LadyJ wrote: »

Have to say I get freaked out by those lorries too. Always feel like they're going to knock me over or crush the car I'm in.

Friend of mine hates plumbing. Won't go into a room if the pipes are exposed (like if a bathroom sink is getting fixed etc.)

I can understand this a little bit actually. The thought of being a plumber disgusts me. Imagine the smelly horrible stuff that gets left in pipes over the years. Plus they make funny noises all the time.

LadyJ

I don't think that's it. I dunno why he hates it. Just freaks him out I think.

watna

LadyJ wrote: »

I don't think that's it. I dunno why he hates it. Just freaks him out I think.

I supppose my thoughts on it were actually too rational to be a phobia really!

pljudge321

I cant get water in my eyes or I flip, makes showering and swimming a bit of a chore but I'm used to it by now.

I think it stems from when i was three and pulled a pot of boiling water ontop of myself and my mum jammed my under a cold shower