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  • Showing only topics with the tag "fears". Back to normal view
    1. What scares you the most? What fears and apprehensions are central to your identity and how you view the world?

      I'm using "fear" in the broadest sense, including both concrete menaces and subjective apprehensions of any kind. As always, anything goes, except for highly divisive controversial stuff that...

      I'm using "fear" in the broadest sense, including both concrete menaces and subjective apprehensions of any kind.

      As always, anything goes, except for highly divisive controversial stuff that might get this locked!

      15 votes
    2. Do you have any odd or unusual fears?

      For example: I've got mild issues with what I'll call "big dark things within emptiness." I'm sure there's probably a very specific term and associated subreddit for this, but I don't particularly...

      For example: I've got mild issues with what I'll call "big dark things within emptiness." I'm sure there's probably a very specific term and associated subreddit for this, but I don't particularly enjoy searching it up.

      An example would be looking at a planet in Celestia or Google Earth, especially the unlit side. Another example would be seeing the hull of a submerged ship underwater. I have no idea why these kind of things give me the willies, but they do.

      Intellectually I think it's absurd and will often try to will myself to ignore the nonsense feeling based on completely unthreatening stimuli, but that doesn't seem to alleviate my instantaneous lizard-brain reaction. For whatever reason, I can't get past it.

      It's been this way for a long time, too. I can remember when I was very young, I had a picture book about space. It had shots of all the planets, most of which I was fine with, but there was a close-up of Jupiter in shadow that I would deliberately avoid looking at.

      Another book had a very dark picture of a giant squid that caused the same reaction in me. I remember memorizing the page numbers for these two photos so that I could skip them whevener I looked at the books. If I ever opened the book to a random page, I would crack it ever so slightly so that I could peek the page number to make sure it was safe.

      Do you have something like this? Some absurd fear, phobia, or aversion to something strangely specific or benign? When's the first time you realized it? Has it stayed that way over time?

      15 votes