Fear of Fear
Trigger alert!
I’m afraid of everything. Why be selective when you can just have a generalized low-level anxiety on autoplay all day no matter the lack of apex predators lunging for a kill from the perfume aisle of the FiveBelow on Route 119? If I listed the daily private lilliputian battles for which I steel my courage, it would be the equivalent of the diner menu, a dozen pages of every cuisine you can’t believe can emerge from the same kitchen. Nothing tastes right.
But then there are the many folks whose fears really do a great job of digging into the gnarliest recesses of the oddities of life. They choose one rare weird thing and revile it in their bones. This approach is the specialty food shop that offers one item both exclusive and exquisite, like the pommes frites stands in Brussels, Belgium I frequented after a long night at the pub, handing you a hot greasy paper cone of double-fried unsurpassable deliciousness, whose only flourish was what flavor gets mixed into your mayonnaise.
Mayophobia or magionezaphobia: a specific phobia that involves an intense, irrational aversion to the condiment, often stemming from its creamy texture and resemblance to bodily fluids like mucus or pus.
The other night at our local annual Veterans Appreciation BBQ—I am too afraid to serve in the Services, but I am happy to serve at this dinner—I talked with an affable older gentlemen festooned with his Korea cap and metals. He said it’s rare for him to come out for these events, or anything, since he suffers severe agoraphobia (fear of being in situations where escape might be difficult or embarrassing). Once he said it, then I noticed his shakiness, his sweating. Yet here he was, greeting new arrivals with me at the front door like a champ. Back in these old wars, when soldiers returned stateside there wasn’t any such thing as PTSD. It was shell shock, combat fatigue. The unbelievable understatement of being merely “tired” from combat—still, an improvement over Civil War era ailments of “nostalgia” or “soldier’s heart.” This man who jumped out of planes over and over with ease said he was fine for twenty years after, living out his life, working, raising a family, until he started feeling the fear that started shrinking his world. It’s at the point now where he can barely get 10 blocks past his house and has to return home. So he knew wouldn’t last long at the dinner; his family was there to help him as needed. I was honored he was willing to share with me. You’re doing fine, I wanted to say. I’m afraid too, and I don’t even have any good reason. I too position myself close to the exits and ensure I can duck out when no one’s looking. He wanted to talk more about it sometime, but he had to go. I followed soon after.
Some phobias are so specific they seem contrived. But they are legit and cause real reactions, which I learned too late shortly after I subjected my then boyfriend to lake kayaking near a very nonscenic power plant. He suffered a fear of large rusty things under deep water (submechanophobia), layered over a base fear of deep water (thalassophobia) that I should have taken more seriously when I put testing out my two new black folding kayaks on my birthday trip agenda, or buying two of them in the first place. When we parked near the lake that happened to accept kayaks and exist closest to our hotel, he was startled by the Chernobyl-vibe sort of setting, but, as I do, I tried to be the best possible sport and pretend it was perfect. At the time I was just pleased he made the effort to muscle through this for me anyway, feeling the love of his sacrifice. While he skirted the shallow edges of the lake near an inlet of grasses and living things that didn’t seem radioactive, and soon silently retreated to the launch ramp, I unsuccessfully encouraged him, it’s fine over here, you can do it, come on, join me!, I beckoned, paddling onward across the depths with the buzzing plant and the dreadful drop off of the spillway across the way, bemused and slightly annoyed. I had no idea until later that he was completely panic-attack-level terrified, so much so that he couldn’t recover. He broke up with me in a few days.
The other fear this boyfriend had was almost humorous to me in its specificity so it felt petty and negligible, no offense. How does one accumulate such things? I did remove my many ear piercings before our dates to accommodate him since he couldn’t tolerate a conglomeration of shiny silver things, or even think about—and over his dead body, put his hands through the most extreme version—a jar of tiny sparkly beads, which luckily didn’t come up often or ever in our relations. It occurs to me now, that in addition to his deep water phobias, this silver bead thing might be some subset of a phobia I encountered lately in another person:
Trypophobia, in Wikipedia, is defined as “an aversion to the sight of repetitive patterns or clusters of small holes or bumps” (as in the dense pattern of beehive or the compacted holes in a lotus seed, sunflowers, sponges, seedy fruits), which “elicit feelings of discomfort or repulsion.”
I am myself densely packed, bumpy and repetitive, scarred, imperfect, patterned with tattoos. Could it be that I too am something that inspires fear, or worse, disgust?
Some researchers suggest this phobia may be of biological origin, an unconscious instinct attached to our interest in survival.
Various venomous animals (for example, certain types of snakes, insects, and spiders) have visual characteristics similar to trypophobic imagery. Furthermore, other animals such as the frog Pipa pipa have been known to be a trypophobia trigger. Because of this, it is hypothesized that trypophobia has an evolutionary basis meant to alert humans of dangerous organisms.
Others relate this to a warning against cues of infectious disease or skin ailments.
trypophobic and non-trypophobic participants showed significant aversion to disease-relevant cluster images, but only trypophobic participants displayed a significant aversion to disease-irrelevant cluster images. Martínez-Aguayo et al. stated that, because the reactions could not be attributed to different sensitivity levels or neuroticism differences, Kupfer and Le believe it supports their hypothesis that trypophobia is an overgeneralized aversion towards cluster stimuli that indicates a threat of parasitic and infectious disease.
Or more simply you could pooh-pooh this and associate it with OCD.
But our innate survival instincts, carried through generations since we started walking out of caves on two legs, align with so many fears that are not as irrational as they may sound. Being afraid of deep water is logical, as is the fear of heights, rust (tetanus!), bumps and patterns (venemous snake skin!). My friend, who was commuting on the front car of the Metro-North train that derailed at Spuyten Duyvil in 2013 and witnessed the horrible deaths of several sitting near her, is completely justified in avoiding trains to this day. As is my agoraphobic vet in wanting to avoid entrapment. Tightly packed holes though? Sure.
What sounds fringe, is, according to the data, surprisingly frequent. The Cleveland Clinic estimates that as many as 17% of the population suffer from trypohobia in some form (more women than men for some reason), although this is newish disorder named only in 2005. It achieved some notoriety in American Horror Story: Cult season 7, which featured a character with trypophobia, inspired by actor Sarah Paulson’s real life version that she talks about and demonstrates here. Some of the show’s images triggered viewers, and generally increased awareness that people have this aversion at all.
What’s getting triggered look like? You might feel chills, choking/dry mouth, fast breathing, increased heart rate, “intense feeling of disgust or terror,” pale skin, sweating, nausea, trembling/shaking, or like Paulson says—trilling her voice and trying not to notice the hole-ridden nicknack behind her on the interview set or the pot full of pebbles—she blanks out, hair rising on her arms. At a more extreme level this can move into depression, stress, insomnia, panic attacks.
The way to get over a fear is through, says CBT therapy. You dip into it, step by step through small increasing exposures until the charge is dulled over time. Come on the train with me to the city, I ask my once-derailed friend. Oh hell no, never. She’d rather drive with the maniacs for 1,000 hours then ever do that again, and when I hear her story from that day and the years to follow, her debilitating injuries and long recovery that continues, the relentless court battle for damages, being stalked by undercover investigators who aimed to prove she wasn’t harmed because eventually she could walk her daughter to school again, how she can’t stop seeing how the woman sitting next to her catapulted through the heavy window glass and was beheaded, I understood.
Some phobias make perfect sense. Others, well, you tell me. According to the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in an article by VeryWellMind, you have three types of phobias: social (or social anxiety disorder), agoraphobia (large enough for its own category), or specific (for snakes, spiders, and everything under the sun, and beyond). You can categorize all these specific phobias into the quadrants: fear of the natural environment, animals, mutilation/medical treatment, or situations. The possibilities are as vast as our ability to clip word fragments from the Ancient Greeks. Here’s just a few I found, compiled from the scariest corners of the www:
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia: fear of long words
Nomophobia: fear of being without your mobile phone
Pogonophobia: fear of beards
Ephebiphobia: aversion to adolescents
Ergophobia: fear of or aversion to work
Eremophobia: the morbid dread of being alone (vs. we eremites who seek this out)
Arachibutyrophobia: fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth
Taphephobia: fear of being interred alive
Anatidaephobia: fear of the idea that somewhere, a duck or goose is watching you
Aibohphobia: fear of palindromes (words, verses, sentences, or numbers that read the same backward or forward). *Note the name aibohp is phobia in reverse
Aichmophobia: fear of sharp or pointed objects (such as a needle or a pointing finger)
Amathophobia: fear of dust
Coulrophobia: fear of clowns (duh, who doesn’t have this?)
Phobophobia: fear of phobias (the only thing we have to fear…)
There’s no specific fear of lists, or I would add that too. I’m afraid of being seen, yet I’m also afraid of being misunderstood, afraid of being unlovable or never really loving, afraid of dying alone or someone finding my body when I do, afraid of leaving a pile of unfinished business, of being forgotten or forgettable, of not mattering, of being too much or not enough. I’m afraid of this country right now and what it is becoming (or unbecoming), I’m afraid of how fragile democracy proves to be, of this American horror story, I’m afraid for my children’s futures, I’m afraid for the survival of our planet and our species, I’m afraid of guns and mass shootings, I’m afraid of screen addiction and the benumbing of generations, I’m afraid of AI becoming the main form of intelligence, I’m afraid of the cruelty of capitalism, I’m afraid of people who let their fears lead them to hateful places. These days that feels like everyone, or at least too many.
“I’m Afraid of Everyone,” is a song by The National I’m not afraid of. So let’s hold hands and sing it out together, for some sad distraction.
Venom radio and venom television
I’m afraid of everyone, I’m afraid of everyone
Lay the young blue bodies with the old red bodies
I’m afraid of everyone, I’m afraid of everyone
With my kid on my shoulders I try
Not to hurt anybody I like
But I don’t have the drugs to sort
I don’t have the drugs to sort it out, sort it out
I defend my family with my orange umbrella
I’m afraid of everyone, I’m afraid of everyone
With my shiny new star-spangled tennis shoes on
I’m afraid of everyone, I’m afraid of everyone
With my kid on my shoulders I try
Not to hurt anybody I like
But I don’t have the drugs to sort
I don’t have the drugs to sort it out, sort it out
I don’t have the drugs to sort
I don’t have the drugs to sort it out, sort it out
Yellow voices swallowing my soul, soul, soul
Yellow voices swallowing my soul, soul, soul
Yellow voices swallowing my soul, soul, soul
Yellow voices swallowing my soul, soul, soul
Yellow voices swallowing my soul, soul, soul
Yellow voices swallowing my soul, soul, soul
Yellow voices swallowing my soul, soul, soul, soul, soul
Soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul
Yellow voices swallowing my soul, soul, soul, soul
Yellow voices swallowing my soul, soul, soul, soul
Yellow voices swallowing my soul, soul, soul, soul, soul
Soul, soul, soul, soul, soul, soul
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Oh me oh my so many fears out there, and some of the stranger ones are almost hard to believe until you hear people who suffer speak about them (Sarah Paulson example) and then still can be odd and beyond another persons understanding. I did laugh at fear of ducks and geese looking at you and then I remembered walking the tow paths in my town and damn if those geese aren’t scary AF when they eyeball you!! I don’t know about you triggering someone’s fear of holes or dots or imperfections, but at this point in our lives who isn’t scarred and ridged and marked? And if that is too “scary” for someone then they can go hang out with some smooth faced clowns or glassy eyed geese :)
Thank you for writing this! I am glad somebody could put it down as well as you. At 65 I've done just about all the stuff that anyone my age has supposed to have done but I find more and more that arriving in public is just sometimes fraught with nervousness, particularly on the road. I wrote a piece about clownishly large trucks and the men who need them, but this is not only comedy, hopefully it's at least that, but it's a true worry that I'm always going to get in trouble. WTF? Somebody is always calling you out. I've been in many countries and there's always someone giving you the business.
My most delicious moments are in anonymity in a foreign country where nobody can cross my path or make a comment or approach me.
Oddly the older I get the less I feel like a muscle-driven ego and more like an old book with hand watercolors that just needs to be taken out once in awhile and read, spoken to, and preserved. But the world doesn't care about my preservation. Sadly. Enough about me! What a narcissist I am! I want to say that I really love this piece! I love your writing!