I am so scared for worms. I am scared of every single one of the but especially parasites like the Assmade and lindworms. I have a stomach ache from typing this. Can some help with this phobia

I've always been scared of heights, but not Flying. Going on glass lifts makes me nervous or light headed at times, same when looking over ledges.

However, recently ive noticed when i look at other people look over tall ledges i get a pretty large reaction, Crouching down on my legs as if it were a reflex, and shouting for them to stop. I find it really hard to look at. I suspect this is just something to do with my fear of heights but what so you think?

For as long as I can remember I've been terrified of feet. When I was younger I would cry when we had to do dance in PE because everyone had to be barefoot and I 1. Hated seeing other people's feet and 2. Hated people seeing my feet, I also hated walking on the same floor as everyone's bare feet with my exposed skin. When I type it on my phone and the foot emoji comes up I have to look away. I hate the words toes and toenails and I feel gross even typing them or looking at the words themselves, as well as the actual things of course. I'm fine if people are wearing shoes and/or socks, but bare feet freak me out so much I will literally yelp and dart away if you put them near me (my family thinks it's funny to do this to get me away from them. It's not funny. I've tried telling them but they never listen). It's not a trauma thing though, I've been weird with feet since before they started doing that, I think I was just born with it because I have no idea how it could have developed otherwise. I used to be able to wear sandals but eventually I even hated them too... the thought of a pedicure is horrifying to me and if I touch a foot on my screen (doesn't have to be real, even poorly drawn cartoon feet send me) my finger gets all tingly and I can't touch anything for fear of it spreading and I have to wash my hands immediately. Even if I'm just scrolling instagram and my finger was just slightly close to a foot. Even now typing on my laptop my fingers are starting to feel weird from typing the words foot and feet over and over. If I see a foot or a picture of a foot I have to hold my breath until it goes away. I've always been freaked out by them, but I feel like it's just getting worse and worse the more time that passes and I don't know what to do. I'm fine with going to the beach and swimming pools, those are the only times where I'll show my bare feet in public and not be as sickened as I normally would be (I feel weird for a bit, but I get over it as I'm distracted because I love the beach and pools). When I do go to the swimming pool I have to hype myself up to walk on the tiles in the changing rooms (since people walk on them with their bare feet) and get into the pool, but once I do I'm fine (as long as no one else's feet touch me in the water). I just don't know what to do about it and I'm worried about how much worse it could get, how far it's going to go. Recently it's getting to the point where if my socks hug my feet too tightly and you can see an outline I'll get weird with that too. I don't want to have to keep shoes on all the time or only wear thick socks. It's embarrassing. Thanks for the help if anyone has any!

Hi! So basically for the longest time I have been extremely scared and anxious whenever movie logos are played or end credits are rolling (specifically black and white credits with no music). Certain ads also scare me quite a bit. For example, as a little kid I would watch Boomerang on cartoon network and they would play those bumpers with the robots and little toys. I specifically remember being absolutely terrified anytime they came on and this fear would worsen at night, especially if i was watching it alone (i recently saw them again and have the same anxiety). This really happens anytime it’s late and i’m watching something alone. Is there a certain name for this sense of dread I get whenever i see these things? I’ve tried searching for a specific name or definition before but never found anything. Thanks!

I have no physical problem, I've never broken my bone in my life. Pulled a muscle once but wasn't a big deal.

For some stupid reason I cannot stop thinking of my achilles tendon ripping off. It cringes me to no end.

How do I end it?

I’ve had this weird phobia since 2010. I remember the exact night it started. We were camping in tents in Yosemite. Everyone else was snoozing and I couldn’t sleep all night because my back having contact with the ground gave me this god awful Feeling that I was going to slip off the earth and into outer space. It sounds so ridiculous even typing it out. Because if I were to really slip down, it would’ve been down the mountain and not up into the sky. I eventually had to sneak out of the tent and sleep in the car sitting up because it was such an overwhelming feeling to be laying on the ground. Since then I can’t lay down on the ground and look up. It’s even gotten to the point that just sitting on the ground outside feels awful. It’s like the earth is gonna table flip me into outer space 😭 I also have dreams of being flung into the sky often and I can feel the sensation of the panic setting in and I my heart is racing is when I wake up. I’m also afraid of external elevators. I’m terrified they’re not going to stop and somehow gravity will stop existing and then the elevator is gonna go all Willy wonka and off I’ll go into space 😭🤣 I’m seriously laughing at the ridiculousness right now. I don’t have a fear of being in the sky, tho. I don’t have a fear of flying. It’s a fear of falling “into the sky” or being flung up into it. When I’ve looked it up, google always said fear of flying, so maybe I’m not wording it correctly.

I’ll keep it short. I don’t know when this started or why. I grew up in central Florida and we always went on nature walks and hikes. Back then and even to this day, whenever I come across a fallen tree I feel overwhelmed and sick. Just looking at one or realizing I’m next to one gives me horrible anxiety. Its even worse if I’m alone

whenever im doing the dishes, whether that be by hand or unloading them from the dishwasher, if i touch one of our ceramic (maybe its porcelain?) ramekins when its still warm and dry, then i cringe so hard and almost drop it every time.

This is something that has gotten worse and worse over the years, and is currently bothering me a lot throughout my everyday life. I've started counting the days until payday earlier and earlier throughout the month. I check my checking account many times per day, and I get stressed if the amount is not as much as i thought.

This fear is completely irrational. I make a very decent amount of money, and I'm in a position where I am able to save a lot of money per month. I have also gotten a small gig at a company that will pay me a decent amount as a one time payment. As well as the tax return coming in shortly, it's a good time economically.

The ultimate goal is to be able to buy an apartment one day, but because of the current market it seems like an impossible goal even though I'm able to save a lot. Many of my friends are buying apartments with their parents' money, which is absolutely out of the question with my family's economic situation.

This phobia is affecting me and my decisions in everyday life. I'm pretty good at not letting it restrict my social-life. I force myself to eat out if someone invites me, go to movies or other events if someone invites, and occasionally treat my friends with drinks or snacks. However, my internal stress is deeply affected. I have a strict system established in my head telling me how much money i can spend each week. If i go over, I get very stressed, feeling that it will affect how much money I can put into my savings account.

I open up my calculator often, calculating a very unrealistic measurement of how much i can save up for this year if I am really strict with myself - then I spend time getting stressed if I don't meet those expectations.

I'm currently in a period where I have to spend some large amounts of money to maintain some of my hobbies. Some camera equipment needs maintainence, my PC rig needs an upgrade, some climbing shoes have to be sent in for repair. It's stressing me out so much that I can feel it in my stomach every day. I'm so in between what to prioitize that it is making me go crazy, even though I can safely buy all the things im considering, and still put 75% of all potential savings to my savings account.

This is making me go absolutely crazy. Everyone I talk to about the issue cannot relate. And I also feel quite guilty talking to people about this issue. Money can be a sensitive issue, and I earn too much to actually be able to complain about it.

Does anyone have any tips for this issue? Should i go see someone professionally? Has anyone had the same experience?

I have dentophobia and I'm really really scared .I'm ready to kill myself instead of visiting a therapist. Can somebody help.me.please

Curious if anyone has tips for overcoming fear of wasps? I discovered birding in January and it’s changed my life, and i’m dreading the depression to come from having to stop now that it’s warming up 😭

It really hasn't been talked about like almost at all but I have a fear of leaves from a tree, well maybe I should say all plants but ones from a tree are the most prominent. By the grace of god I have not had a significantly large one land on me. I can stomach small ones for some time like being covered by a thick blanket if I were to go to a picnic, but if the wind picks up I'm almost done for. I am able to hike somewhat as long as I have good thick shoes and tall socks, my experience of it in Costa Rica in the middle of nowhere was ok. I had issues when I was drunk and walking back in the dark and I had to look on the ground, and especially those large hand leaves like massive ones scared the daylights out of me. I can usually tolerate windy days and large leaves if I close my eyes and pretend I'm not there, Pools with them have always screwed me over big time though I can't exactly escape those ones as easily. I'm worse around magnolia ones, because of their opposing underside bleh and ones that look like maple's. I think my fear stems from close nit patterns because the skeletons on living and dead ones freak me out so bad. Also ones with spots on them as signs of decay even worse. I'm tolerant of tons of other not normal stuff like frogs I pick them up, well unless they are on a leaf, then I wouldn't.

Basically I've always had a fear of going outside alone at night whether it be taking the dog out to use the bathroom or taking the trash out. I've also always had a big fear of looking out of windows at night or uncovered windows at night. Sometimes I hear strange bumping noises that sound like from outside my window that terrify me.

I have 3 very specific phobias that make my skin crawl. It leaves me unsettled anytime I think of it.

The first one is the inside of appliances, especially ones with running water. Like the back of a toilet, or a shower taken apart so the pipes are showing. Or the inside of a washing machine. Bonus if it’s an older appliance too 🤢

The second one is monochrome 80s bathrooms. Like a blue toilet with matching sink and bathtub. Or brown or green. It makes my skin crawl it’s so uncanny and makes me feel like nothing is real.

The third thing is so niche idk if anyone will understand. I think it has to do with liminal spaces. It’s this fear of abandoned McDonald’s. Especially the kitchen/stainless steel area. It makes me so queasy. I used to have dreams of being stuck in an empty town and the only place to eat was an abandoned McDonalds.

Can anyone relate to this??

Hey guys, I need some help with my phobia. My boyfriend recently got me a ladder (he says it was to help me reach for low hanging fruit and to help me jump to conclusions). It’s actually to help me reenact my favourite scenes from the classic movie ‘the borrowers’ as I’m part of a borrowers reenactment group. I have severe climacophobia and emetophobia and the group meets weekly so will be climbing the ladder frequently. Do you think I need to buy antisickness tablets to climb the ladder? This may be quite draining on finances because I’m 6”6 and need heavy doses of medications.

Hello, brothers and sisters.

I am 15M from India. I have phagophobia, ocd, tics (anxiety) and anxiety.

Here's how i got phagophobia: One day I was eating roti (tortilla?) w/ potato curry then I had anxiety and thought that it choked me. But tbh I was just anxious not choking because I could talk and breath.

After that day I could still eat food, but one day I watched a video about how to survive choking alone. In that video footages of people choking was included, which triggered me and since then I eat food with water and eat a little food.

I get tics when eating. I rapidly blink eye and do something in neck which I can't express through words.

My staple food is rice, which I know isnt a choking hazard for a healthy 15 years old male like me. If it was choking hazard why would half of the earth's population eat it? But still anxiety is anxiety and it doesn't go away easily.

I think meditation 🧘‍♂️ helps. I am nowadays able to eat a bit (⅓ spoon rice) w/o water but takes me years.

I even struggle (sometimes, mostly at night) to struggle saliva.

Could awesome people tell me if rice is really choking (be optimistic please)? and provide support?

Tl.,Dr: I have phagophobia and anxiety. Give me some support.

I developed severe thalassaphobia recently, any tips for how to overcome it? I have grown up kayaking and swimming in lakes, I swam in the ocean consistently, and I was on a swim team for a few years as a teenager. I’ve never been afraid of water whatsoever! But last summer a kayak that I was on sunk in the middle of a lake when myself and two friends were paddling around. For some reason I literally lost it and started crying and screaming, I was terrified that I was going to drown or be attacked by some nefarious entity in the lake or contract a brain eating amoeba and I was completely overwhelmed with panic and fear. Ever since then, if I try to do any sort of lake activity or if I even think about a lake too much, I start having a panic attack! Like literally panicking while sitting in my room nowhere near water because i thought about a lake too hard. I am both befuddled about why that incident scared me so much and had such a lasting effect bc I have never been scared of a lake prior to that, and also confused about how to get over the fear so I can continue my usual summer activities. Any advice welcome!

I’m still a young ish teenager and I am full blown shaking-covering my ears- almost full blown sobbing everytime it’s rains too hard and especially when it’s a thunderstorm. I have no idea why. Maybe the aspect or tornados freak me out since my paps brothers house was ripped in half over one not less than two years ago. But where I live there hasn’t been a tornado in 70 ish years and my neighborhood has never had a tornado touch down, so I don’t think it’s that. It’s not because of my autism I think (I get very overstimulated and overwhelmed fast) because usually I like loud noise because I like metal music and concerts and etc. all my friends and family say they love storms and they calm them down, but i have absolutely no idea how or why. Thunder is loud and ESPECIALLY when it’s close/a really bad storm it sounds like it’s going to strike you, and lightning is just as unsettling and scary. I don’t know the phobia term for this, but I remember doing research on it for a school project and it said something like “usually whenever a kid grows up they get over it when a teenager” and I am nowhere close being done with my fear.

I have a few intense phobias, like I am deathly afraid of specifically fake nails, and the ocean, and whales, and vampires. But all of them feel so pathetic when I encounter them I can't say why I'm sort of frozen and uncomfortable

This all started last April, there was an earthquake where I live and it was the first earthquake I ever experienced. When it happened I was extremely freaked out and I didn’t what to expect. What makes this worse is that there was an eclipse due to happen in the following days. My extremely religious mother proceeded to say how it was all connected and that “something was coming”. All of this made me spiral and panic. Ever since then my fear of loud noises and the world ending has become worse as the months went by.

(Here is a list of things that has happened that made this fear worse: really bad summer storms, a surprise alert on my tv because there was a forest fire nearby, extremely loud fire alarm going off at work, building shaking thunder/lightning at work)

Im so scared that something loud and unexpected is going to happen and this fear is really starting to affect my quality of life. I want to be able to fall asleep in peace and not stay up bracing for something that may or may not happen.

how do you deal with the fear of wind?

I live in a place where there is sandstorms. i get such bad anxiety. i check the weather app every half an hour. i keep a table tracking the wind gust strength, direction and how it made me feel. it doesn’t help that i live on the tenth floor in an area where there is few buildings as high. to put this into perspective on sunday it’s scheduled to have 64 km/h wind gusts (40 miles per hour) and i have such bad anxiety about it. i think it’s the sound of wind which makes me anxious.

any advice? thank you

First post ever, but this is also a celebration post! I have been struggling with dental phobia for my entire life, and I have not been able to get a checkup in 5 years due to my severe phobia. I've been going to EMDR therapy for a year now, and booked an dentist appointment under anaesthesia. It was free for me, since I have a severe phobia, and I live in a country where dental care is pretty much free. I was really nervous and scared going in, and had a panic attack, but this nice nurse told me that I could take a sedative first, and then get the mask. We did so, and then I woke up with my teeth finally fixed!! I had a crack on my left front tooth, and some other cavities. It's been over 10 hours since the operation, and I'm still a little shaky. I'm just so happy I was able to do this. After years of fighting the pain, now I'm finally well! Seriously recommend Anesthesia to any other people who have a dental phobia, if it is accessible for you. I acknowledge how lucky I am to get this opportunity. I'm just so proud of myself for actually going and doing it :)

tl;dr - how do you go about explaining your phobia(s) to someone? specifically work-related

Hi friends, I have severe entomophobia - a fear of bugs. It started as cPTSD and a trauma response that has manifested into a full blown phobia. I won’t get into exact details, but I’ve dealt with a lot of traumatic bug interactions and has gotten much worse over the past two years. The sight of one irl makes me cry and panic, which also triggers my trauma-related contamination OCD. I live in rural Michigan and it’s spring, so bugs are becoming more prevalent. Over these past two weeks, I’ve encountered increasingly more bugs than I have the entire winter.

I’m a nanny for some folks I’m relatively close to, both kids being under three. Yesterday I saw a bug, a harmless one, and had an incredibly hard time with it, but did find something long enough to take it to the door and get it outside. If someone else were here with me, I’d have ran as far away as I could and have a panic attack. Since I’m the only adult, I had no other option to either accept the bug or take care of it; which caused me to cry and obsess the entire day; it was the only thing on my mind and the thought of seeing another made me cry. Today I show up and on the kitchen sink is the same type of bug. I was able to hit it with water but even still, I freaked out. Just now, I saw a bug near where I sit and I can’t stop obsessing.

Like most people with their phobias, I already spend a lot of time thinking about it and being hypervigilant of my surroundings. I feel as though I need to talk about this with the parents I work for, but I don’t know how to or “why” I’d even do that. Part of me really needs support of some kind, but, if I do tell them, what’s the point if they can’t even do anything about it? The only people who know about my phobia, aside from my partner and therapist, are my friends. One of my friend’s partners didn’t take it seriously; when I told all of them, she proceeded to tell me a story about an interaction she had with a bug.

I have an intense aversion to female anatomy

I don't properly know how to describe it but I basically can't say words to do with it, I can't even bloody type them or I'd give examples but I physically can't make myself do it

In biology, we do the reproductive system and I have to completely zone out (not hard adhd comes in clutch 🤞) or I have to leave because my legs start screaming at me to run

The most unfortunate thing about this is I'm a girl

I have to change with the lights off, can't look in the mirror without being fully clothed and now its interfering with my medical issues

I had to have a heart scan back in September and when they told me I had to take my bra and shirt off I started TWEAKING

I backed into the furthest corner of the room silently crying and shaking whilst putting my entire hand in my mouth (its a comfort thing I put fingers in my mouth subconsciously but it gets bad when I panic) and my mum said you could see me scanning the room for something to defend myself with (I didn't even know that's what I was doing)

At first I was saying how I didn't want to but it devolved into weird sounds instead

We had to wait 2 hours because I went completely non verbal before I was put in a room with all sharp objects removed and a special lady had to do it so I could keep my bra on because I can't even make myself go out without a bra

I won't what is wrong but I have some stuff going on down there (bad hygiene ig, avoiding anything to do with down there has downsides obviously I probably js neglected it)

I hve to do a cotton swab or I hve to let the doctor look up there

Everyime I think about either of those things my stomach twists and I feel like or start crying because the thought of anything ever going up there is genuinely the most horrible thing I can imagine

I'm not getting a visual, I'm not weak I'll harm the doctor without thinking about it but I can't make myself do the swab I've never had anything up there before and my plan was for there not to be unless absolutely necessary

Its been sitting there for about a month now I just can't do it

I'm trying to find the root of this because I don't know if its a phobia or if I'm just a prude on steroids

I don't think its the latter because I can talk about certain things as long as I use the derogatory terms like pussy and shag/fuck is fine but the second detailed descriptions of the chest or down there comes into it I shut down

I've been thinking about gender dysphoria but again I'm not sure because I am a girl and have no doubtd about it

Maybe my autism plays into it I was diagnosed when I was 4 (adhd too) and I have pretty intense ocd so that could be a factor

After my gcse's I'll seek therapy and there is no harm in getting a head start so if anyone can help that would be great

I havent found much info about this but i know a few people who experience the same thing.

6 months ago i was participating in a show with my dance group where in one dance we had to be with our bare feet. i HATE showing my toes or people seeing them, the thought of it made me sob like crazy so i taped my toes so no one could see. i cried every time we had practice because i knew that i wont have tape with me to hide my toes.

in school when we had swimming lessons i lied that i was on my period or sick so i wouldnt have to show my toes. my teacher caught up to it so i bought like shoes (idk what they are called) for swimming class so i wouldnt have to show anything.

I told this to one of my friends and she laughed and said she sometimes feels the same way but inly with people who she doesnt know. our only difference is that i feel this way with everyone, even with family. i have had boyfriends and every time my man would come sleep over, i slept with socks, even if i had to do it for days.

If anyone could help me find this phobia and maybe give tips on how to get over it i would be VERY grateful!