Phobias

[Whatintheworldgirl]

If you have a phobia, what is it?

I'm finding that it's frustrating having a phobia and people assuming you can just 'get over it'. Do you believe you can just 'get over it?'

Lagershandy and XenoBitch, it seems my DGS’s button phobia is not as unusual as I thought! He has to wear the Velcro shirts for school with the buttons taken off. I have to take out the buttons off on his trouser waist adjuster and stitch the elastic to the right width. His mother cannot buy herself anything with buttons on.

Weirdly I don't mind buttons on clothes as much, unless they have been sewn on with different coloured thread, and I don't like ugly buttons.
One rule I insist on Is that if a button has come off, I must be told so I can sew it back on asap. Then I have to wash my hands thoroughly.
Loose buttons are non negotiable.

I have managed to overcome spiders and 'the dark' but one I can't, I can't type the word, I haven't ever said it but it's those white/orange things people smoke (please don't quote the word back to me).

I can cope with their existence and even the smell, and I was a barmaid in the 90's so I can manage...but their litter on the streets, I just can't stand. My pony died from eating the ends and I have seen toddlers playing with them and birds choking on them. Plus they just look and smell disgusting.

I grew up in a house with 2 chain smokers so I know where it has come from. It really affects me but having grown up with 'teaser' brothers, I have to pretend it doesn't. In my experience, the more you tell someone something upsets you, the more they try to goad you (yes shit family and friends!).

Haha, yes! I feel like a fraud saying I can't deal with buttons unless they are sewn on. Sewn on ones are safe. Buttons out in the wild... they could jump in my tea or food, or mouth. That is what I get bothered with. I get convinced they will end up in my mouth. It is really weird, and I get so pre-occupied by it, and I don't expect most people to understand that feeling at all.

Having my blood pressure taken. Which is highly annoying and quite restrictive because I need it checking at the minute and I can’t get a proper reading. Even typing this makes me anxious.

I used to be the same but I now take it myself at home... much better

Spiders
roaches
public speaking
anything dead
cigarettes/cigarette butts & ashes
mice/rats

I’m even worse doing it at home! 🙈

This is my phobia! Emetophobia! Can you explain exposure therapy to me? I've always wanted to try it but I'm petrified it's like watching people being sick or something

Exposure therapy is something that needs to be done with collaboration from a good therapist who understands phobias. For me, the treatment plan started with breaking all my triggers into categories (e.g. animals vomiting brings me to a 4 whereas my child vomiting brings me to a 10). I was taught strategies such as deep breathing and coping cards when I was calm as well as when I was practicing exposure to the level I was on. What started out as a 4 (animals vomiting) became a 1, and only then did we move to the next category. It was a very slow process, not without hiccups but I can now cope with people vomiting on tv (I don't look away anymore or get anxious) and I don't go straight into a panic attack when one of my kids are sick.

Those stairs scare the hell out of me, too! When I was pre-teen there was a staircase like that over the railway station where I lived. Very wide and high, and old, by the 70s the wood wasn't in a great state. I would go well out of my way to avoid using that thing.

There was also a pedestrian bridge over a multi-lane road in London when I visited in '89 - I don't remember the name (keep thinking Hammersmith Bridge Road but I don't think that's right) and I only got a few steps up that horrible vibrating thing before I decided no, I'd take my chances at the next pedestrian lights.

And for heights, the absolute worst was being near the Glacier Rock lookout at Yosemite Park. Didn't matter that there were solid stone walls with massive timbers above them and that you'd have to climb over to fall - I couldn't stand anywhere near that massive drop. Even being several metres back was frightening.

The dark