Fears are feelings that are very common and are normal reactions to objects or events. They are unpleasant emotions and an emotional response caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.
Phobias are extreme or irrational fears or aversions to something.
Differences between fears and phobias:
- Fears are an emotional response to a real or perceived threat.
- Phobias are not common and are a form of an anxiety disorder. They are characterised by intense and irrational fears of an object or situation that pose no real threat. Phobias are so strong that they interfere with people’s daily lives.
- Phobias are similar to fears but the difference is that phobias are so strong that they interfere with a person’s quality of life and/ or their ability to function in their daily life.
My Five Fears are:
1.Letting people know how much I weigh… the high number and scales. Ugh!
- I have a fear of telling people what my actual weight is and/or weighing myself in front of people.
- I think my fear stems from the fact that I am very embarrassed and ashamed of my weight.
- Even though rationally I know others do not really care what I weigh, somehow I feel they will be equally ashamed of my weight as I am.
- However, I will weigh myself at the doctor’s office when I have to, but believe me I try to talk my way out of getting weighed.
2.Unplanned Fires! Yikes!
- I have a fear of having an unwanted and unexpected dangerous fire start, such as a house fire.
- I do everything I can to prevent those type of fires from happening.
- I will never light or leave candles burning in my home because they could accidentally start a fire. No beautiful candles lighting up my home spreading the beautiful aroma of lilac and lavender throughout my home.
- I check and double-check my burners on my stove to make sure they are off.
- I also make sure all unnecessary cords are unplugged in my house before I leave my house to go anywhere.
- However, I am not afraid of fire that is lit on purpose.
- I love sitting around a huge bonfire and roasting marshmallows and making and eating S’mores… Yum!
- I am not afraid to light a gas grill and I love grilling out.
- I am always the one that lights the many birthday candles on a birthday cake.
3. Bats!!! Bats!!! Bats… Screeeam!
- Bats are the ugliest and scariest creatures in the world. I am deathly afraid of bats.
- I believe my extreme fear of bats began one evening when I was sleeping very peacefully in my bed and was awakened by a loud rhythmic banging noise. I opened my eyes to see a bat flying around my ceiling and swooping down very close to my head.
- I did what most people would do when there is a bat in your house. I pulled the blankets up over my head and screamed bloody murder. After screaming for a minute or so I realized that was not going to help anything. The bat continued his horrific flying motion aimed at my head.
- Being the brave woman I am hahaha… I peaked over my covers and quickly opened my bedroom door so that bat would leave. The bat flew out of my room and then I stayed in my bed, threw my blankets back over my head and screamed very loudly again.
- After screaming for at least two to three more minutes, I realized I was the only that could take care of this horror story that was happening in my home and that I had to do something about the very ugly, scary, disgusting vampire dracula bat creature flying around inside my home. So, I jumped very quickly out of my bed to my phone and dialed 911… hahaha…
- The 911 operator gave me the telephone number for animal control who I quickly called.
- I waited outside my house for animal control to arrive expecting them to be dressed in full body armor protection gear to capture this horrible creature.
- However, out comes this nice young man in regular clothes carrying a tiny little net.
- He caught the bat and asked me if I wanted to let the bat go back outside.
- I was horrified. No way I did not want this gross disgusting bat creature to be freed to go back outside just so it could fly back in my home and visit me again. No way.
- Plus, I wanted to make sure this bat did not have rabies. So the young man took the scary bat creature with him to get him tested for rabies.
- A few days later I heard the good news that my unwanted bat guest did not have rabies. Hooray.
- I had about four more unwelcome scary bat visitors in my house that summer before I finally bat proofed my home. Each time a bat visited me inside my house I got braver and got better at dealing with the ugly scary flying creatures. However, I am still scared to death of bats.
- When bats are flying around outside and swooping down towards my head, I still scream and run to my car usually holding something big over the top of my head so they cannot attack me.
4.Guns!
- I hate guns and I am afraid of guns because they can kill and hurt people and animals.
- If someone is suicidal and they have a gun in their home and they use it to try to kill themselves, that is it. There are no second chances or changing their minds. That suicide attempt is usually fatal or deforms their face or causes severe brain damage if they do survive their self-inflicted gun shot wound.
- Guns can get in the hands of children or others and can fire accidentally and kill or injure someone or an animal.
- I hate guns and am afraid of guns. I do not ever want one in or near my home.
5.Going to the Doctor’s Office or Clinic:
- I absolutely hate going to my doctor appointments.
- Lately for some reason when it is time for a scheduled appointment my mind becomes filled with an overwhelming dread of going and I skip my appointment.
- I know I need to go to my doctor appointments, especially because I am getting older.
- I make my necessary appointments just fine, but when it comes time to go to my scheduled appointment I become blocked frozen and cannot seem to force myself to go to my appointments lately
- Recently I rescheduled all of my missed and necessary appointments. I have about 7 different appointments to go to starting next week. Oh boy! Yippeee…
- I guess having so many different doctor appointments is one of the many blessings of aging.
- I think I have this very unfortunate fear of going to my doctor appointments because I was so sick with my bipolar symptoms for so many years that I basically lived at the clinic seeing my Psychiatrist sometimes two days a week, being hospitalized almost every three to four months on average for about four years after my full-blown manic episode and also having to go to the hospital many times to receive my many ECT (Electro convulsive therapy) treatments.
- I am very determined to make it to all of my upcoming appointments. I have to go to these appointments and cannot put them off anymore.
Don’t be scared… God is in control!
Thanks for reading.
Hugs and blessings to you.
My Loud Whispers of Hope 