What are you afraid of?

[Claire]

[FONT=Arial]I know we all can't be completely unscareable. We may not have something we can call our biggest fear, but surely we have things that creep us out.

I'm somewhat the latter. I don't get scared all that much anymore, but I just can't handle somethings for very long.

The dark, for instance. It's not really a problem if I'm in the same room as other people, but I can't be alone in a dark room. It's the feeling of uncertainty, and paranoid thoughts that people are hiding in my closet...as well as not being able to see anything. I'm not afraid of monsters anymore, but I think every single noise I hear outside (such as plants tapping on my window, or that one cat that sometimes comes into my yard and sickly meow) will be the death of me. That's just with the light on.

I'm also terrified of frogs. I was stuck in a bathroom with one a couple weeks ago, and I couldn't help but scream as it hopped around. =(

I suppose there's not much I'm afraid of anymore. I used to be very scared of thunderstorms, but I've gotten over that. I can also watch scary movies now, such as Halloween (which I've yet to see, but I really want to) and The Shining. I haven't seen any recent horror movies, though. They might actually affect me.

So, what are you afraid of? [/FONT]

[Sojiro47]

I'm not really afraid of anything in particular. I'm afraid of situations. Like being tied to train tracks when a train is coming. You know, no way out situations. I've only been in a few of those situations, but it was enough to let me know I'm afaid of another one.

[Guest Prickle Warrior]

I often get scared when walking through the country roads next to my town. I will be walking along in broad daylight which I must say can be very blinding and dazzling when all of a sudden I will hear a rustle in the bushes.

All of a sudden I get a sense of what it could very possibly be and imagine the possibilities that their are ancient warriors or even their ghosts lurking in the trees.

Who's to say that the forests aren't full of giant warbands or tribes of warriors with skilled bowmen and poison arrows.

It really is very uncomforting, especially when I've got hayfever which hurts me and the sun starts to dazzle my eyes and make me hot.

[Mewprincess]

[COLOR=RoyalBlue]*sigh* i may sound like i was trippin, but i'm afraid of trippin (as in walkin over a branch lol) and falling on my stomach while there is a pin facing up on the floor...and i get stabbed :animedepr

i'm also scared of gettin my finger pulled all the way back (cuz u might break it!!!)

last, but not least, i'm soooo terrified of great heights!! i can puke up there...[/COLOR]

[Jubei Yagyou]

I'm only afraid of a few things in particular. I'm really afraid of trying really, really hard on something and getting nothing out of it or someone/thing taking it away from you, but that can be preventable i guess.

What I'm really afraid of is having someone I know die. I guess I am scared of death in general.

[Kurama + Hiei]

well, being the lame person i am:

I'm terrified of people looking at me, so I can't do public speaking, but I can barely keep eye contact with anyone....yeah! That's why the internet is so cool!!

I get really freaked out if other people start to cry right in front of me, I usally start to cry too or I just act really strangly

I'm also afraid of people who smile ALL the time (I'm not joking) the people just freak me out really badly so I never talk to people like that

I'm also afraid of cramped spaces, so i can't go stand in an elavator full of people or i start to just freak out.....yep!! :catgirl:

So that's just some of the many things I'm afraid of!! Meow! :catgirl:

[Andy]

[SIZE=1][COLOR=DarkRed]Hmmm...well I don't suppose there are many things that actually scare me, but there are a few that make me uneasy. Such as, heights, when I get up high or something I usually get all queezy and sick, but not scared. I also used to be afraid of spiders and wasps, which actually, I just got over that fear. Oh and I know it may sound lame but, i'm afraid of scary movies. I don't exactly know why, but I kinda've figured it to be because of when I was a child, my step dad made me watch candyman. And after I watched it, I had nightmares for a week. So I don't suppose there are too many things that scare me, but their are a few[/SIZE][/COLOR] :animeswea

[crazyoveranime]

im afraid of spiders well not small ones but huge ones im ok if their like not on me but if a huge is i'll freak out

[DeathKnight]

[quote name='Prickle Warrior']Who's to say that the forests aren't full of giant warbands or tribes of warriors with skilled bowmen and poison arrows.[/quote]

[color=crimson]Or perhaps even a roving company of Elves? It could happen!

I'm afraid of drowning. Not the water in particular- I can swim pretty well but I just don't like the idea of descending into the murky depths, surrounded by creatures who are native to that environment and never being seen again.

Giant Squid are pretty eerie as well.[/color]

[Anakoni Stark]

[QUOTE=Kurama + Hiei]

I'm also afraid of cramped spaces, so i can't go stand in an elavator full of people or i start to just freak out.....yep!! :catgirl: [/QUOTE]

dont worry you're not the only otaku who suffers from claustrophobia. :animeswea

other known phobias I suffer from:

Acrophobia - extreme or irrational fear of heights.
Glossophobia - the fear of public speaking
Photophbia - aversion to lights
Insectophobia - Fear of insects or bugs

that's all i can think of at the moment.

- Fury

[Sara]

[color=#b0000b][size=1][center][b]Gmork[/b]
[img]http://www.otakuboards.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=25714&stc=1[/img]

[b]Scrunt[/b]
[img]http://www.otakuboards.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=25715&stc=1[/img]

In conclusion, evil wolves with funny names scare me to pieces.[/center][/size][/color]

[Claire]

[FONT=Arial]I used to be scared of wolves, though I don't know why. I also forgot that I'm scared of heights, sharks, and whales.

Heights because of the fear of falling and dying, sharks because of their creepy lifeless eyes and menacing teeth, and whales because they're humongous. I was just reading a story about a whale one night, and I thought to myself, "You know, I'm scared of whales."

I think I'm frightened of sea creatures in general.[/FONT]

[Aaryanna]

[COLOR=SeaGreen]I?m kind of afraid of bugs. Mostly spiders. *shudder* I just hate creepy crawlers. Though to be fair I do like butterflies and dragonflies. I?m not so scared that I run away though. Especially when a spider is inside. I get a shoe or a paper towel and I kill it as I don?t want to wake up in bed later only to find that the spider is in my bed. Yuck!

The one I hate the worse is mosquitoes. Not just because they bite, but because they carry such lethal diseases like the Nile Virus. Our next door neighbor had a bird die in his yard this summer and because it behaved so strange they tested it and it died from the Nile Virus. So I worry that one will bite and infect my dog. We have a bug zapper in our back yard, which does work rather well, but I worry when I walk her that one will get her. [/COLOR]

[Fasteriskhead]

Well, if all we're doing is making a list here, then I would add: fear of slipping (on wet or icy surfaces), fear of the death of friends and loved ones, fear of failure. But at the risk of grinding the thread to a halt (as usual), I would ask whether it might be more useful to try to understanding [i]what fear is[/i] - that is, by making a descriptive interpretation of how it takes hold of us - rather than just having everyone sound off about their own set of anxieties. True, in this way you could get a kind of statistical set of which fears are most [i]common[/i], but that doesn't necessarily say anything about what fear [i]is[/i].

So let's see if we can think about fear for a minute. Let's take a very basic, very common kind of fear - I'm arbitrarily picking stage fright - and see if we can understand what happens to us when we fall into that fear. Hypothetically, let's say that I'm to go out onstage and perform a short monologue in front of a small group (say, 20 people), and I'm scared out of my wits. What am I afraid of? The people? No: even if I don't know any of them, I have no reason to believe they're malicious. The stage? No: the stage is just a raised platform in front of the audience, it's not like it's going to endanger me somehow (unless I fall off). When I have stage fright, I'm not afraid of any [i]particular[/i] thing. So the only thing that can make sense as far as my being fearful must somehow be the situation itself.

I am afraid of something about my going out on stage and performing. The obvious answer to all this is to say: "F*head, look, quit going around in circles. [i]Everyone[/i] knows that stage fright is the fear of public failure and embarrassment." But as "sensible" as this sounds, I have my doubts about it. In my stage fright, I'm perfectly capable of imagining myself failing somehow onstage. I can imagine the results of, say, flubbing my lines badly, or somehow going out "unzipped." Now, with something like this I would obviously be [i]embarrassed[/i], but I know that the audience would probably be understanding and that, hey, life goes on. I can understand perfectly well that even the worst case scenario won't really be that bad, and that I'll survive. And yet, in spite of the fact that I know this very well, [i]I'm still terrified of going onstage[/i].

Stage fright is [i]not[/i] the fear of any particular bad result that might happen. Or, to illustrate this further: we can [i]know[/i] that shots never hurt all that much, but still be afraid of needles; we can [i]know[/i] that shark attacks are incredibly rare and are usually survived, yet still be afraid of swimming in the ocean. Fear in general is never the fear of a bad result. We'll have to try another approach if we're to get a grasp on this.

How do I feel, standing backstage and about to go on? I feel as if my stomach is collapsing into itself; I feel as if the room I'm standing in is shifting away from me in a subtle way that I can't put my finger on; I feel as if my body can no longer hold itself together; I feel as if I'm falling into an abyss. The closer I get to the stage, to the [i]moment[/i] of the performance, the more the anxious, terrible feeling of breaking apart and falling away increases. So we ask even more urgently than before: [i]what[/i] am I afraid of? No particular thing in the theater or beyond, no particular quality of the performance (whether the monologue itself is written well, etc.), no good or bad results that may happen. I can only be afraid of the performance [i]itself[/i], of what it essentially is. As I approach it, the moment of performance shows itself as a kind of abyss; something important will happen there, something will be decided, and what's terrifying isn't what may come about because of this event but the [i]moment of the decision itself[/i].

What I fear in stage fright is the moment where everything is decided, when all practicing and preparation finally gathers itself up and "fate" (if we want to use that word) takes place. The word for this is "crisis" - a crisis is a turning point, a place of impending change. It's a place of [i]possibilities[/i]. But it would be a fatal misunderstanding to hear "possibilities" and only think about a collection of stuff that might or might not happen. I can calculate a half dozen of those kinds of possibilities (results) coming about from a crisis, but possibilities [i]as a whole[/i] is something else entirely. I do not fear one possibility happening, or many; I fear the [i]flood[/i]. In a crisis, the possibilities pull me toward them in a strange way, a terrifying way. There is a sense of sinking, of drowning, of not being able to grab onto something solid and take a breath. Eventually I will be [i]flushed out[/i] somewhere, in one "result" or another, but knowing this has (again) nothing to do with removing the terror of sinking into a crisis in the first place. And this sinking always means: into the sea of possibilities. Stage fright is thus the fear of possibilities as a whole as they confront us in the crisis, i.e. the moment of performance.

Obviously this is just a rough sketch, but I think it makes sense of stage fright much better than just saying "it's fear of screwing up." I don't know how well this applies to other kinds of fear, though; I think it works pretty well for, say, fear of shots or fear of flying, but I don't know if this is what's going on in, say, fear of another's death. I'll have to think on this some more.

[BlackTigerGurl]

[FONT=Arial][COLOR=DarkRed][CENTER]It's easy for me to say what I'm scared of. There are quite a few things. Heights, roaches, the dark, and fear of death. I'm also claustrophobia. There are more but can't think of at the moment.

[B]Heights[/B]-I've been scared of heights ever since my little sister almost fell out of a ferris wheel when she was little. I could nearly picture her falling down to the ground and me just there watching her. After that, I couldn't do any big rollercoaster rides or other rides at amusement parks. Even though, from time to time, I try to break my fear of heights. Doesn't work to well. :animeswea

[B]Roaches[/B]-What can I say. They are disgusting looking. They are all over the place here at my house. When my family and I moved here to the south, we bought an okay house. What we didn't know was that one of the cabinets had a nest of roaches in them!!! :animedepr My mother and I had to clean it out, which was really disgusting. Not only that, but one time I had vaccumed up a roach and it crawled right out of the vaccum and crawled over my foot!!!

[B]The Dark[/B]-When I was little, I would be in my room sleeping, when I would hear banging against the wall. When I opened my door, I could faintly make out the appearance of my father throwing my mother into the wall. I was scared then and still scared now even though my parents are divorced.

[B]Fear of death[/B]-Ever since my two people at my school died, it was the only thing on my mind lately. I'm scared of how I would die, when I would die, and what would I leave behind. I'm also scared of other people dying that I know of. Friends, family, people I work with, anybody. I sometimes wish that there was a way to be immortal so I wouldn't have to die but that is wrong to think that, right?

[B]Cramped Spaces[/B]-I don't know why I'm scared of cramped spaces. I just am. I hate having to many people around me, breathing on me, ect. It just...irritates me. :animeangr

That's about all that I can think that I am scared of. I bet there is a whole lot more if I thought really hard. I'm a real scardy cat. :animeswea [/CENTER][/COLOR][/FONT]

[SunfallE]

[COLOR=RoyalBlue][quote name='Marsh][FONT=Arial']The dark, for instance. It's not really a problem if I'm in the same room as other people, but I can't be alone in a dark room. It's the feeling of uncertainty, and paranoid thoughts that people are hiding in my closet...as well as not being able to see anything. I'm not afraid of monsters anymore, but I think every single noise I hear outside (such as plants tapping on my window, or that one cat that sometimes comes into my yard and sickly meow) will be the death of me. That's just with the light on. [/FONT][/quote]I use to be the same way. I was terrified of being in the dark when I was a kid and I always slept with some sort of night light on. Then when I got older I did a complete about face and now I can?t stand to have any light on when I sleep. I even made special heavy towel curtains so that my room is pitch black when I sleep. If I can?t have complete darkness, which often happened when I was a truck driver due to the wacky hours, I would take a towel and put it over my eyes to simulate darkness just so I can sleep. Somewhere along the line when I switched to wanting it dark, I lost my fear of it.

The other is thunder storms. Although I love how lightening looks and enjoy watching a storm, it still frightens me. It?s a combination of the start of fear with the thrill of how beautiful it is. When I was a kid I would run to my parents room as I was beyond terrified. As an adult, I don?t feel the urge to run, but a bit of the fear is still there. I suppose the fact that three times lightening has struck the ground within one hundred feet of where I was standing has nothing to due with that fear. ^_~[/COLOR]

[Magus]

[QUOTE=SunfallE][COLOR=RoyalBlue]
The other is thunder storms. Although I love how lightening looks and enjoy watching a storm, it still frightens me. It?s a combination of the start of fear with the thrill of how beautiful it is. When I was a kid I would run to my parents room as I was beyond terrified. As an adult, I don?t feel the urge to run, but a bit of the fear is still there. I suppose the fact that three times lightening has struck the ground within one hundred feet of where I was standing has nothing to due with that fear. ^_~[/COLOR][/QUOTE]
I use to fear thunder storms, but I don't really care about it too much nowdays. I think what I will always fear is tornadoes. I haven't experienced one, and I don't plan to do so either. I've had a lot of what I consider as close encounters as a kid, but always managed to get away from them just before a funnel cloud is spotted or before they ever touch down. It was like mother nature had a hit out on me when I always go with my family to some kind of park to go fishing. (hate fishing btw)

[Inu-Hime]

I'm afraid of a lot of things. I've got the usual phobias -- spiders, heights,the dark, hobos. The worst is probably bugs. I can't stand them. I once wore a mosquito repellent to bed because a mosquito got inside. Another one is the telephone. I hate answering and getting phone calls. I'm rather afraid of store clerks too. When shopping and one asks "May help you?" I freeze as if I had just been caught in the middle of murdering someone.

I'm not afraid to admit that I'm a coward.

[DeadSeraphim]

[size=1][color=indigo][font=arial]I'm afraid of snails and slugs. They're dangerous, you know.[/font][/color][/size]

[Sojiro47]

I'm afraid of people who can kill others with a smile. I mean, I am cold hearted, but to kill with a smile. Creepy.... :animeswea

[Ai.sAkUrA.chan]

[FONT=Lucida Sans Unicode]Where to begin..?

Well, for one, I'm terrified of snakes.
I get paranoid whenever I see one, I'll think they're everywhere.
Like I'll sit down, and feel something rub against my arm or so, and start screaming.
*sigh* Do I sound like a freak? XD

Another thing...
Sharks.
Another reason why I get to shaky and paranoid.
Jaws isn't the reason. When I'm in a pool, I can't stand being alone, because I always imagine some white shark coming after me. Again...am I weird?..:S

And let's see...
the ocean. Alot of people find it beautiful and soothing, I just find it
terrifying. Instantly, I'll think of everything that's in it, and how dark it is, it just
creeps me out.
Maybe going alone wouldn't scare me so much, but by myself, oh yeah.

I guess that's all I can really think of right now...I'm sure more will come to me though ^^[/FONT]

[Guest DamagedTime]

I am so scared of cockroaches, I don't care if that can't hurt me. The very thought of one being around me makes me scream and if people mess with me about it only makes it worse.

[Fyxe]

[size=1][color=slategray]Jesus.

Have you ever innocently been driving around and all of the sudden up look up at a billboard and the word "Jesus." is the only thing on it in huge, bold lettering? It's enough to make someone piss their pants.

It's even worse when there is a mural.[/color][/size]

[Jonesy251]

Um, I'm afraid of a lot of things, like hurricanes for one because it knocked my grandparents home right off the foundation and all that was left were a few bricks and one tree in their yard. Scary! I don't care for spiders much either, just the other day I was surprised to find a daddy long-leg in my kitchen and screamed. Lightning scares the crap out of me too because you never know where it's going to strike.

[Xra]

[font=Century Gothic][color=Blue]Shock videos, screamers, or internet pranks turn me into a blubbering blob of Jell-O. Seriously, I've been ripped apart by quite a few and now I can't watch anything on the internet unless the speakers are muted and my mouse is on the close button. I can't even walk in the silent dark without images of screaming faces popping up in my mind!

I [b]hate[/b] paranoia...[/color][/font]