IRRATIONAL FEARS ALL UP IN THIS THREAD

[katiuska]

See, I distinguish between fear of bodily harm from disgust/anxiety at the thought of touching something disgusting. Roaches are disgusting, and I don't want to see one, but they won't hurt me. I guess this is why that's an irrational fear, but I'm always vaguely aware of this knowledge, so I spend more time fearing things that could pose a threat, even if they never will (dark/remote places, heights, other people).

Originally Posted by Overcast

Death.

At the age of four I was vaguely aware of death, but like most kids was unaware that it might affect me. At five I was, for any odd reason or another, able to reason out that in fact it did. For the next five years I couldn't get a proper night of sleep without quietly sobbing myself insane about the possibility of death grabbing me in the night. The terrible cold of nothingness and unknown after death regarding me fondly and keeping me sick with paranoia.

At age ten I began desperate binges of imagination to distract myself from it, keeping my brain as busy as I could in order to escape the troubles. From time to time that failed and I would be crying myself insane once again.

At age thirteen I began self-actualizing a personal dream that some day science was going to save me from this terrifying experience and aid me in becoming immortal, and all I had to do was live long enough. The fear of death wasn't gone, just redirected to an obsession with immortality.

I began to get reasonable sleep.

I still have a personal desire for immortality to this day. I won't stop hoping until I hit the century mark, and then the world might well start being afraid because I'm unsure what my mind will do to help me get over the fear.

I fail to see how this is irrational. As Lore puts it, "When you're dealing with something that's both undesirable and inevitable, you kind of have to wonder who's the unbalanced one, the person who treats impending mortality with the paralyzing fear it deserves, or the rest of us who manage to avoid thinking about it in favor of, say, whether our Liquid Paper has the viscosity we deserve."