(no subject)
Fun apartment-warming party last night for uta_o_utau and Lindsay, now living in an unnervingly grown-up looking place in an impossibly hip area of Minneapolis. Their street is crawling with dive bars and coffee shops and 'ethnic' restaurants and hipsters and starving artists and college grads and friendly wandering punks with nice dogs. (I met a couple of the punk/puppy pairs on my walk to the apartment.)
I was quite intimidated by the presence of newly purchased furniture and sofa cushions that matched and a bed that looked as though it came out of a catalogue, and told Emily that she was clearly too adult for me now and we probably couldn't be friends any more, because my bed isn't nearly so coordinated, and our furniture is mostly bought used or foraged. But then she gave me wine in a cup with cartoons on it and we started looking around at the hilariously post-modern junk museum they've made out of the little ledge that runs around the wall of the living room and it was all okay again.
Much hilarity. I don't remember any of what was funny now but I laughed until my stomach hurt, and we stayed until almost 2 AM. Good times.
I'd taken the bus there, but bummed a ride for the way back, and the conversation turned for a while towards the ever-interesting subject of irrational fears. Something one person said stuck in my head -- she mentioned that, although she'd been completely unafraid of the dark and even somewhat fascinated by it as a little kid, as an adult it terrifies her, and now she sleeps with a nightlight. It turned out that all four of us in the car had things we're irrationally afraid of, akin to the child's fears of the monster in the closet, and that in fact some of us still fear monsters in the closet, quite literally.
Thinking about it turned it into...
Anna's Inquiring Mind, Episode #12784.433
What was your greatest irrational fear as a child? Do you retain it now? If not, when and how did you get rid of it?
What is your greatest irrational fear as an adult? Any idea where it comes from?
.... Hopefully this one isn't too personal to keep people from answering, because I'm really curious.
I'm going to sort of squish the two parts together, since the answer that comes to mind is the same for both questions.
Ever since I was about six or seven, I've been terrified of having my lower legs touched. I remember getting up in the middle of the night to pee and leaping on and off the edge of the bed so as to land several feet away from it, because I had an idea that there might possibly be someone underneath who would reach out and touch my ankles. Not hurt me, not kill me, not drag me under the bed -- just touch my ankles. And I have a very vivid memory of playing a tag game with my mother in a friend's pool, and of her swimming up underwater and grabbing my calves. I freaked out completely, and kneed her in the eye, really hard. Completely involuntary reaction. And I was terrified for a good ten or fifteen minutes afterward, not just because I had hurt my mom and she was mad, but because I could still feel where she had grabbed me, and just the memory of the feeling scared me witless.
This fear has lessened a little bit with time -- at any rate, I can now refrain from hitting and getting angry at people when it's triggered. There also seems to be some sort of unconscious 'safe list' of people I trust enough that having my lower legs touched or grabbed by them doesn't freak me out -- it's not very consistent, but all of the people on it are people I'm emotionally close to, and it seems to be easier to get on it if you're young and female, and hardest if you're older and male. (My poor dad is still not on it. Even Stephan only got on it in the last six months or so. But so far so good with girlfriends.)
The 'hypersensitivity' to touch extends across my whole lower leg starting just above the knee, but it's worst towards the ankle. The instant someone who's not on the 'safe list' touches me unexpectedly, I feel absolutely terrified, threatened, paralyzed, vulnerable, helpless and furiously angry. Something as simple as a doctor taking hold of my foot to do a reflex test on my knee makes me tear up and want to scream and kick out.
I've always been really, really wary of exploring the origins of this fear. Several people who know about it in detail (including a couple of psychiatrists) have suggested that maybe someone tried to molest me when I was little and I repressed it. I think these irrational fears can develop quite easily from much less horrible incidents, and I have no interest in going through some horrifying memory recovery process that has the potential to create false recollections and whatnot. I'm pretty much okay with just looking like a shrieky prude if someone flirtatiously grabs my knee at a party. (Although it's annoying if it happens to freak me out enough that I have to go cry somewhere for a while, which has happened a couple of times.)
So yeah. TMI, maybe. But there you go. Just in case any of you were thinking of hiding under my couch and snatching at me when I pass by.... don't. Ever. Really.
I was quite intimidated by the presence of newly purchased furniture and sofa cushions that matched and a bed that looked as though it came out of a catalogue, and told Emily that she was clearly too adult for me now and we probably couldn't be friends any more, because my bed isn't nearly so coordinated, and our furniture is mostly bought used or foraged. But then she gave me wine in a cup with cartoons on it and we started looking around at the hilariously post-modern junk museum they've made out of the little ledge that runs around the wall of the living room and it was all okay again.
Much hilarity. I don't remember any of what was funny now but I laughed until my stomach hurt, and we stayed until almost 2 AM. Good times.
I'd taken the bus there, but bummed a ride for the way back, and the conversation turned for a while towards the ever-interesting subject of irrational fears. Something one person said stuck in my head -- she mentioned that, although she'd been completely unafraid of the dark and even somewhat fascinated by it as a little kid, as an adult it terrifies her, and now she sleeps with a nightlight. It turned out that all four of us in the car had things we're irrationally afraid of, akin to the child's fears of the monster in the closet, and that in fact some of us still fear monsters in the closet, quite literally.
Thinking about it turned it into...
Anna's Inquiring Mind, Episode #12784.433
What was your greatest irrational fear as a child? Do you retain it now? If not, when and how did you get rid of it?
What is your greatest irrational fear as an adult? Any idea where it comes from?
.... Hopefully this one isn't too personal to keep people from answering, because I'm really curious.
I'm going to sort of squish the two parts together, since the answer that comes to mind is the same for both questions.
Ever since I was about six or seven, I've been terrified of having my lower legs touched. I remember getting up in the middle of the night to pee and leaping on and off the edge of the bed so as to land several feet away from it, because I had an idea that there might possibly be someone underneath who would reach out and touch my ankles. Not hurt me, not kill me, not drag me under the bed -- just touch my ankles. And I have a very vivid memory of playing a tag game with my mother in a friend's pool, and of her swimming up underwater and grabbing my calves. I freaked out completely, and kneed her in the eye, really hard. Completely involuntary reaction. And I was terrified for a good ten or fifteen minutes afterward, not just because I had hurt my mom and she was mad, but because I could still feel where she had grabbed me, and just the memory of the feeling scared me witless.
This fear has lessened a little bit with time -- at any rate, I can now refrain from hitting and getting angry at people when it's triggered. There also seems to be some sort of unconscious 'safe list' of people I trust enough that having my lower legs touched or grabbed by them doesn't freak me out -- it's not very consistent, but all of the people on it are people I'm emotionally close to, and it seems to be easier to get on it if you're young and female, and hardest if you're older and male. (My poor dad is still not on it. Even Stephan only got on it in the last six months or so. But so far so good with girlfriends.)
The 'hypersensitivity' to touch extends across my whole lower leg starting just above the knee, but it's worst towards the ankle. The instant someone who's not on the 'safe list' touches me unexpectedly, I feel absolutely terrified, threatened, paralyzed, vulnerable, helpless and furiously angry. Something as simple as a doctor taking hold of my foot to do a reflex test on my knee makes me tear up and want to scream and kick out.
I've always been really, really wary of exploring the origins of this fear. Several people who know about it in detail (including a couple of psychiatrists) have suggested that maybe someone tried to molest me when I was little and I repressed it. I think these irrational fears can develop quite easily from much less horrible incidents, and I have no interest in going through some horrifying memory recovery process that has the potential to create false recollections and whatnot. I'm pretty much okay with just looking like a shrieky prude if someone flirtatiously grabs my knee at a party. (Although it's annoying if it happens to freak me out enough that I have to go cry somewhere for a while, which has happened a couple of times.)
So yeah. TMI, maybe. But there you go. Just in case any of you were thinking of hiding under my couch and snatching at me when I pass by.... don't. Ever. Really.