Phobias and other irrational anxieties

[Rev. Justin Timberlake]

Pigeons.

But not as the result of some Hitchcockitty attack, or the unlucky target of fowl defacation.

No, rather from the threateningly self-destructional thought processes stemming from the intrinstic chaotic incoherency of pigeon-thinkerence.

[katya]

I have an anxiety concerning the mentally disabled. It`s just because I don`t understand them and I don`t know what they`re gonna do or how I should act. I only really realized this today as I was at that concert. All the ones I`ve met have been really sweet but still, it makes me really anxious. I`m just not a people person in general, you know.

[Lotesse]

Katya, you should check out this awesome website/blog written by a young woman who is a retarded/developmentally challenged kid's teacher. When I got on this website of hers, I swear I could not stop reading until I'd read the ENTIRE thing through. It took me a few hours, but DAMN it was so worth it! She's amazing. It'll definitely give you a refreshed, funny, revealing, heartwarming and irreverent look into the lives of "tards." For real! It is an awesome site.

http://www.tard-blog.com/

[katya]

Wow, thanks Lotesse! I read through the whole thing too without being able to stop (disregarding a mandatory dinner outing with a couple of suits). Really interesting, refreshing and depressing at the same time. I don`t think you`ve helped my anxiety though. In fact I think it`s just gotten worse....

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

in all seriosness, i do actually have some real phobias:
i can't touch velvet, or foam (not foam which firefighters use, but like stuff from insode sofas and cushions an stuff)
and i can't speak in public, however i can sing in public, which is strange, i know

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

Originally Posted by katya

I have an anxiety concerning the mentally disabled. It`s just because I don`t understand them and I don`t know what they`re gonna do or how I should act. I only really realized this today as I was at that concert. All the ones I`ve met have been really sweet but still, it makes me really anxious. I`m just not a people person in general, you know.

hopefully not those with paranoid schizophrenia, katya? cos we are ok, half the time!

although i have actually been ok for about a year now, and don't even need my medication most of the time

[Tamuril Sirfalas]

Originally Posted by Lotesse

You're kidding; he just attacked you like that? How very Hitchcockian! Why on earth did the crow deliberately claw you; did he think you were some kind of threat or was he just being randomly terrifying? Animals are a trip, sometimes.

i dunno it was crazy tho...mabye i was a threat but still...cant go by crows anymore..i freak out

[Bombadillo]

I was once chased by a kid with Down's syndrome. The talk about retardation and randomly attacking birds reminded me. I'm totally respectful of the mentally challenged, but to this day, it's among the funniest things I've ever seen. One of those things that you'd see in a sitcom or something, but wouldn't be funny unless it actually happened to you, and then it's hilarious. We were riding our bikes through a little patch of woods (for this suburban area, it was a gigantic patch of woods, actually), and he was walking along with his family on a path that intersected our own, until we passed him and he went entirely crazy, hollering, trying to grab us, and chasing us at really surprising speed down the rest of the way. It was maybe two minutes of pedaling away from his screams, and like some twisted, low-budget horror movie, one of my friends was lagging behind the whole time on what was a crappy bike in the first place but also barely able to breathe through his laughter. About two blocks after we escaped we had to lay down in a baseball field and just keep laughing until the pain in our sides made us cry. But really, if you weren't there, don't judge, because I have pity for him; the scene itself would make anybody laugh.

On another note, Chrys, I can see the rationality behind your fear of foam. I call that stuff "70s foam" because it always looks so old and recycled, probably filled with dust and mold and insidious germs that I would never feel comfortable resting on. I'm not paranoid of it, but really I hate that stuff too.

[Lotesse]

Foam is creepy, i've gotta admit. You know what I really hate? Styrofoam. I HATE that stuff. I do NOT understand how people can drink out of styrofoam cups, and the sound it makes when you rub one styrofoam thing against another? *shudder* PLUS, the freakin' stuff gets everywhere on this planet, and screws up the biodynamics of the environment. The fish in the sea eat bits of the stuff thinking that it's food, then of course they die, and the birds too. I hate styrofoam with a passion.

Bombadillo, I swear ta god you have the funniest storylets to tell all the time! That is too funny, the being chased by a screaming tard, while on a bike - I wonder why he was yelling at you guys? Hey, did you ever check out that story blog about the teacher of kids with severe behavior problems and retardation? She's a special ed teacher. It is a must-see - check it out, you guys.http://www.tard-blog.com/

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

styrofoam is what you call polystyrene isn't it?

i ate a polystyrene cup today...i got bored

[Spock]

Originally Posted by Last Child of Ungoliant

styrofoam is what you call polystyrene isn't it?

i ate a polystyrene cup today...i got bored

Yes it is.

and

your eating habits may be the cause of some of your problems.

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

hey, it was actually quite tasty

[hectorberlioz]

Originally Posted by Spock

Yes it is.

and

your eating habits may be the cause of some of your problems.

I eat apples and oranges whole sometimes...though I cut back on the apples, because I was getting bad stomach aches from the cores..(the arsenic!!!)

[Lotesse]

Apple seeds have arsenic? When I was five, my first step-father saved peach-pit interiors in a jar, and made me eat them every day. I come to find out many, many years later that the pit of peach has trace amounts of cyanide in them. He was an insidious freak bastard; he wanted to poison me to death. It's when we lived up in the remote Canadian mountains, too, oh happy memories. I hate fruit pits. There are many very valid reasons why to this day, I have the personality quirks and irrational phobias/anxieties that I do. You would, too, if your stepfather did the things this man did to me, since I was a toddler. (I had 2 son-of-bitch stepfathers; they were both wonderful gifts to the human race. )

[Spock]

And little old ladies, elderberry wine has arsenic in it too.

[hectorberlioz]

Originally Posted by Lotesse

Apple seeds have arsenic? When I was five, my first step-father saved peach-pit interiors in a jar, and made me eat them every day. I come to find out many, many years later that the pit of peach has trace amounts of cyanide in them. He was an insidious freak bastard; he wanted to poison me to death. It's when we lived up in the remote Canadian mountains, too, oh happy memories. I hate fruit pits. There are many very valid reasons why to this day, I have the personality quirks and irrational phobias/anxieties that I do. You would, too, if your stepfather did the things this man did to me, since I was a toddler. (I had 2 son-of-bitch stepfathers; they were both wonderful gifts to the human race. )

How horrid! ...peach cores...I've opened up a few...looks weird.

[jellyfishannah]

Public speaking, definitely. I can be as prepared as anything, know everyone in the room personally and still... I just start stuttering and forgetting everything! I think I generally do not like to have anything I've written criticized. I am very self-conscious about my writing. Because it sucks!

I find it strange that so many people are afraid of spiders. I can sort of understand but they don't really bother me. (Even though I had a pretty scary encounter with a large tarantula a few years ago!) Bees and wasps bother me more. And needles. Ugh.

Snakes never bothered me until I went on a hike with my brother the other day. I turned over a rock and there were a couple baby snakes under there. They both slithered away into a hole. It was so shocking! And the thing that unnerved me was that they didn't really slither. They made a weird flip-flopping motion. But it was so fast! It was unnatural, I tell you!

[Lotesse]

Is THAT what they were on, in "Arsenic and Old Lace?" Elderberry wine? No wonder!

edit - Baby snakes definitely have high creepy-factor going for them, plus if they're poisonous, their venom is much more pronounced when they are babies.

[hectorberlioz]

Snakes in general scare me. (Like my sis, except worse).

I've had some very scary dreams involving snakes: in one, I came out of a tent-it was a bible-ish tent- because they were wiggling in, and when I started walking , I realized that the stuff I was walking on wasnt grass, it was snakes all over! (you know how it is in dreams, stuff transfosms as soon as you think it).

[Lotesse]

Actually, Hector, that sounds like a cool dream - you could think of it, and re-transform the snake-grass into something else entirely, like living spaghetti or something. Or sea anemones.

Here's a description of what eating fruit pits does; apparantly almond pits are the same as peach pits - It's interesting.

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives...7625.Ch.r.html