Fears
We all have something we fear. Some are common, some not, but there are few terrors we all share equally. But our fears are rarely static.
I used to be quite afraid of spiders. However, when I learned how beneficial the creatures are in keeping down the population of my even less savory insectoid neighbors, I forced myself to get used to them. I still instinctively do the spastic dance when I walk through a web — jumping back, arms flailing about, looking like a loon to passers-by — but I don't go through the rest of the day checking my clothes for a passenger.
I used to have a terrific fear of drowning, too, caused in no small part by nearly drowning as a child. Moving to Florida seems to have eroded that fear, although I suspect I wouldn't react well to diving. That point is moot, since my misbehaving sinuses eliminate that from my recreational options.
And while I used to have a terror of growing old and dying alone, well... let's just say you grow into some fears.
I have one fear, though, that still drives me batshit insane: taphephobia, the fear of being buried alive. It isn't quite claustrophobia, although it is obviously related. I can be in a small room, crawl under a bed, or fly coach without a problem. But if you immobilize my shoulders, I'm done.
While it doesn't come up often (thankfully), the fear is still annoying in its intensity. As an example, in checking out Google's new movie trailer service I accidentally clicked the link for The Descent. If you don't know, this movie is about a group of tough women spelunkers who go into an unexplored cave and get killed off one by one until the movie is over. (Okay, I'm making an assumption about that last part, but this isn't high art we're talking about.) About ninety seconds into the trailer, one of the women says "I'm stuck!" and the camera shows her upper body sticking through a narrow hole.
My heart started racing, I couldn't catch my breath, my eyes blurred enough that I had trouble hitting the stop button on the video player, but most of all I was furious. This betrayal of my body and my subconscious makes me crazy. I was sitting in the middle of my living room with windows all around me and not a cavern in sight, and I was irrationally trembling like a child. Once I had killed the video it took me a half hour to get back to normal.
Unlike spiders, I am not willing to let myself be buried alive in order to confront my fear. I will have to chip away at it rationally until it becomes manageable. I certainly don't want to eliminate it entirely — after all, taphephobia is a legitimate fear. Just not to this extreme.
5 Comments:
I don't think this is taphephobia, but your post reminded me of some my own recurrent unpleasant weirdness.
Sometimes when I wake up, I can't move. It strikes at random, although more infrequently than a few years ago. This describes a typical episode:
I gain consciousness in the fuzzy-headed space between dreaming and wide awake. I am dimly aware of my own body sprawled across the bed. Time to get up. I fire off a few synapses; nothing happens. Confusion. Let me try the arm; nothing. A creeping panic crawls into my amygdala. Move something, damn it, anything, just flail! My eyes flutter, but that's about it. In my head, I frickin' breakdance on crack. My body manages a few disjointed twitches, but nothing coordinated. The creeping panic chokes out my amygdala and germinates into a bloom of terror. Thought without motion.
A sudden rush of control hits me (electrical, but less scientific), and I almost leap off the damn bed. Hop around, move everything at once, so good to move again! Just keep moving, don't stop!
Calm returns, and I slow down, try to get breakfast started without being spastic about it. I think about how much I hate waking up this way. I shiver at the memory of screaming in my head while my body lay inert as a corpse.
I make a lot of coffee.
Nic, I know that feeling exactly. There's a medical explanation for it, but my own brain is fuzzy today, so I can't recall it at the moment.
NFK, that happens to me too! But never when it's time to wake up. Sometimes just in the middle of then night. I feel a desire to move and wake up but some creepy feeling of being drawn into darkness comes over me. The physical sensation is like when your foot falls asleep, but I feel it all over, pulsing on and off. I often think, am I dying?
Luckily it passes and I go back to sleep.
I am sure there is a neurological explanation for this. (Scully talking here.)
The thingee in your brain that keeps you from sleepwalking, or from actually acting out what you're dreaming, is still in gear as you wake up. So it does feel like you're paralyzed, but you're conscious, then you get this adreneline rush because you think you're paralyzed, and now you're really awake.
Wow, that's some of the same things that I've experienced. I almost drowned as a kid and I was afraid of the water for a while but got over it. I remember flipping under water multiple times to get myself over it, in a pool and the exhiliration I got from the fear and moving beyond it. Same thing about feeling cramped or immobilized, ESPECIALLY when I see or Gf, feel stuck when I'm sleeping (in a sleeping bag or anything). I've always guessed that it is the human need to feel in-control and unfettered to fend for yourself. Thanks for the new nightmares KEVIN! ;)
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