Sometimes I think about all my fears that I have and rationalize them. I'll just sit there for minutes and ponder all these different ways to make it seem like this fear is reasonable but I always end up just being disappointed in myself. I mean, is it really that hard not to be afraid of tiny eight legged insects? I don't think so. I'm so much bigger than them and half of them are not even poisonous... So why do I still scream in fright when I see them crawling around the house? I can't give you an answer to that question but I can say that some of it may be because of my mother. Lately she's been creating a "healthy fear" of spiders in my little 3 year old sister. Does she have no shame? Apparently not, and I guess I don't either because sometimes I join in on the fun.
Admittedly, one of those times I got what I deserved because I was trying to scare her by screaming at a dead spider on the floor and she let out a high pitched squeal and almost started crying and I began comforting her and stood nearer and said, "See? It's just a little spider. Besides, it's already dead!" and then I proceeded to scream my heart out as it started crawling towards my foot. Being the caring sister that I am, I was prepared to sacrifice her to the spider. The situation was quickly remedied by my mom squashing the devil with a nearby shoe, but I just guess that was pretty funny because she continued laughing at me for the rest of the day. So should I really have this fear? No, it's stupid. But will I ever stop screaming when I suddenly discover a spider? Nope. I've been working on it and admittedly I've gotten a lot better with dealing with this. I no longer have emotional breakdowns and cry until I'm tired or avoid the room even a week after the spider is dead. But I don't think I'll ever be able to resist jumping away when I see those creepy crawly creatures. Those are meant to stay outside!
Another weird but generally applicable phobia I have is stage fright. I know that a lot of people have worse stage fright than me, but I guess mine is still pretty bad. I hate giving speeches. I always have them planned out perfectly, but the minute I turn around and see an entire room of people staring at me and waiting to hear what I have to say all of that just flies out the window. I stutter and repeat A LOT of the same ideas over and over again. And my hands start to shake and I can't seem to stop fidgeting with my note cards. It's bad. But somehow, apparently they still end up being good. I wouldn't know if my speeches were good or not because as soon as I sit back down I can't remember a thing of what happened. My brain just froze for 15 minutes and not a single memory is retained from that horribly frightening experience. Another event that I have extreme stage fright with is my piano recitals. And this is why I am writing to you about phobias. I have a piano recital to perform in later this afternoon and I'm already becoming jumpy from the nerves running throughout my system. Of course to help with this I am typing out my feelings and thoughts but it's just not getting rid of them. I try to convince myself that it's not that big of deal but my nerves just stomp out any chance of trying to calm myself.
Let my try to do a little recap for you so you understand the severity of my stage fright. When I give a speech, on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being completely calm, my nerves are at about a 6. And normally throughout my day I never get higher than a 2. When I have to socialize with people my nerves reach about a 8, but when I have a piano recital it's about a 15. My whole body starts to shake and my fingers fumble on the keys. I can feel my head shaking in fright and my face heats up. My lip trembles sometimes and even after I sit back down I can feel my heart pounding in my chest and my palms are sweaty and my hands twitch as the adrenaline runs itself out of my system. And for the remainder of the recital I'm fidgeting and my heart doesn't slow. When I finally get out of the building and back into the car to go back home I start to calm down and the result of that ends up being me telling the other person in the car how scared I was and how stupid it was that I was afraid to play my piece in front of about 40 people. I mean, come on! That's pretty pathetic. But still, as the years go on and I participate in more and more recitals I repeat the same procedure.
So to end this post, I ask you, what are your phobias? And are they rational or completely stupid like mine?
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