By specific, I mean not general fears like fear of heights or spiders.
I constantly worry the police are going to kick in my door and shoot my dogs before realizing they have the wrong apartment. Mostly I get this anxiety about it when standing in front of my door putting their leashes on so it has the added fear of being hit in the face by the door when they kick it in.
I can’t look at super close up pictures of insects, like where you can see all the little hairs and shit. Sends shivers down my spine. The worst part is I had to dissect a giant grasshopper in high school anatomy. God I still remember having to rip its mandibles out of its face. Gahh shiver. The cat was much more manageable later on in the year lol
Finding one of my children dead, it has happened once already.
You’re a good parent.
Unlike my parents who are just shitty and would feel relieved if I kms right now.
At least your parents like metric! That’s gotta count!
But seriously, no license is needed to become a parent, one of the greatest responsibilities IMO. Maybe they don’t actually hate you, and just don’t know to parent good. If they hated your guts, why would they (badly?) raise you instead of giving you in adoption the moment you were born?
Bruh, they think I’m useless because I have depression, and they are already threatening to leave zero inheritance if I don’t “snap out of it”. Gee thanks mom, wonder where the depression came from.
Also, idk where you got that metric thing from, their only rubric is “useful” or “human trash”. In China where I was from, they literally do not have a law like the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), they treat people that have health conditions horribly. I’d rather use the imperial system if at least it means I’m not treated like shit (even though recent politics is starting to get shitty).
They just say "You won’t need these (referring to inheretance), you can just get disability income.
Like… did they not pay attention to the news? The US government is declaring war on people with mental health issues.
They are literally just going with the government narrative whereever they are. To them, it’s “work hard or else your a burden on society” and “medicine is for the weak” or some bs
No wonder why PRC is like that. Everyone in government thinks like my parents.
Its the same with American conservatism
Conservatives ruin everything and have zero sympathy. (CCP is conservative if we’re being honest, there is zero “socialism” lol)
(sorry for the rant, feeling very suicidal rn)
(sorry for the rant, feeling very suicidal rn)
Please find someone with whom you can talk.
Thanks for sharing this. Losing a child is so devastating people become pariah, but you’re showing people it happens and people get through it. I’m sorry your child passed, they should still be here today
Work was very supportive of me during that time, excluding my direct supervisor, who nearly ended up being fired over it. I had support from friends that helped as well.
But it being a suicide added so much more taboo to it. His birth giving parent (is a trans man) was raised very religious and had a hard time telling people it was a suicide, so I kept it quiet. Eventually they announced the suicide and me being able to talk about it in that sense really helped me a lot.
I’m glad that you got the support you needed and deserved. I’ve got a lot of respect for your boss fighting so hard for you.
Suicide is really hard, it brings up additional terrible and profound emotions. Having to keep it secret is additional stress, and isn’t a nice secret to keep. Well done for getting through it ❤️
I’m so sorry! It happened to two friends of mine and they were absolutely destroyed, stay strong!
It was 11 1/2 years ago, he would be 29 years this year.
I’m terrified that I smell bad and nobody is telling me.
I had this one friend who smelled like piss one day and everybody I knew was afraid to say something. I sometimes think about that situation and if it was the right thing to brush it off and not tell him or to tell the guy.
If I smelled like piss for just one day, I’d rather never know about it. If I always smelled like piss, I’d rather know.
The MAGAstapo breaks down my door at 2 AM
… seriously? I mean, that sucks, and I’m sorry.
This is seriously a fear of yours? Do you think many others having such fears? What exactly is the magastapo?
It’s the intense feelings, the “us vs them” mentality in politics that hate to the core.
Well all they would have to do is have a green card and have been involved in the “wrong kind” of protest apparently.
You know, every time I mention this I get strange looks (I also have now just realized that makes me sound like I bring this up very often - I’ve done so maybe twice):
My odd specific fear is based around the fact that I have quite a few medical issues, a lot of the symptoms haven’t been resolved yet due to not knowing the root cause. This has been the case for years… I fear that I’ll end up leaving this planet in some strange way that ends up triggering an autopsy being performed on me. The examiner then basically says “Wow, this guy lived a tough life. If only his doctors had known about XYZ, these issues could’ve been easily solved” - and that effectively all of this that I deal with is “for nothing”.
On one hand, I like to think that if seeing numerous specialists for how long I’ve been doing so hasn’t resulted in answers, then it’s probably not super likely that an ME would just randomly find the answer on a simple autopsy.
On the other hand, quite a few of the doctors that I see don’t really listen, and are always in a rush to get you out the door in five minutes… So maybe not.
In the end, I try not to think about it too often - there’s nothing more that I can do, at least not reasonably. I mean sure, I could go to medical school and try to become a doctor and hope by then I have the knowledge to diagnose myself, but I wouldn’t really call that “reasonable”. Plus, I hear doctors make terrible patients.
TLDR
And that’s fine, at the end of the day, I’m not forcing you or anyone else to read it. OP asked for a specific fear, and I responded - that’s all.
I get this it’s a valid fear. What’s your gut instinct about it?
Hmm, do you mean whether they’d find an answer (or even what the answer might be)? If so, it’s tough to say.
Edit: This is a much longer response than I intended to give… My bad!
One of the issues I’ve been dealing with for example is I’m constantly incredibly tired. The feeling that most people have when they first wake up for a couple of minutes where they’re not fully awake even though they’re “physically awake” is the closest I can describe it, except I have it all day most of the time.
Doesn’t matter how much sleep I get, the result ends up pretty much being the same. I do often have sleep issues, but sometimes I think that it’s a cyclical result of me being too tired throughout the day and thus not doing enough, and so my brain doesn’t think that it’s time to sleep because I haven’t done anything (but then because I don’t sleep well, the next day I still end up doing “not enough” because I’m even more tired from the lack of sleep)… I’m not even sure if that makes sense, but when I bring it up to doctors they don’t seem to think it’s a crazy theory.
Trying to find out the root cause though has not been easy, as sadly lethargy and fatigue are very generic symptoms - the amount of things that can cause it (even on a chronic level like mine) is… quite a list. And then if you eliminate one, that doesn’t mean that others aren’t affecting you either.
So for example, it’s common for me to be low on iron and other essential vitamin levels because I have Crohn’s Disease which one of the side effects is that you have a hard time absorbing those nutrients. Nowadays I consistently see a hematologist who checks for these things, and I can have iron infusions done to fix low iron levels.
A couple of years ago, my results were so low that the lab tech called my doctor saying it was dangerously low, who then called me at 8PM in the day saying that I needed to drop what I was doing and go straight to the ER for an emergency blood transfusion. One of the jobs of iron to my understanding is to be a binder for oxygen so that it can be carried throughout your body - if it gets too low, you risk your organs basically not getting enough.
Then last year we found out my testosterone levels were practically that of an 80 year old man - I’m in my late 20s… So I had to start TRT, and everyone hoped that would be the magical fix - sadly, it wasn’t (though it still needed to be addressed anyways). That however comes with its own issues.
Now they want me to get a sleep study done because their next idea is that I might just never (or very rarely) be entering REM sleep - if you don’t enter REM sleep, then you’re pretty much not actually sleeping (an 8 hour sleep without REM is practically just an 8 hour “power nap”). But even if that were the case, and we got it fixed, there’s still no guarantees that there isn’t some other issue that is triggering the fatigue.
As to my gut feeling, I know there is certainly an answer - I just don’t know what the answer is. But there is absolutely zero chance that the majority of the humans on this planet can go about their lives and actually be awake with enough energy to do “normal things” such as work an 8 hour day, and that I’m somehow that unique to just be missing some vital gene or such, especially when I used to be among those people. I haven’t even hit my thirties yet!
Somewhere along the way, something went critically wrong and I lost that “ability”, but as to what that “something” is I unfortunately just don’t know because after all these years I’ve exhausted the list of things I think it could be based off my limited medical knowledge (I of course never went to medical school, but living with an autoimmune disease since before you even started puberty you do at least learn a little bit).
I guess the other tangential fear I have is that I’ll spend the rest of my “good years” trying to figure this out, and that eventually the doctors will just blame it on old age. Time only flows in one direction, once March 16th 2025 has come and gone, it’ll never swing by again - there’s no do-over if they just don’t find the answer in time.
Mate that’s rough, it’s a lot of stress and you’ve got some horrible symptoms. No wonder you’re worried
God I relate to this so hard. So many doctors just dismissing the constant pain I go through, so many times I seriously just sit and think “What if it’s something stupid that nobody is thinking of.”
I hate the state of medical service in the United States. Most expensive medical care in the world, but if you’re poor, you’re wasting the doc’s time.
It really makes me wish I could turn back the clock. When I was a kid, my pediatric GI was very aggressive with my treatment - each appointment that I had she would ask how I’m feeling and if the answer was anything less than “I feel fantastic!” then she would start to come up with a way to pivot my treatment along with finding more tests (where applicable) to continue trying to tackle the issues. All other answers meant there was still work to be done.
As a kid it wasn’t something that I understood and could appreciate, from my limited perspective it just looked like she kept wanting to put me on new things that had the potential to make me feel even more sick (I vividly remember having to take a course of antibiotics at one point that made me sick for weeks), or to be put through more machines, have more of my blood taken, etc. I’d do anything to get that back though, as you mentioned, doctors are incredibly dismissive.
I don’t even know when doctors (at least here in the US) started to turn sour. Even as a kid, before I got referred to GI my PCP was incredibly dismissive of my concerns and that of my parents - their “best” theory for why I was practically just skin and bones came down to “He probably has an eating disorder that you’re not aware of”. The other thing I liked about my pediatric GI was that she spoke to me, not “about” me to my parents. Even though my parents obviously don’t go to my doctors appointments now, in a way it still feels like I’m being “spoken about” rather than spoken to with most of the doctors I see.
In comparison, almost all other people that I’ve interacted with in the medical world are fantastic - lab techs, nurses, nurse practitioners, phlebotomists, etc. Its just the doctors that are terrible.
I constantly hear about how medical science is so advanced, but with the way doctors generally act… well, “could’ve fooled me” is usually my words on that.
I have similar feelings about my partner. They’re constantly in and out of the doctor’s office for a variety of medical issues. It would be nice if there were at least some sort of diagnosis. Like we have family and friends say “oh it’s good that the tests for all of those things came back negative” like it somehow means her symptoms will stop since she wasn’t diagnosed. Every time I hear it, the voice in the back of my head goes “how is not knowing the best case scenario?” At least if you have a diagnosis, you can work on treating the root cause.
Yep, I definitely am all too familiar with that experience. I’ve tried to accept that this usually comes from a genuinely good place - people often don’t know how to interpret the news and want to say something positive. But sometimes I wish for more honesty of “Wow, that fucking sucks, I’m sorry”. Most of the time I don’t even share the (lack of) updates anymore unless its very explicitly asked for.
That all being said, I do hope your partner gets some good news soon - I truly feel for them. Not knowing creates problems of its own.
Waking up to find my partner dead. I used to leave for work while she was still deeply asleep so every morning before I kissed her goodbye I would have that moment of terror that when my lips touch her she would be cold.
Thalassophobia, aka fear of deep water. No problem being in a boat, but swimming in it is a no-go. I can swim in swimming pools, but the larger the body of water (ponds, lakes, ocean, etc) the larger the fear. I think it has something to do with not being able to see through the depth of the water? Strangely enough, the idea of being in space doesn’t bother me at all.
I also tried Subnautica (based on recommendations) like a dumbass, played it for 20 minutes and had a panic attack. Uninstalled!
I’d like to try you out on the swamp down the street. You can see the bottom almost everywhere, it’s that clear. But there’s at least one gator in it and certainly cotton mouths along the shoreline.
(Given their typical territory, probably only 1, maybe 2, gators. They’re shy as hell in any case, have barely glimpsed it.)
I’m gonna nope out of that, dawg.
I can’t look at super close up pictures of insects, like where you can see all the little hairs and shit. Sends shivers down my spine. The worst part is I had to dissect a giant grasshopper in high school anatomy. God I still remember having to rip its mandibles out of its face. Gahh shiver The cat was much more manageable later on in the year lol
I dont want to hold babies. I have a fear that I will drop it and I am not sure what I would say to the parents. Im not sure what is going to happen when I have kids
Im not sure what is going to happen when I have kids
For me, it went like this:
- I’m afraid I’ll drop or hurt this tiny helpless child.
- But this tiny helpless child can’t even go drink milk by itself.
- I guess I can only make things better helping it get milk. I’ll just be really careful.
- That wasn’t so bad. I guess I can do this.
Then repeat in stages every 15 minutes or so as it needs diapers, or cuddles to warm up, or cleaned, or milk again, or diapers again.
Until eventually I’m confidently picking it up in a moment of complete terror so that it won’t run out into traffic.
This does make me feel better. My wife keeps saying I need to hold babies to get over it (I suppose similar to your experience, hold it and realize it ain’t that bad). We’ll see how it goes. I don’t plan on having kids until I finish grad school though so I do have some time to prepare myself to face my fear: baby droppin. Thank you kind stranger for the words of wisdom
LOL, I got over that early. Dropped a cousin on her baby head as a child.
Did she die?
That this 80 year old psychopath has nukes and when he faces a fatal medical diagnosis is 100% of the “if i cant have it nobody will” mentality. Now that I think of it there are at least 2 more of these type of psychos leading nations sitting on nuclear arsenals now. Yea, we’re fucked! Shoulda scuttled nukes while we had a chance. Certainly before we elected a toddler with a loaded handgun.
Oh, something political related? You should get outta the house more…
Is it really you?
No, but its a fun joke
Haha agreed. Although I still have yet to get the DM.
That while I’m driving I’ll have to sneeze while driving across a bridge and during that split second while my eyes are closed and I’m distracted by the sneeze I’m going to drive off the edge.
That is wonderfully specific!
That I’ll die before my kids are adults and I won’t be there to prepare them for the world.
Losing all of my memories, and therefore proof that I’ve lived, to hereditary dementia.
I’ve tried to live a good life, and tried to be a good influence around me. My secret fear is suddenly dying in public, and farting like some corpses.
I want to be remembered as a good coworker or friend, etc., not as the guy who farted loudly after dying.
Speak for yourself; If I could be remembered by a fart that rattled the souls of everyone nearby, I’d die happy.
My family finding out about my fictional crushes, showing that I’ve got a superbly weird taste in fictional men.
Turn that into your armour. I threaten my friends and family with my search history so they’ll never be tempted to snoop.
