Phobias other than guns?

View · by **Tronster** on Sat Mar 08, 2014 9:44 pm

Is it weird that I'm totally comfortable handling and shooting guns with full awareness of my muzzle discipline, but I become really uncomfortable around bladed objects?

If my wife is cutting something in the kitchen, I have to look away or leave the room. I have this constant nagging anticipation that each cut with a blade will result in a severe flesh wound to the bone or a finger getting cut off. I'm nervous when I have to handle a knife in the kitchen and I end up being even more dangerous with it because I hold it wrong. I even prefer to open packages with a flat bladed screwdriver instead of a boxcutter. I'm more nervous and cautious around a 12" bayonet than I am around the rifle it goes on.

So is this abnormal or unussual in the realm of weapons and bladed objects?

View · by **Erud** on Sat Mar 08, 2014 9:50 pm

It is abnormal and irrational.

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View · by **LarryFlew** on Sat Mar 08, 2014 9:56 pm

I've sliced a thumb twice and still keep my knives razor sharp and still use them BUT anyone can have a phobia about just about anything.

View · by **coltpython123** on Sat Mar 08, 2014 10:09 pm

I'm a butcher and have worked around knives and saws all my life I just recently seen a guy put his hand into a meat tenderizer it took his hand down to the second knuckle on three fingers I now have a phobia with that machine

View · by **OldmanFCSA** on Sat Mar 08, 2014 10:24 pm

While butchering deer one year nany years ago, one person made a comment "how can this deer still be bleeding 3 days after hanging him to age?" Then someone pointed out it was he that was bleeding, not the deer. After that we sent all our deer to the butcher, who was one of our hunting partners. (Jefferson IA)

View · by **xd ED** on Sat Mar 08, 2014 10:36 pm

Possibly because you can more readily relate/ empathize with the pain a knife can produce?
We can all rationalize on an intellectual level the damage a firearm can inflict. But most have some personal experience of being cut. I know I respond quite differently to photos of gun shot victims vs someone whose been sliced up- in part no doubt because they are more graphic, but also because I can better imagine the pain.

View · by **smurfman** on Sat Mar 08, 2014 11:39 pm

No phobias regarding firearms or blades but I do have two major ones regarding spider webs (not so much spiders themselves though) and needles.

Spider webs freak me out big time. I can hardly stay in a room if one hits me in the face, neck, or any other bare skin. I don't know what it is but it is something I avoid almost to the point of pain.

Needles are another. Not sewing needles but hypodermic ones. That is odd as part of my profession encompasses the EMS field. If needed I could stick another person as I have done so in the past but don't point a needle at me. I say that having gotten a fish hook stuck in my nose when I was a kid and having to watch the needle being poked into my nose literally right in front of my eyes may have had something to do with it but I've been told my fear of needles goes even further back.

I would have counted my wife's driving in bad weather but the definition did include the word "unreasonable" didn't it?

View · by **Rodentman** on Sun Mar 09, 2014 9:05 am

I have sat for many hours of tattooing with no issue, but I have fear of the dentist. I also have a rather strong aversion to stinging insects.

View · by **Evad** on Sun Mar 09, 2014 9:42 am

Rodentman wrote:I also have a rather strong aversion to stinging insects.

I have no problem admitting that when a bee is near, I will run and flail like a little girl.

View · by **xd ED** on Sun Mar 09, 2014 10:18 am

Rodentman wrote:I have sat for many hours of tattooing with no issue, but I have fear of the dentist. I also have a rather strong aversion to stinging insects.

What about cats?

For me, it's snakes: when I was a little kid we lived at Ft Bliss TX, and I spent hours beating the tumbleweeds with a forked stick hoping to catch a rattlesnake- that was age 6. Today seeing a snake is like an electrical shock. It was all I could do a few years ago to capture ( I stepped on it for several minutes before I mustered the nerve to touch it) and pick up a 10" ribbon snake to show to some kids….

View · by **Rodentman** on Sun Mar 09, 2014 10:34 am

No, pusses are my friends. They help me read the paper...

View · by **bensdad** on Sun Mar 09, 2014 5:48 pm

I'm so afraid of rats and mice that I have to have bensmom empty traps... of which there are many. We have a horse barn for hecksake. When one falls into the tray under the hay rack and can't get out, I gotta go get my wife or one of my kids to get it out. I actually knock on the door to my own root cellar before I go in. I feel like the mice or other rodentia will find a corner to hide in if I give them a heads-up.

View · by **Rodentman** on Sun Mar 09, 2014 6:35 pm

Those nasty, beady-eyed, stinky, nefarious pests!

View · by **Snakeman721** on Mon Mar 10, 2014 5:13 am

I can see that XD Ed and Bensdad won't be paying me a visit anytime soon as I happen to have a few snakes and rodents in my house on purpose.....

I used to have a phobia about stinging insects that can fly ever since a yellow jacket stung me (for no apparent reason...I wasn't harassing it) when I was 8. I've more or less overcome that phobia by learning everything I can about wasps and hornets but still get edgy when I see one of their big paper nests hanging in a tree or under an eave. Right now, I can't really think of anything that would make me run the other way screaming and flailing my arms like a little girl....unless someone dropped one of those hornet nests at my feet....

View · by **smurfman** on Mon Mar 10, 2014 8:52 am

I also look at those paper-like wasp nests with a jaundiced eye too. Most of them seem to be Bald-Faced Hornets and they are plain, flat out mean. It doesn't take much to tick them off, I think the mere act of breathing within sight of the nest will trigger them to attack.

Snakes are not a problem, I have an affinity to them. I've been stupid enough to chase down rattlesnakes for fun. I should have a "I brake for snakes" bumper sticker on my lawn mower as I stop and move snakes if they are in the way.