What is a phobia?

Phobias are persistent and intense fears of a particular:

object

person (like a doctor or clown)

situation

activity

If you have a phobia, you may experience severe anxiety and panic attacks when you’re:

exposed to the object or situation you’re fearful of

thinking about the thing you’re afraid of

anticipating an encounter with the item you’re scared of

  • Uwu_im_toxic@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Emetophobia. Fear of vomiting. I’m super nauseated just thinking about it to type it out. It led to a semi eating disorder when I was young because I didn’t trust any food to be properly kept or cooked. Took a food safety class for work and learned proper food handling and preparation, so I eat a lot better now. But I definitely come off as rude if I don’t trust the person that’s cooking food for me, like my partner’s family, or friends that don’t understand.

    I can’t help friends or loved ones when they’re sick if that’s one of their symptoms, which sucks. If someone has a nasty cough that gags them I go into a panic. If I hear someone get sick I instantly start crying, sweating, shaking, and my mind gets fuzzy with panic.

    I really hate it. I always thought I had arachnophobia, but I just really really don’t like spiders. I don’t get the mind numbing panic that, to me, would classify it as a phobia.

    And yeah, because of the phobia, I haven’t gotten sick like that since I was 8, and I was born in the 80s. Plenty of fearful times, but cold water and pepto helped me through.

    I gotta go dissociate on some meme posts for a bit now.