I’ve lived with a phobia as long as I can remember. I don’t know why it’s there, and I’ve never been able to fully overcome it. While it in itself is frustrating, it makes me sad when I realize that “most people” really don’t understand what the strain on someone’s psyche is when they have a phobia.
We’ve probably met people with arachnophobia, or claustrophobia - or at least recognize the term by name. I’ve heard people claim to have these phobias that genuinely did not express the symptoms of phobia when faced with their trigger - and people that do. I worry that the term is potentially overused in circumstances where it isn’t relevant. For reference, the former is like someone who really hates tomatoes, and the latter is like someone who is violently allergic to tomatoes - really quite different. The most common response given when I tell someone about my phobia is “Yeah, I don’t really like ______ either.” The extreme understatement of “I don’t really like” is astonishing.
Let me try to break it down for you. Mentioning the word gives me a shot of adrenaline equivalent to the epinephrine I get with the shot when my dentist numbs my teeth. Increased heart rate, tightness in the chest, and anxiety are obvious and immediate reactions - just to the mention of the word (and no - I’m not going to tell you what mine is, for that very reason). Someone with a phobia, when confronted by their trigger, is going to experience an uncontrollable and irrational fear of that trigger. A friend of mine with arachnophobia saw a tiny spider on their windshield while driving and was paralyzed by their fear and hyperventilating immediately. This lead to the rest of the car immediately in fear for their lives because the person driving could no longer focus on driving - all they could focus on was the fear and the source of that fear. I’m going to guess that most of you relate to the passengers - because a car without a driver is much more life-threatening than a tiny spider. Key point: not to someone with arachnophobia, that spider is far more terrifying than the uncontrolled motor vehicle. I got the spider and tossed it out the car, but they were still not okay. This is a feeling I’m familiar with, and even I should be better at recognizing and responding to it in others.
Now, to an outside observer - the level of fear is crazy over something that is not, in fact, life-threatening. True, it isn’t - but their subconscious responds as though they are under threat. If someone you knew was held up and their life was threatened while a gun was at their head - you would expect that level of fear. If they never wanted to go back to the place they experienced that trauma, or never wanted to see the person responsible again, or even if they wanted revenge for what was done to them - it probably wouldn’t surprise you. Yet it is the same level of fear experienced by people with phobias. When someone expresses that level of fear over something that isn’t actually life-threatening - the response is much different.
When I’ve experienced this fear, the expectation of people around me is often that I should be fine. Nothing traumatizing “actually” happened, so I should just get over it. I spend all of my energy repressing the trauma I’ve experienced - pretending I’m okay because that’s what everyone wants and expects from me. In reality, I’m really NOT okay. I get PTSD from my phobia - it’s not life-threatening, but I experience waking nightmares about every time I’ve encountered my trigger - including instances from over 20 years ago. I have trouble relaxing because when I stop for a second to think, or just be - that’s when my mind likes to torment me with every possible memory of my fear. I’ve been asked if I’d rather die or face my fear - I’d honestly rather die than be subjected to it intentionally even once. That once will become thousands of times in my lifetime that will haunt me in ways I don’t want to imagine, because I already know how much it haunts me now.
The worst of it is, I’ve grown a lot - I’ve learned a lot about my phobia, and I’ve accepted that others do not see it the way I do. And, most importantly - that I can’t blame them for that. That fear, and the repression of that fear leads to a lot of anger at the outside world. You want to cry out at them for not understanding your needs, punish them for torturing you, and ask them why they hate you so much because you can’t imagine that someone who likes or loves you could put you through that much pain. When really, they just don’t understand the level of intense emotions you’re feeling. They can’t even imagine them, because to them - your trigger is about as scary to them as the screen you’re currently reading this on.
Even in knowing this, I cannot control my fear. My fear is an inherent characteristic of my person because I started experiencing symptoms before I was old enough for preschool, and although I try to be better - I inevitably fail. Every encounter is a dice roll, and over time I’ve been able to lower the dc of my will save - but every roll changes the dc making it harder and harder to behave like a “normal” person. As in Russian Roulette, each click that isn’t loaded only raises the tension through the possibility that the next chamber is the one that’s loaded. Once I fail that will save - there is no turning back, the dam is broken and I am so far from okay that it will take me weeks to truly be myself again. You can look forward to anger, fear, depression, and anxiety flowing out of me for days. Then, after I’ve survived that phase, you can watch while I hate myself for all the shitty shit that I did while I was in that phase, and for all the raw emotional sewage that my trigger swept upon me. I hate myself for being this way. I wish I could magically make the fear go away too. I don’t enjoy any part of it, and it would be awesome if my trigger didn’t exist in the world so I would never have to face it again. Maybe then I could feel sane.
Please, be aware of this fear. When you know someone with a phobia, or see someone express this abject fear over something completely harmless to you - accept that they are afraid and that is all that matters. Get them away from their trigger, and do your best to be helpful if they want you to do anything they think will help them recover. Because honestly, there’s a phobia for nearly anything you can think of, and no matter how crazy it seems to you - the person experiencing that fear is living it in real time as though someone is about to kill them. It is not a joke, and it is out of their control. Also, no matter how many times you tell them they’re okay - they aren’t okay, but it’s okay that they aren’t okay - got it?