How many of you are afraid of something? Well, it's probably all in your head. Literally.
Warrior Goddesses can be afraid too
I am not a fearful person. Growing up I played with Teela and He-Man, She-Ra and G.I. Joe - no plastic prissy domesticated girly dolls for me.
I also had the She-Ra with the purple shield, facemask and sword - and had the Becky-sized costume to match.
Yeah, that's right - the original Teela. I had this one.
Girls were tough and didn't let things like snakes or mice get in their way. Your arm fell off and you're bleeding? No problem. I've held boa constrictors, raised mice, gone to grad school - all sorts of scary situations.
I do have one tiny weakness: creepy crawly bugs. Spiders, centipedes (or any kind of -pedes) - mainly arthropods. I am entomophobic to a very high degree. Luckily, I'm not alone.
Phobia nation
More than 10 million adults in the United States suffer from some serious sort of phobia, according to the National Institute of Mental Health (estimates range from 8.7% and 18.1% of Americans for all phobias, mild to severe). A phobia is an irrational, disabling fear and can be an anxiety disorder or symptom "characterized by avoidance of a situation out of fear or out of anticipation that anxiety would accompany exposure," according to the DSM-IV. The big guns are specific phobia (of a specific thing, e.g. animals, spiders, heights, etc), social phobia (social anxiety), and agoraphobia (fear of leaving home or a safe place).
The best evidence so far points to the amygdala as the seat of our fears - the amygdala plays a primary role in processing emotional reactions to stimuli, shooting out the signals that trigger our "fight or flight" response.
But where do phobias actually come from? It's often hard to say. It could be a traumatic experience in childhood, but it's probably some combination of genetics, brain chemistry and life experiences.
Here are some rather odd phobias, courtesy of The Phobia List:
Aeronausiphobia - Fear of vomiting secondary to airsickness
Anablephobia - Fear of looking up
Arachibutyrophobia - Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth
Aulophobia - Fear of flutes
Barophobia - Fear of gravity
Caligynephobia, or Venustraphobia - Fear of beautiful women (I run into this one all the time)
Consecotaleophobia - Fear of chopsticks
Cymophobia - Fear of waves or wave like motions (perhaps Isaac Newton)
Cypridophobia - Fear of prostitutes or venereal disease (not a lot of this in Las Vegas)
Ephebiphobia - Fear of teenagers
Genuphobia - Fear of knees
Hellenologophobia - Fear of Greek terms or complex scientific terminology
Levophobia - Fear of things to the left side of the body.
Omphalophobia - Fear of belly buttons
Pentheraphobia - Fear of mother-in-law (otherwise known as marriage)
Phobophobia - Fear of phobias
Porphyrophobia - Fear of the color purple (and probably Alice Walker)
Pteronophobia - Fear of being tickled by feathers (tickled by nail files, fine, but not feathers!)
Walloonphobia - Fear of the Walloons (this one lost me)
Zemmiphobia - Fear of the great mole rat
And winner for most ironic phobia:
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia- Fear of long words
So what is a warrior goddess to do?
My problem with my phobia (which is not up to "medication needed" standards, just your run-of-the-mill phobia) is that it is irrational. Unless we're talking math, I prefer a rational existence. I understand that the creepy crawly little bug is not in fact trying engulf my leg whole with its razor sharp incisors and insatiable appetite for petite females, but is just trying to get across the floor. And it's probably more scared of me than I am of it (or at least that's what Mom used to say). But I cannot overcome my irrational fear with rational thinking. Ergo, the harmless little tree bug that landed on the lamp next to me last night while I was on the computer morphed into a giant cockroach-like mutant that stared at me with malice aforethought and thoughts of Becky shish-kebab. (Thank goodness I have (a) a male in the house that will kill the invading predators, and (b) a cat with better hunting skills than a bloodhound and hawk combined.)
In lieu of actually confronting my phobia directly, i.e. throwing myself into a pool of creepy crawly bugs and hoping repeated exposure does the trick, I can go the virtual route. Unfortunately, just pictures of things like spiders and tarantulas creep me out so much that I can't look at them (when looking up arachnophobia I had to shield the right side of my screen with paper because all the scary pictures were there).
There are anti-anxiolytics, cognitive behavioral therapy, the dude solution to everything ("just walk it off"). But usually the most successful route is to yell for the man or the cat, stand off to the side where the creature of death can't get to me, and pretend to be useful by proffering a tissue or some other squishing implement, thus ridding my house of the offending monster and my amygdala of the scary stimulus.
