Fears

I don't know anyone who thinks they are fearless. In fact, if you asked most people they'd give you multiple things they are afraid of. Common fears are: death, spiders, ghosts, and failure. Personally, I am afraid of spiders, death and failure, also sharks. I'm terrified of them although I used to live in the Midwest and we have no oceans anywhere near us.

Here's a list of 2011's top 10 phobias. I know people that are afraid of these things, but fear of vomiting and fear of blushing? I don't know anyone with those problems. Although, I guess if you hate throwing up that could be considered a fear of it, possibly. I'm not judging, those just confuse me. Is the fear of blushing thing a fear of being embarrassed in reality? Someone explain that one to me.

Something fun to do is to look at a list of phobias. As totally wrong as it is to laugh at someone else's fears some of them do come off a little silly. I mean there's a fear of garlic and unless you're a vampire I don't get that one. There's a fear of gold, to me that just sounds inconvenient.

Yesterday, I went to the doctor. I'm not afraid of the doctor, but you know you are always expecting them to tell you you have some sort of incurable disease. That's why I'm afraid to go. I'd rather not know if I'm dying although once you find out you can delay it or start medication to possibly cure it. I'm fine, by the way, but it was a battle getting to take myself to the check-up.

I know people scared of the dentist. I guess they had a bad experience, or they too worry about having something wrong with them and they don't want to know. I forgot about clowns. Many people are scared of clowns but I could bet they didn't have a bad experience with them. It's their creepy little faces that you imagine would be smiling as they stab you. Ok, sorry, I think I just had a flashback to a scary clown episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark. You know, the one where they take the clown's nose and he goes after them? That possibly did cause me to fear clowns.

According to this Huff Post article fear is, "thinking vividly about what we don't want to happen in the future or dwelling on an unhappy past event." In fact, that's exactly what fear is when you get right down to it. There's usually something you saw when you were a kid, or even last week or that you experienced that makes you think that will happen to you or will happen again.

The article talks you through letting go of your fears. At least, how in Buddhism one would overcome their fears. I hope this will help some people get over some of their phobias. It's a little dense for me, but has good ideas nonetheless. I'm still going to be terrified of spiders no matter what anyone tells me though, but it did make me a little less afraid of clowns.