Question #2: What is your greatest fear?

The Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of fear is as follows.

Fear: Option 1a: an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger

What is your greatest fear?

When reading this question I had several fears come to mind:

• Acrophobia: the fear of heights
• Glossophobia: the fear of public speaking
• Nyctophobia: the fear of the dark
• Arachnophobia: the fear of spiders
• Chromophobia: the fear of colors 
• Chaetophobia: the fear of hair
• Monophobia: the fear of being alone
• Spectrophobia: the fear of mirrors
• Dromophobia: the fear of crossing streets
• Driving Phobia: the fear of driving

I have experienced all of the above fears in one way or another and most seem to be learned fears from experiences.

Acrophobia

When I was in elementary school my mother thought it would be best to put me through swimming lessons since she has very poor swimming skills. My most prominent memories from that time are when my swimming instructor wouldn't let me sit out from jumping off the diving board even though I was afraid to. This happened early on in elementary school, I can't remember the exact time that it took place. All I can remember is that I wasn't able to force myself to jump off a diving board until the end of my 8th-grade year. That one incident seemed to initiate my fear of heights, my acrophobia. This was the defining moment that I thought of when addressing my fear of heights and there is another. This one was caused by a lack of thinking, when I was in 7th grade I was playing a game of tag with my younger cousin and decided, even though I was in slippers, to climb up a tree to get away from him and ended up slipping, ironic right, and falling down onto a bed of rocks below the tree, I was only about 6 feet up into the air when I fell and it still traumatized me. I avoid climbing trees now especially now as an adult since I won't heal as easily. Climbing ladders and up open staircases still scare me, not as bad, therefore this is not my greatest fear.

Glossophobia


Looking back I'm not sure what the defining moment was for gaining the fear of public speaking, maybe I was following the crowd, maybe I just was afraid rather of the unknown, or maybe I was just afraid of being myself and being rejected. I do remember the defining moment of when I felt the pressure lift off of me. In my first semester of college, I took Speech with a former forensics coach, forensics is a competitive public speaking group, this made me comfortable because I was a part of forensics during my last two years of high school, acting as characters during those two years. Acting as a character was okay with me, being myself was not. During the Speech class we had a symptom inventory activity for what we felt when going up in front of people to speak and once we were done she instructed us to raise our hands for any symptom we felt that she called out and then look around to see who shared that symptom. It was eye-opening to know that I wasn't the only one who had sweaty palms, a sore throat, and a bunch of other things happening to me when going up to speak and then I realized I wasn't alone and that allowed me to be myself and speak in front of the class. Having previously been asked during my last speech during high school if I was about to cry, to be confident enough to quote and sing song lyrics to open and close two of my speeches in college, it was almost magical the transformation I went through. I learned to live with my fear and anticipate the ending relief after finishing the speech. Now I have given speeches in front of crowds up to 300 people and have taken it upon myself to seek out these opportunities to be more and do more with public speaking. I have been invited to speak on my experiences with a nonprofit within my community at an event and have helped facilitate conferences for organizations across the state of Wisconsin. Fears can be overcome, although it is up to you to figure out how to do so by learning more and listening more to those around you. This is not my greatest fear.

Nyctophobia

For as long as I can remember I have been afraid of the dark something about the unknown aspect of what lies within frightens me even if it may be nothing. Looking into it terrifies me and it took me a long time to allow myself to sleep in the dark because of this irrational fear that something was in it trying to get to me. When I have to sleep in new places or go on trips where I am rooming with someone who doesn't like the light on it can sometimes freak me out and I have to go through meditative steps to get over it and move on. This is not my greatest fear as I have been able to rationalize myself through it.

Arachnophobia

The fear of spiders. I've been told a story throughout my life of a time where I was intensely interested in touching every bug ever in existence, this could have really gotten me in trouble one day. I was playing outside by the sidewalk and apparently, I saw something and needed to go near it, my father was outside with me and saw what it was and just before I was going to pet it, my father pulled me back and away from the pretty bug. This bug was a wolf spider, bites are rare from this spider and they don't even build webs, I don't believe this mattered to my father though as he just didn't want me to get bit by it regardless. These spiders are ground dwellers and hardly ever come indoors with a rare chance of breeding indoors. I can't remember this but I know I don't exactly like spiders and can tend to overreact if spiders come within my personal space depending on the type of spider it is. This is not my greatest fear.

Chromophobia

This fear developed from a time in my life I would sooner forget and move on from, I still acknowledge it and I still am affected by it and I will still be entirely grateful that it happened to me rather than someone else. This fear is specifically of the color blue because it was my stalker's favorite color at the time that he was stalking me. I gained many fears from this time in my life, two years of torment that affect me to this day even if it has been over for 5 years now, the nightmares only stopped occurring as frequently 2 years ago. I didn't want to be associated to the stalker in any fashion and so my mind developed this idea that if I stayed away from the color blue I would be okay and I wouldn't run into him. I stayed inside near every day unless someone was with me to protect me even if I wouldn't let them know I was afraid. I would also avoid wearing anything blue the one thing I wasn't able to avoid was my blue eyes. This fear was irrational and now I love the color blue and no longer associate it with that time in my life as rational thought has led me to the conclusion that just one single color could not be the catalyst. This is not my greatest fear any longer.

Chaetophobia

This was another fear developed from the time that I was stalked, this one having to do with my long flowing hair, it was their favorite thing about me. I thought if I kept my hair up I would be able to keep him away, and this idea was reinforced. There were two times I had my hair down during the time that I was getting stalked, the rest of the time it was up, which resulted in consistent migraines as I wouldn't even allow it down in my sleep, only when I was showering would it come down to rest my scalp. These two times they tried to corner me and luckily I was either able to be saved by my friends at the time or to sneak away into the counselors' office. Only one teacher in my high school ever learned of me being stalked, to my knowledge, as we were assigned to write a memoir and I felt that I needed to write about getting stalked so that at least someone would know at the school besides the counselor and a few of the staff in the front office. After the second time that I was cornered after having my hair down during this time a decision was reached in my head, I needed to cut my hair. I practically shaved my head clean from hair only being stopped by my mother who talked me into getting a short cut with the top long. The relief from this was immense in both mental and physical ways, the migraines stopped and anxiety lessened to a degree. My hair is still relatively short, the sides are still shaved while the top can reach my chin when letting down. Since the nightmares have lessened so has the fear centered around having long hair, I learned to love having shorter hair though as it has cut down on those migraines that I would get.

Monophobia

This also stems from being stalked, that time in my life was probably the most traumatizing for me as everything seemed to get so much worse before it finally got better. During this time I would not go outside more than a few steps unless I either had a pocket knife on me or if I was with someone that I trusted, sometimes even when I was with someone if the nightmares had been particularly bad the nights previous I would try to convince them to stay inside with me so that they wouldn't end up getting hurt in case the stalker somehow found out they were associated with me and wanted to harm them to get to me. The stalker had attacked one of the counselors and needed to be restrained by the school's liaison officer and principal, the day that happened I was lucky to have been kept home by my mother as she had had a bad feeling about sending me to school. I still sometimes am afraid to be alone and won't go out of my usual spots where I know people by myself unless I have someone with me that I trust. During this time my father had also decided to pull a disappearing act and wouldn't contact anyone in the family for 3 months, he never told me why he did it and I still don't know if anything bad happened to him during that time. Sometimes I still have a hard time being alone but it doesn't affect me every day, so it is not my greatest fear.

Spectrophobia

I have a feeling this may have been caused by seeing one too many horror movies that involved mirrors although I can also think of when I would look at myself and how I had someone sneak up on me while in high school choir and I hadn't spotted them until I had looked up at the mirror on the wall as I had been working on an assignment and this had been during the time while I was being stalked and my emotional and mental state were frayed. I've found myself also avoiding looking at mirrors in the middle of the night unless several lights are on and I tend to keep blinds drawn during the night so I don't have to wonder what could be behind the glass looking in at me without my knowledge. The fear of the unknown is also associated with this fear. This is not my greatest fear.

Dromophobia

During middle school, I was on my way home and had been dropped off at the top of a curved hill by public transportation and I had looked both ways several times and thought it was safe to cross the street, it was not. I got hit by a car while trying to cross the street on foot, the car was going around 30 mph and didn't see me, therefore hitting me at the speed they had been going down the street. I don't know the exact speed they were going so I judge it based on the speed limit of that street. I flew over the vehicle and onto the other side of the road landing on my forearms and knees over my messenger bag from school. I saw the blood drip from my face onto the bag and because of shock was not able to react well. What I did do though was roll over onto my back to lay flat, which I later learned could have damaged my neck or back if any of my vertebrae were broken. That's when the pain registered, all centralized in one location, my left calf, I screamed twice and then stopped realizing it made no difference if I were to scream or not. I started to try to calm my breath as people started to gather and my body started to tremble from the shock of it all. It was also November, the 15th to be exact, so it wasn't exactly warm out where I lived but there was no snow so that was good. The people that started to gather informed me that they had called 911 to come to help me and asked if I needed anything. I mentioned that I was cold and that my nose was running, the woman of the group instructed the man that was there to grab me a blanket and tissues for my nose. Going through that experience I seemed to not take it too seriously as the one thing I was worried about was my favorite pair of jeans that they had to cut off my body to check if my leg had any serious injuries they needed to worry about. It was probably the shock of it all or my need to make sure others don't worry about me. Looking back I realize I was truly lucky that I was able to crutch away from it with minor injuries if permanent muscle damage in my leg, road rash, bruises and abrasions on my face can be considered minor compared with the alternative of death. Later, once I was taking public transportation again, after having stopped using crutches, I realized something, I was terrified to cross the street by myself. This fear still affects me to this day and I will wait at 4-way stops until it is clear of cars before I will cross and I will only cross outside of a crosswalk if I have someone with me. This is still not my greatest fear although it does come second as it affects my everyday life.

Driving Phobia

I wasn't able to find a fancy name for this fear, the fear of driving. When I got hit by a car crossing the street my mother made a decision that I would not learn how to drive until I was 18 since the driver that had hit me was 16. This was the first enforcement of my fear to learn to drive and it got reinforced when I was in a car accident on April 14th of my first year in college with my mother. I was in the front passenger side when it happened as she was driving me home a short way from the college. It happened suddenly and it happened quickly. While driving down the road a driver from a side road did not stop at the stop sign and slammed into us, we didn't see them coming and they hit the front passenger's side of the vehicle, meaning if it would have been a split second later I would have been crushed as they shifted the frame of our Chevrolet Trailblazer which is known to have a very strong frame. My glasses flew off and my right shoulder sustained muscle damage from my seatbelt holding me back into my seat. The hit almost resulted in us going head-on into a van that was in the turn lane to our left and we would have if my mother hadn't slammed on the brakes. This is my greatest fear and has made it my goal to move to a large city where I won't have to drive and can rely on public transportation.
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Tell me. What is your greatest fear?