Where the line?
Was having a conversation with coworkers and fears/phobias came up. A few of them have some of the more common phobias (snakes and spiders) but we started to discuss when fear becomes a phobia and where that line is. Snakes became our example, you find a snake in your yard and dont want to handle it, is it a phobia? Do you need to flee the area and not come back till it gone to be phobic? Or does the thought that a snake may be out there and it prevents you from mowing your lawn at all constitute the line for phobias?
We work in an industry where language has precise meanings and typically look for quantitative measure for labels like phobia, so we probably went deeper than needed and became our own worse enemies in that conversation.
In order to avoid diminishing anyone's own experiences im going to provide my biggest fear/phobia and people can feel free to disect that or label it or whatever for this conversation. You have my express permission to ridicule me if you feel that its productive to the topic.
I cant watch those cave diving/spelunking videos without becoming immediately uncomfortable. Something about that tight dark space or the inability to turn around just gets me like nothing else. However, I dont feel the NEED to flee from it and it doesnt impact my life in a negative way (not something I encounter everyday). Fear or phobia? What do you people think?