r/Phobia

Forgive my verbosity, this is the way I write.
I have had a pervasive anxiety when trying to fall asleep for atleast the last 5 years. I was hoping someone on here might be able to provide me some advice or guidance on this particular phobia.

Every night when It's time for bed I experience this crushing and belittling feeling of fear. As i'm becoming an adult, ignoring this phobia is getting harder and harder.

The feeling is impossible to describe, I am not sure it necessarily fits the definition of a Phobia. I literally can't avoid it, I face this fear every single night, and I'm no less scared of it than I was 5 years ago, I suppose exposure therapy is bullshit?

Im trying to be a functioning adult but my inability to maintain my career is weighing heavier as time goes on.

I've sought help online before but nothing ever came of it (*Elaboration at bottom) and I discarded the idea that I could get better, but I'm at such a point now that I could consider myself desperate for help.

I'll go into a bit more detail about my history with it, how it manifests and ways i've tried to deal with it in the past. (feel free to skip this bit if you don't care)
I don't doubt I'm chronically sleep deprived, it feels as though my brain functions at the capacity of an 80 years old's sometimes, despite being 20. it's hard to know if I'm on the spectrum or just barely functioning as a result of my lack of sleep. The worse it gets the more anxious I get, the anxiety creeps out from the phobia and injects itself into most parts of my life.
I had myriad behavioural issues as a kid, one such issue I had was my reticence towards sleeping, I never made it easy for my parents to get me to bed, even before I could talk.

I don't recall exactly when I became cognisant of my sleep anxiety, but I know I remember a moment in time where It dawned on me, I believe it was around 5 years ago. It has only gotten more intense since then.
I've been on a few prescribed medications, Melatonin, Temazepam, THC/CBD, and a few OTC supplements from health food stores, these all haven't worked at all, so I've tried lifestyle changes too.
I tried eating less, fasting, sleep posture, lifestyle changes but I always hit a brick wall: sleeping.
Because I need to rely on YouTube to knock me out, I could be up from anywhere between 9pm to 4 am, YouTube has become my lifeboat, it is what gets me through every night.
I've had this fear before I relied on YouTube, and I've tried powering through some nights without YouTube, I've tried reading books instead, these things don't solve the Phobia.
I've always felt the fear was specifically related to the state of being unconscious or letting go of consciousness, I recently had my wisdom teeth removed, and that experience was bordering scarring, I have never felt so horrible in the leading up to the surgery since or before, so I'm pretty confident the fear is specifically related to being unconscious.

I hope the above rant about my life contributes to clarifying the issue I'm having so I can better find help on the topic, instead of it just being an appeal to pity. I don't need people to validate me, I welcome being challenged, It might be the only way to overcome this phobia. Thanks for taking the time to read my post.

*Several years ago I asked for advice on a different subreddit, Nothing eventuated, but I did get some advice on the way soldiers use to sleep during WW2, I presume.
Supposedly there was a way to sleep while also being semi conscious, this was so the soldiers could be ready if they were attacked.
I struggled to find information on that so I never explored that avenue, I also assume it is not great for your health, but if anyone has information on this specifically I'd love to hear about it.

So, I've been terrified of these exhaust fans almost my entire life even seeing one sends a shiver down my spine. I don't recall how and what made me so scared of them. In south Asia they are not like vents but mostly wall mounted ones and are horrifyingly loud sometimes especially old ones. I remember not going to the bathroom with this one fan which probably was huge , circular and had a weird noise and then my mother removed it for me. I'm scared of going to public toilets and I have to hold it till I get back home. I remember begging my parents to not get it installed in our new house. When I was 11 I had to pee real bad so my aunt took me to a restroom in a restaurant and I straight up refused to enter It because the fan was on and even though she turned it off I still feared it might turn on somehow so I held it in lmao. Anyway I think it got better with age but still kinda terrifies me.

Tengo fobia social, llevo casi 22 años sin hablar con nadie y casi no hablo con mis padres, no estudio ni trabajo mis padres me mantienen a mis 35 años todavía, tengo miedo

I know it sounds dumb but injections are genuinely enough to make me not want to try something, even if I’m interested in it.

It’s mostly the idea of having to keep doing it over and over that gets me. If there was a patch version that actually worked, I’d choose that in a second.

Anyone else like this?

An hour ago i was trying to pick up some stuff from the balcony.
One of these roaches flew right by my leg and started drifting around me.
I ran soo fast and was so scared that after getting a safe distance away i realize i got an 8cm cut on my foot and i didnt even feel it.
I dont know these damn creatures scare the hell out of me for no reason. Any way to idk maybe be less scared? Or at least not panic?
It weird because i have killed snakes (helping a farmer relative) and touched spiders no problem but roaches? I just see black and run as fast as i can even if i dont have a destination.

I am female and I have Cynophioa with no past experience.. In growing age I used get scared from dog. Till now i m scared if it. But I have always seen other female loving dog too much.. Which msde me question myself. Do other female are scared of dog like me?

When I was 12 (20 now), I found out I had lice and had to cut my hair short. I don't know how it happened, but for some reason I became irrationally afraid of the idea of having lice. Even the word itself being said out loud has become a trigger for me to immediately become itchy.

The problem I'm having is that I can't shake the fact that I think I have it. My scalp is ALWAYS itchy and I constantly feel my skin moving behind my head and ears. I've gotten numerous haircuts and I've been checked over and over again. The most peaceful time of my life was around 2022 ish where I got the confidence to grow my hair out but then I saw a bug on my pillow around april of this year and I just couldn't take it and I got my hair cut short (like 12 inches of hair gone). After cutting my hair, my family and friends around me told me it was bed bugs and I got a new mattress and washed a bunched of stuff, etc.

But since that day, it's only been worse. I feel like I can't escape them. The itching sensation, the crawling sensation, the dread of looking at my pillow every morning not knowing what I'm going ot see. I just want a way to know for certain that I have them or don't have them. I can't shake the feeling that I did actually have them in april and we didn't do a good enough job getting rid of them. (I did the lice shampoo treatment just to make myself feel better about it in april.) Can someone please help me figure out how to find peace with my head.

TLDR: I have bad anxiety with the idea of lice most of my life and my scalp is super itchy and crawly feeling and it only makes it worse. How do I fix it.

im losing my brain help
i highly afraid of going to the dentist my heart hurts at the thought of it, but i might have a cavity needing a filling or a root canal and i cry all the time thinking of going and i dont wanna go
does it hurt

how do i tell my parents without actually verbally telling them if i laugh with my mouth open will they themselves notice lmao help😭

So I’m going on a cruise in October and honestly I don’t know how I’m going to do the beach that my family is super excited about.

I’ve never been to the beach I don’t know if fish are close to the shore and I’m terrified of freaking out in front of people. Like is there anyway to be closer to shore and avoid them or… should I just stick to the sand?

Sorry if this isn’t allowed here, I don’t know where else to ask.

Hi

Sooo

I have a deep fear

A deep fear of finitude/finity, or limited quantities

Like

Not fear of death

Not fear or aging

Not fear of poverty

But fear of finitude/finity itself

Like, loss of resources for example

Like, thinking about how we launch so much iron into space that we will run out of it someday, and satellites are almost completely unrecoverable

Or how we mummify lots of animals, throw plant seeds in trash, burn so much paper and make so much plastic, and burning so many corpses, which leads to decrease in the recycable global biomass, gives me a bit of anxiety

Or how much burner accounts and dead accounts datacenters are holding, and we might use extra energy on useless accs to power datacenters to hold these accs while not using the energy for what's better Or all the online groups and messages in them are holding

Even in games like Minecraft, every dirt block dropped in lava makes me uncomfy, because minecraft world is limited

I have searched for this, and I found no matches

Please don't slime me if I got anything wrong

Mines moving to twenties I fear even the thoughts of handling the stress and pressure

Hi everyone

I have been in anxiety for one week now . My fear is of getting tetanus. I have completed my childhood vaccination and last year I got a injection of tetanus by my school. I know that I am protected with it but the anxiety is getting over me. The fear comes when I tried to shave with my razor which I have been using since 4, 5 Times it was not rusted. But somehow I have been developing some symptoms of tetanus. I really need help how I can get out of it.​

So, like the title suggests, I've been suffering from entomophobia ever since I was in 2nd grade, and i remember my parents telling me to be normal and be like other kids, because being scared of tiny things when I'm so much bigger than insects is weird and abnormal as long as I can remember. One time when I was in 5th grade, for 'exposure therapy' apparently, my dad put two termites on my hair and I was fucking crying and shit and he got physical because my entomophobia really pisses him off for some reason. I genuinely haven't been the same ever since, thinking about their little crawly legs all over my scalp.

Whenever I see some kind of bug flying around and i try to escape it to avoid being in the same vicinity as the insect, they tell me to quit the act and grow up because people will make fun of me if they find out about my irrational phobia and nobody will be as understanding as they are apparently??

I wish they could be more understanding man, I fucking hate them.

There was an ant infestation in my room some time ago and it gave me a fright and when I told them about it to get rid of the ants they laughed at my face and told me to get over it.

I hate my life and insects make me want to die.

Is there anything I can do to overcome my fear?? Because my parents would never let me get professional help, so until I'm an adult and earning my own money, I guess there's absolutely nothing I can do.

Over the past year or so it's become more and more obvious to me that I have some kind of specific phobia, but I can't quite figure out what exactly I am afraid of, and what all the things that trigger the feeling have in common. Some things that trigger the same specific feeling of fear:

- model turtles: fake ones, a real taxidermied or living turtle is fine. Toy turtles are okay. The bigger they are the worse the fear. I also feel similar about other large fake fish

- model animals with plastic/hard fur: again, taxidermy or models with synthetic fur/fur that mimics the real texture is fine. It's when they look plastic that's the issue. Thinking specifically of a tiger in this case

- inflatable Christmas decorations

- hot air balloons that are human/animal/creature shaped

I'm fine with human mannequins and those wiggly inflatable people that you see at car dealerships, which are the only two other things I can think of that might fit into whatever category this is. It seems to me that the issue is large things meets uncanny valley. Any ideas, anyone relate?