"If I could smoke fear away, I'd roll that motherfuer up...."
"And then I'd take three puffs..."
As a teenager, the concept of fear is something that I've always lived with, guided myself with and -on some occasions- had to overcome.
Sometimes fear can be limiting, yet it's not something I truly hate, nor is it an emotion that I use to rank the weakness of someone.
For everyone has fear, and at such everyone is truly weak.
I see fear as a repellant, one of the numerous safety measures we as living beings have.
In actuality, it may be man's one true repellant from stupid harmful experiences.
Yet when fear does fail to stop man from proceeding in stupid clearly harmful acts, the experience causes pain and hurt which in turn causes more fear to help more strongly repel man once again.
A phobia is a stronger form of fear. One so great that it can make a person have diverse severe physical and mental reactions it.
A phobia, can be caused by a lot of things, but the most common causes are;
- Traumatic Experiences
- Environmental Factors
- Genetics
- Brain Chemistry
There are numerous types of phobia's, some more reasonable than the others, some which a normal person can even agree on, some which are easier to hide than most.
Since phobias, at the lamest of terms is still fear, it's still a safety measure of the body. It's the mind telling you aggressively that
We've been on this lane before, it's not safe.
Especially if we look at the phobias caused by traumatic experiences and environmental factors.
- Someone who may have been locked in a room could be claustrophobic
- One who have witnessed a friend drown or had almost drowned himself could easily become hydrophobic.
Generally, there wouldn't be anything drastically wrong for phobias except for the fact that the fear is so unreasonable that living normally becomes impossible.
At that point, a person is truly ruined by fear and needs an intervention.
I had a phobia once, a terrible fear of cockroaches because of a traumatic experience with one.
It had fallen from the ceiling into my clothes when I was sitting down.
It was a really long night for a 7 year old, who just had to strip and remove the cockroach who was frantically crawling inside his clothes.
I stayed awake all night, eyes on my ceiling, searching for the cockroach.
Later had to leave my room and go sleep in the parlor.
Since then, whenever I see a cockroach, I steer clear from that place, not bothering it.
If it's a flying cockroach, I'm flying away.
My mother thought it hilarious, my father simply annoyed.
Even the baby cockroaches (nymphes) were a no-go for me. It got to the point where I could literally hear tiny scuttling on the walls and some surfaces and feel something was there - most likely a cockroach.
The sad thing was that cockroaches are everywhere and are hard to stamp out.
When I heard they could also cause leprosy... The phobia went to record heights.
I happened to somewhat grow out of it (not completely) through many encounters and having to squish and kill by myself.
Pride didn't allow me reveal to others that I couldn't kill a roachðŸ˜ðŸ˜”
But still, if me and a roach were in a room and I could leave... I will.
I feel fears are something that are normal in life, a phobia although is slightly abnormal isn't really rare.
Plenty people may have phobias but not be aware of it because of lack of experience.
Most people may display the symptoms of a phobia and just pointedly ignore it, calling it a fear.
Growing up, despite this cockroach chapter, I still had plenty of fears and phobias.
As a young teenager in a country that is out to kill us, the fears were plenty.
Fear of insecurity, fear of finding job, fear of lack of money, fear for education... Just to list a few.
I feel fears aren't something to truly be feared, it's a barrier that you can choose to maintain or overcome.
Your body is safe guarding you from new scary and potentially harmful experiences, yet sometimes the new isn't all that scary or harmful, as always.. it's all in the mind.
The starting quote is an excerpt of the lyrics from the song Fear by Kendrick Lamar.
It's a song I truly relate to cause all these are fears that I've had. Some I've conquered, some which still trouble me, all I've acknowledged.
This is a response to the May Inleo Monthly Prompts posted by 
Just a rant of some of my thoughts on Fear and Phobias.
You should check the prompts out if you don't know what to write and need some ideas...
Lovely prompts on here...
Gifs gotten from Tenor
My Instagram page.
