"Phobia"
is defined by unreasonable fear of a place, object or situations more than they have reason to be. This results in exaggerated behaviour to avoid the concerned fears, to reduce the anxiety.
I think I have 2 great phobias;
1. claustrophobia - fear of closed spaces
2. zoophobia - fear of animals
I'm really afraid of getting into confined spaces. getting into the lifts would make my heart beat faster, the more people inside a lift, caused my heart to flutter more. i also dislike being in a crowded train coach. it made me feel suffocated, my heart would start to race and i'd be feeling faint, a situation that could come clause to losing consciousness. being in a low-roofed cave, would bring about the most terrible experience of anxiety for me.
I once visited Gua Kelam in Perlis, which was lit up with fluorescent lights the whole way. But no, 10 steps into the cave, i started to feel the roof was caving in, started to feel breathless and ran as fast as i could to the entrance to save myself from further embarrassment.
i once watched a CSI vegas episode where they showed one of the CSI members was kidnapped and kept in casket and buried underground in a park. i didn't realize i suffered during the whole episode, until i felt sweaty, my hands were trembling and i was breathing very raggedly. just watching someone else going through the experience was enough to physically affect me!
My phobia arises due to a terrible childhood experience that I had. when i was small, my older brothers and sisters slept in a big room together. upon waking up in the morning we had to tidy up the room and keeping the sponge mattresses stacked up at the end of the room. one fine day, while i was heavily lifting up my mattress, my elder brother jumped and heaped up his pillows and mattress on top of me. this surprised the hell out of me and made worse by another sister/brother (I forgot who they were), spread eagled on top of us. i was trapped at the bottom within heaps of mattresses and pillows and human bodies. i nearly suffocated due to the weight and suffocation. this happened for a few minutes until i was finally rescued by my mother who later reprimanded my older siblings. but the few minutes i was under had deeply traumatized me that until now i have strong aversion of a closed space.
I'd admit that my training as a doctor has enlightened me of this panic/anxiety disorder and i have desensitized myself a bit. otherwise i would be a complete wreck when it comes to getting into elevators, buses or trains. Thank God!
The second type of phobia was developed over a subsequent episode with LIZARDS, thus the animal phobia or zoophobia.
Have you ever heard that killing lizards on a Friday night would give you extra "pahala" (heavenly returns)? when I was small, this was drummed into me by numerous stories about how lizards endangered Nabi Muhammad SAW when he was hiding from the evil Musyrikin people in a cave. While the spiders spun webs to protect the entrance of the cave, giving the idea that no one had passed thru the entrance, the lizards made so much noise to give him away.
So with this unconfirmed folklore in our heads, my friends and I went lizard hunting on a Friday night, way back during my boarding school days. armed with rubber bands, we went corridors by corridors attacking those innocent lizards, making them lose their tails, injured, or dead. all would be awarded by loud cheers from the hunters.
that night, i had a very bad nightmare where tens of lizards hunted me, they went into all orifices potentially opened for entrance into my body, especially my ears! i fought with my fist, flailed my hands, struggled, turned my heads and raised my arms. i was really fighting to the death! when i opened my eyes, my blanket was tightly twisted around my body getting all over my head and covered my face, rendered me nearly asphyxiated!
So that was then. eversince that, i had a severe case of lizard aversion, may be out of guilt? however, the story did not just end there. I thought lizards never let me get away with what i had done much earlier in my life to their species. at university, one incident happened where i thought was a clear case of lizard revenge. i had left a mug of Milo on my nightstand and later i found my nemesis swimming in it! another association with the uncouth creature happened, during a time when i was deeply engrossed reading my story book, a lizard flew out of nowhere and landed on the page i was reading!
if i had slightly countered my fears of confined spaces, i still have an uphill battle with the lizards. may be it's to be a constant reminder of my wickedness over an innocent life form...
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