Ask Lemmy

Even though I am an arachnophobe, I also just can't stand insects in general. They're unholy creatures that I wouldn't mind if we removed without destroying the world. The worst part is I'm pretty sure my fear of insects comes from an early childhood cub scouts(?) day camp(?) trip where I opened a tarp on a wooden tent frame and saw a bunch of ants, so it's an early, somehow traumatic, childhood experience.

Dementia

My biggest fear is that my office chair might break in such a way that the hydraulic piston breaks through the seat and punctures my colon.

Having to work for another 20 years.

I was in this crystal clear cliffside cove and could see in front of me maybe 10 m or so but the Rock only went out about 5 and then just plunged into the abyss. and after exploring the coastline I swim out about 10 ft past the rocks and realized that I could see nothing but the deepest blue I'd ever seen.

literally anything could be just a few body lengths away watching me were sensing me, it was almost overwhelming.

I felt this visceral terror, that I've felt before in the middle of reading a Lovecraft story.

very much looking into the eye of something unknowable.

The speed at which we are (not) acting on climate change. Our tolerance for neoliberals/capitalists absolutely wiping their arse with the whole planet.

Everything. Everything scares me. If I stop and think about anything in particular, I slowly realize how frightening that thing really is.

Cat. Sits with its ass on your face while you sleep.

Dog. Eats its own vomit and greets others by sniffing their ass, then tries to lick you.

shivers

The idea of living as if my life hadn't really started yet and then one day realizing I'm old and I wasted my life.

Dental pain. Experienced it once and that was enough to give me lifetime nightmares. Absolute horror!

Dementia.

My mother has dementia.

Every time I forget something I know I should know it terrifies me.

Humanity. I know it's kind of self-defeating or something, but humanity just scares the shit out of me.

I'm afraid I'll live my whole life in fear like I'm doing now, that I'll never experience love, that one day I'll wake up old and alone, in misery and just waiting to die but too afraid end it.

Extinction. Our technology gives us the power of gods, but we still have the brains of hunter-gatherers optimised for living in tribes of less than 150 people. My own death doesn't worry me, I'm not bothered by knowing I'll be forgotten, but the possibility that there might not be anyone to carry on is what I think about at 3 AM when I can't sleep.

A hypothetical fear of course, one with my wife who I've been with for 15 years now.

One day, maybe hopefully 30-50 years in the future, my wife and I look back and think about how good our lives were. We raised happy and successful kids. We bought a house. We had dozens of pets. We celebrate the end of our life together. But she doesn't make it.

And I have to spend the final years alone with memories of her. Two controllers. Two spoons. Two of everything for decades. Now just me.

And Never being able to explain to the rest of the world how amazing she was.

Micro-plastics

Your fear of disappearing resonates the worst for me in regards to my daughter (4) doing so. It makes me want to vomit to think of her just gone, at the mercy of someone or something else, with no way to know where she is or how to save her. It rips my heart in half that so many parents throughout time have lived this exact nightmare and never received answers. I find some relief that I live in a very safe part of the world where child abductions rarely (if ever) happen, but there are a number of other ways your little girl can just vanish.

I wouldn't say this perpetually weighs on my conscience, but every time I remember it can happen, it really fucks with my head.

Being eternally trapped in a mental prison. Imagine having a panic attack that never ends. I'm pretty sure that type of prolonged stress would cause a psychotic break where your psyche fractures and you become a despondent shell. You would become deathly afraid of everything, even the people you love, because of an unceasing paranoia. That basically sounds like hell to me.

I'm not really afraid of the idea of nothingness after death, because at least then I am released from the torment of living.

Letting down people I love somehow

My temper

Grey aliens. Yep, I know they're almost certainly not real. They freak me the frack out. It's undoubtedly all the UFO stuff I read as a kid about abductions and such. A very petite friend once threatened to dress up as one in a realistic costume to scare me in the night. I begged her not to for her personal safety: I'm certain I would not react in a safe or rational way.

Being alone at night creeps me out because of this. Driving alone in a remote, low population locale? Horrifying.

Nevertheless, I still read up on stories and other media about the paranormal. Why am I like this? No idea.

It hasn't ruined my life or anything. I've spent time alone far away from people, when I had to. I can go places at night. It's just something that creeps into my mind sometimes. I function as a grown ass man, but I still get the creeps about it when I'm alone. I don't know that I'll ever completely shake it.

Intolerance.

Aka, the lack of willingness to understand one another — I mean, the ability to discuss and work together toward a common goal, even with people we (deeply) disagree with — and the hostility towards whatever dares being/liking/talking/thinking different.

This is a not only a sad dead-end, imho this is also the very end of any society and of any civilization when the only other persons we can tolerate around us are exact copies of ourselves. People behaving, dressing, talking and thinking exactly like we do — or like we want them to.

This frightens me way much than anything else because I see no way to escape it and, even more terrifying to me, I see no place anywhere where one could escape it. Intolerance is growing everywhere, and it's growing fast.

My biggest fear is something happening to my kids. If something happened to them my hair would turn white, I would curl up in a ball and die.

Death by violent means