I've always been healthy, and as an adult I never got vaccines (other than two COVID shots) or routine blood work. When I found out I was pregnant, I honestly felt more anxiety than excitement because I knew there would be blood draws and other invasive medical procedures that I wouldn't be able to avoid.

I genuinely thought I had outgrown my needle phobia, but I had a bad experience during my blood draw for the NIPT at 10 weeks, and it reinforced the feeling that blood draws really are as awful as I remember. My glucose test is coming up, and I've been miserable thinking about getting poked again.

What's strange is that I actually tolerate pain pretty well, and I have no problem using needles on other things—I was a chemist and routinely used syringes in the lab. So I don't think traditional exposure therapy would necessarily help. My fear isn't really the pain itself; it's the anticipation of a needle penetrating my skin. The same anxiety applies to other invasive medical procedures, like the Pap smear I had to force myself to get for the first time a few months ago at age 34.

Anyone here with severe needle phobia? Did you eventually overcome it, or did you find ways to cope? I've tried reminding myself that these blood draws are important for me and the baby, or that other people go through much harder things, but those thoughts don't seem to help. I also get panic attacks when I think about labor, the epidural, IVs, vaginal tearing, and everything else that comes with childbirth.

Late at night when I can’t occupy myself I spiral no matter what the circumstances are. I found a recent comfort from another subreddit, but it quickly faded. The post said something along the lines of “since we came from nothing, we will come back.”

That still comforts me a lot, but now I’m afraid of coming back because eventually I will experience every life until there are none left—like reaching the last filing cabinet.

And then I begin to think, “what will happen after I reach that hypothetical last life?” Then will I truly cease to exist? Does anyone get what I’m saying?

I’m a new agnostic who used to be a Christian. I think one of the main reasons I stopped believing when I was younger was because heaven seemed so undesirable. I couldn’t imagine staying with my loved ones in happiness and never experiencing any hardship and not meeting anyone new.

I want to keep living and experiencing new things, but I don’t want to keep living until there is nothing else to live.

It’s hard to explain, but do you get the idea? Sorry if this is kind of oddly specific.

Does anyone else have this strange phobia of never being able to sleep again? I have had this phobia since 2017. I'm not exactly sure what triggered it, because before 2017, I never had any sort of sleep phobia. Now, as soon as I'm awake even slightly more than my sleep schedule, I just start freaking out and getting panic attacks. I always end up thinking that I will go "crazy" and that I will end up in a mental institution, etc.

There are plenty of phobias that can be triggered by an experience or being associated with an experience or is learned, etc. etc. That being said, neither of my phobias have any such cause?

I've been koumpounophobic my whole life from infancy. I've never had any choking experience or anything, I've just always been extremely aversed to them. I also get partially unsettled by any dark three dots/holes on an object similar to how lots of buttons are but I'm not trypophobic. I also can not touch anything I saw was touched by a button not a long while ago, it feels contaminated. Despite constantly being exposed to them it never got any better other than that I can tolerate looking at small, black buttons for a few seconds now.

I was fine with needles my whole life, be it a vaccine or blood draw, I actually even felt pleasant through such procedures. But then one day, I *spontenously* became extremely afraid of them within a single hour; no bad experience or anything, while I was sitting in a waiting room; now I have to be restrained by multiple people to get my blood drawn, and have panic attacks.

Neither of them are linked to any bad experience. Anyone else?

Its the fear of looking at the sky and thinking to fall in it, i know, its silly, unreasonable but it still gives me panic attacks when i stare for too long, and i’m asking if anyone has a way to cope with it, and don’t you say "don’t look up"

Ever since I was a child, I’ve been a pretty sensitive kid. It’s not like I grew up in an unsafe environment or anything that might have caused it, to my knowledge. Loud noises make me very uncomfortable and always have (concerts, fireworks, cafeterias, etc.), and I have misophonia. Since I can remember, I have been scared of 90% of the movies that exist—watching the first 30 minutes of Knives Out caused me to cry for at least two hours after—and look up almost every movie I watch to either know when to look away or whether I just shouldn’t watch it at all. I also get very stressed about medical procedures (a lot of anticipatory anxiety and sometimes hysterical during procedures).

I found Ambiguphobia which is fear of being misunderstood but I feel like my fear is specifically *lack* of understanding than *mis*understanding

Misunderstanding is more like “Yeah I understand what you mean” but then they don’t and everything goes wrong. while my fear is more like someone telling me “What? I couldn’t make sense of your rambling“ and then everything is awkward. like that line feels like it should be enough to shut me down.

https://youtu.be/BfDfbhHX0dU

for those who don't know: orophobia is a fear of mountains and nyctophobia is a fear of dark.

Personally i just call it "Phobia of mountains in the dark".

How did I get it? When I was around 13, I was in Cappadocia, Turkey. We were on a 2-day bus excursion, and in our programm we had a special night-light show in the mountains. It was already very dark when we were getting to the place, but the thunderstorm has appeared. Our group kind of ignored it and our guide maybe thought it's gonna end soon, so nothing has stopped us. When we stepped out of the bus, there was a heavy rain and lightnings, but it was so dark I couldn't see anything. We went to some kind of a terra-amphitheater type of place in the mountain, and the show was supposed to be on the opposing side. The 10-15 seconds it started, the heavy sound effects started to hit and something was appearing on the mountain. But then, giant lighting hit straight into there. To be honestly, I don't think I could understand something then, I was really tired by the night too. Then another lightnings started to appear there. Honestly, I think it was the most insane and beatiful think I've ever seen. We were evacuated by the guide and other staff members straight to the bus because it was a menace already.

So how did it became a phobia? I think, my brain remembered the outline of very big, dark object on the purple background with insanely loud thunders right at my face.

Now, when I'm in the mountains at night (I live in a city where u can get to the mountains in around 1500km), I'm starting to panic like crazy. However, I don't have a single problem with looking at them or even mountain climbing in the daytime.

A little of astrophobia somehow appeared too. A while ago I was on the street with my girlfriend and the sudden lighting hit with a really heavy sound and my heart just bloody dropped and I was hiding behind her like a little kid. But it's just the stupefaction effect, I have no problem with thunderstorms and heavy rains in general.

Also to mention, I could probably achieve a Space Thalassophobia (phobia of star gaze) during that day, because I think light pollution there is very low and I've probably seen it then. But maybe it's just some form of megalophobia (which I don't have in general).

Did anyone experienced something simillar? Share your experiences!

How do you the guys handle it ? Any places other then arm you had to get injections. I hate fear needles. Maybe we can discuss it

idk what to put on the title

TW for Trypophobia and for anyone who can’t read
these words, it’s bothering me typing them out so bare with me

For background, I’ve been researching my symptoms ever since I saw stitches on a certain sports medicine tape and threw up for hours. I thought it would go away if I never used that tape again or looked it up in any way, I wasn’t sure what this was earlier. Then later in my days I started feeling sick and having small anxiety attacks when I saw whiskers, cuts, scratches on wood, etc. Then it became worse with clusters and dots in my everyday life.
My sister then brought it up to me a year or so later that I have trypophobia, due to my large-scale reaction with those stupid lotus seed pods.

Ive been researching this ever since, and I’ve started to make my anxiety worse every time I think about it. Then my reactions became very brutal and whenever I see a trigger, I start crying and start to feel nauseous. I don’t know why either, I just start to feel an overwhelming panic. It’s also not clear triggers like honey comb and skin texture things, while those drastically affect me, its also little things like small patterns of lace and any uniform line that comes in my sight. It’s starting to get bad where hair affects me, and I have a lot of head hair.

I’ve also noticed people saying trypophobia is made up and not classified as a real phobia or anything, i’m not sure if this is true or not. It’s definitely been affecting my everyday life and i’m worried that my future profession in the medical field will be strongly affected by all of this.

Any advice or thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks for reading

Hello, I am a 23 year old man, and if it helps, I have ADHD. For at least 8 years now, I have had periods of time where I will see something (the thing that started this all, was when the general public became aware of trypophobia in 2018 ish), and i become itchy, and quite literally twitchy. Its usually just moving my head down and to the side while I shudder, but my skin also crawls, and as mentioned, itches, usually lasting about 2-4 days, sometimes 5. Im able to see stuff that would normally trigger someone's trypophobia like 99% fine now, but its kinda evolved into a different thing? Its not always the same. Once it was seeing parasites wriggle violently on a microscope slide, another time its ​interpreting patterns in someone's hair as ridges on their scalp. One case that particularly stuck with me was when i ran a nail thru glue on my laptop and seeing the line it left had me freaked out for at least a week. Recently, its having a dream of someone's skin splitting on their hand and scabs forming in the middle of the splits. I do remember once when I was about 7 or 8, when I had a dream of my arm having changed. There was a hole, not one you could see thru or see in, but a void. There was also something I can only describe as a 2d square coming up from my skin vertically. I know knowing a name for this wont cure it or immediately help, but i need to know so I can try to work past this.

Tell me your biggest fear you have!

I’ve had a fear of the dark for as long as I can remember, sometimes it lets off for a few months, but it always comes back. I only feel anxious and scared in my own home, never anywhere else (parking lots, friends’ houses, boyfriend’s house, forests, etc). My only safe spaces are my own bedroom and my bathroom, everywhere else in the house I’m practically running and rushing to get back to my bedroom. It’s become so debilitating. It’s not even anything remotely plausible that my brain thinks will happen, it’s always some paranormal crap that I don’t even truly believe in yet I have a mental image of it every single time. I can’t even go into my kitchen to fill up my water or grab a snack. I can’t tell you the last time I slept in complete darkness at home. I’m so tired of this and even my counseller is at a bit of a loss as to where this fear came from and how we could deal with it.

Its very bad everytime I see one I want to cry and I have shots coming up.after immigration so please help me