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Tony Watson
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« Reply #15 on: 14:17:20, 25-07-2007 » |
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I've seen that photo of men sitting on a girder before and I thought at first that it was faked, but it's not. And yes, I can get dizzy just thinking about it or seeing it on television.
I don't like heights and yet I can't resist them; I'm sure there must be a word for being irresistably drawn to the thing you fear. I went up St Paul's a number of times when I was a student in London and once, just once, I was lucky enough to be allowed to go to the top of the dome on the outside and not just round its base.
Going to the top of Liverpool Cathedral is interesting too because to get there you have to go up a staircase inside the tower after getting so far on a lift and you find yourself in a dark, cavernous space very high up.
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increpatio
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« Reply #16 on: 14:39:33, 25-07-2007 » |
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Blimey Jan, you`ve reminded me of my Dentist Phobia. S-H-R-I-E-K!!!
You'll not be seeing this film then?  Actually, I have a big thing about horror films. Not a phobia per se, but if I go and see even an only slightly-potent horror film, chances are I won't get a decent night's sleep for about a week even if I do manage to sit through it. Last one I went to see, on a date because there were no other films on, was "House of Wax". EEEEK. |
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Morticia
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« Reply #17 on: 14:49:11, 25-07-2007 » |
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Anyone else suffer from what I'd call 'sympathetic' vertigo? The best example I can think of is those wonderful photographs of construction workers having a lunch break, sitting on a metal joist being dangled by a crane during the building of the Empire State Building - with nothing at all beneath them for hundreds and hundreds of feet!!!! I just can't look at those photos anymore without feeling extreme panic.
Bit small, but I'm thinking of this one...  OH MY GOD, STOP IT FOR PITYS SAKE, Mart! I`ll keep you in home-made lime pickle for the rest of your days or Mort cooked cashews, just no more pics!! I have to close my eyes if that kind of thing comes on the television!!! That`s reminded me of Buster Keaton and The Clock. Shriek!! Silence followed by the sound of Morticia fainting discretely into her cup of black olives. |
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martle
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« Reply #18 on: 14:53:26, 25-07-2007 » |
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Sorry Mort. Really! I can't look at it either - I had to squint when I found it so it was at least out of focus.
Tony, please be gentle with your Liverpool cathedral stories. That one made me shudder.
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Green. Always green.
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George Garnett
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« Reply #19 on: 15:13:27, 25-07-2007 » |
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I don't mean to be competitive about this but I do have rather a lot: claustrophobia, flying, vertigo, snakes and some of them have been really destructive and life-wasters. I haven't flown for about twenty years now and can't see any prospect of doing so again. I only go on the tube very, very rarely and never when it is crowded. That one at least had some sort of rational basis in that it started when I was stuck in a tunnel for over an hour once. I was fine for the first twenty minutes or so and was even one of the ones being 'supportive' to those that didn't like it, but I suddenly cracked. Horrible. The stupidest one was a (related, I suppose) phobia of travelling by train which started when they replaced the 'slam door' type with sliding doors that only the driver can release. It wasn't that I would have got out on to the track before if we stopped at a signal; it was just that I could have. And just knowing that made all the difference. I actually had to give up work for eight months because of that one. Really, really stupid and destructive it nearly took over completely. And no, I don't think it shows I am a deeply sensitive and interesting person. It's the stupid brain getting it wrong, triggering the full 'panic' response when there is nothing to panic about, and it's a horrible nuisance. Looking back on some of the avoidance behaviour I went through....well, it was madness. If it's any help to know this, it hasn't gone away but it has 'lightened' and there are things you can do to outwit your own brain, just a bit. It can be seen off to some extent and it can, if you are lucky, just 'leave' of its own accord or 'lift' and you can't remember what the fuss was all about. Oh, yes, talking of 'lifts'....  |
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« Last Edit: 17:30:38, 07-09-2007 by George Garnett »
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time_is_now
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« Reply #20 on: 15:34:34, 25-07-2007 » |
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Even worse was walking down stairs a few flights on the way out (from the very top to the 80th floor). At times like that I lose all confidence in the building, physics, my legs, and my psychological ability not to throw myself over the bannisters just for the hell of it. I can understand that last point. When I was a child and we used to go on holiday as a family, we always used to go within England (or Wales), and it generally involved a 3- or 4-hour motorway drive. I used to be terrified that I'd open the car window and throw my watch or a toy or something out, and that we wouldn't be able to stop because we were on the motorway and all the other cars were going too fast. I don't really have any permanent phobias, but still if I'm in a situation where I could do something irretrievable I can get quite worked up about it once the thought's entered my head - anything from throwing something out of a train or throwing myself off the balcony to insulting someone important while talking to them. |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #21 on: 15:39:12, 25-07-2007 » |
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I don't mean to be competitive about this but I do have rather a lot: claustrophobia, flying, vertigo, snakes and some of them have been really destructive and life-wasters. Snakes are a massive one for me as well - cannot even watch a television programme where one appears. The most hideous creatures imaginable (oddly, spiders aren't a problem, though; crocodiles are, however) The stupidest one was a (related, I suppose) phobia of travelling by train which started when they replaced the 'slam door' type with sliding doors. It wasn't that I would have got out on to the track if we stopped at a signal; it was just that I could have. That made all the difference. I actually had to give up work for eight months because of that one. Really, really stupid and it nearly took over completely. It's not stupid and it's not uncommon, I think. Some people think this might betoken suicidal urges, but that's not it at all - it's the sense that one is presented with the choice. Thinking 'If I wanted to, I could throw myself onto the track (or off the top of a high building, or anything else like that'. And it brings a perilous sense of responsibility with it, don't you find? Not having that choice makes life much easier. The vertigo came later for me - when a teenager I even went up in a hot air balloon, which is as exposed, and 'on the edge' as you get. Now that would be unthinkable. |
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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increpatio
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« Reply #22 on: 16:11:06, 25-07-2007 » |
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I don't mean to be competitive about this but I do have rather a lot: claustrophobia, flying, vertigo, snakes and some of them have been really destructive and life-wasters. Snakes are a massive one for me as well - cannot even watch a television programme where one appears. The most hideous creatures imaginable (oddly, spiders aren't a problem, though; crocodiles are, however) One of my housemates has a thing about snakes. All very manly and go-get-em, but no way in hell he'd go to see Snakes on a Plane (and, having watched the film, I can imagine it might be QUITE terrifying to anyone who actually has a thing about snakes). |
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martle
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« Reply #23 on: 16:23:49, 25-07-2007 » |
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One of my housemates has a thing about snakes. All very manly and go-get-em, but no way in hell he'd go to see Snakes on a Plane (and, having watched the film, I can imagine it might be QUITE terrifying to anyone who actually has a thing about snakes).
Or snakes AND planes... Eek! |
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Green. Always green.
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increpatio
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« Reply #24 on: 16:25:08, 25-07-2007 » |
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 EEEEK. |
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #25 on: 17:10:44, 25-07-2007 » |
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One of my housemates has a thing about snakes. All very manly and go-get-em, but no way in hell he'd go to see Snakes on a Plane (and, having watched the film, I can imagine it might be QUITE terrifying to anyone who actually has a thing about snakes).
I can think of no film I'd less want to see than that one. PLEASE don't anyone post a pic from it on here - if you do, I will respond with 10 lengthy posts about Adorno!!!!!!!! (waiting for the 'so what's new' reply....  ). |
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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Morticia
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« Reply #26 on: 17:32:12, 25-07-2007 » |
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The husband of a friend has a real phobia about slugs. Just the mention of them makes him go pale. However, he braved the net to see if it was just him and discovered, oh joy! that there were other unfortunates like him out there. Sadly he ventured a site too far and discovered how they reproduce. I think it`s set him back a tad. Well, it is rather yucky.
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increpatio
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« Reply #27 on: 17:51:37, 25-07-2007 » |
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One of my housemates has a thing about snakes. All very manly and go-get-em, but no way in hell he'd go to see Snakes on a Plane (and, having watched the film, I can imagine it might be QUITE terrifying to anyone who actually has a thing about snakes).
I can think of no film I'd less want to see than that one. PLEASE don't anyone post a pic from it on here - if you do, I will respond with 10 lengthy posts about Adorno!!!!!!!! (waiting for the 'so what's new' reply.... ). I did consider it, and then though that it would be rather an unpleasant thing to do. I even felt bad about posting the "dentist" cover because it's a bit gross (it certainly freaks me out). I have a friend who, while not suffering from Vertigo, is profoundly fearful of infinite recesses, and other geometry objects (or depictions) that connote infinitude. There is a painter/mathematician, Fomenko, whose work I quite like, that rather terrified him (stuff by him here http://anatoly-fomenko.com/art/main.php). The husband of a friend has a real phobia about slugs. Just the mention of them makes him go pale. However, he braved the net to see if it was just him and discovered, oh joy! that there were other unfortunates like him out there. Sadly he ventured a site too far and discovered how they reproduce. I think it`s set him back a tad. Well, it is rather yucky.
Oh my I STRONGLY dislike them. I remember once when I was young going out to the shed in my socks to see some kittens, stepping on a slug. GROSS. |
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« Last Edit: 17:55:09, 25-07-2007 by increpatio »
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George Garnett
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« Reply #28 on: 18:00:55, 25-07-2007 » |
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One of the positive things about having a phobia.......no, correct that, the only positive thing about havng a phobia......is that you are much more sympathetic and understanding with people who have really peculiar ones. For example, I have no idea why anyone would have a horror of slugs (as opposed to just finding them a bit yukky) and I can't begin to summon up fear of them. But I do know that their fear is very real and very horrible and I do know what that is like. And also that it is completely to miss the point to tell them all about the good and delightful qualities of slugs and that there is nothing to be be afraid of. They KNOW that already.
Which sort of leads to one thing I do find helpful, or the beginning of helpful, in all this. That is to give yourself the picture that it isn't the slugs that are the problem, nor is it the horror that is the problem (that's a very healthy thing given an appropriate trigger). What has gone wrong is the connection between the two. So that's what you try and work on, snipping that causal thread between the two. You don't concentrate on the slugs (they're not what it's about, er, you try and tell yourself) or on the heart pounding, the sweats and the loss of control (that's all good stuff in its place, if faced with a hungry tiger for example). But what you do work on is just snipping that mistaken filament, which is your invention and has nothing to do with 'the world', which connects the two. I don't know if that makes sense but it's a way of looking at it that I have found helpful......cough, a bit.
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« Last Edit: 18:24:56, 25-07-2007 by George Garnett »
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George Garnett
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« Reply #29 on: 18:08:49, 25-07-2007 » |
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I even felt bad about posting the "dentist" cover because it's a bit gross (it certainly freaks me out). I have to admit that the phrase "Even more Grue-some than the original" did give me the willies. |
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