Photo by Rennett Stowe (Wikimedia Commons)
“To be afraid of, expect with alarm.” ~ Webster’s Dictionary
“Fear is the ability to recognize danger leading to an urge to confront it or flee from it.” ~Wikipedia
“Fear not.” ~ The Angel Gabriel and others
“Do not fear.”~ Jesus.
“False Evidence Appearing Real” ~Somewhere on the Internet
Fear is also one of the themes of Bridging Two Hearts where Amy is terrified of the Coronado Bridge and Josh, a Navy SEAL, who doesn’t believe he’s afraid of anything. (Though small spaces bother him after a recent near-tragic assignment).
Fears and phobias are related, of course, though phobias often have a psychological component and frequently need professional help to overcome.
The list of phobias–φόβος, Greek for fear–is endless, but some of the more common ones are mentioned in the novel.
Amy’s fear of bridges is called Gephyrophobia. Most people know claustrophobia is a fear of small enclosed spaces.
Gephyrophobia is so common in San Diego (whose Coronado Bridge is the number three suicide bridge in the country), that the Virtual Reality Medical Center is well prepared to handle people needing to deal with it.
The 4.3 mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Maryland so frightens people that for many years the Maryland Transit Authority had a program where someone else would drive your car over the bridge while you sat in the passenger seat.
Phobias
In Bridging Two Hearts, Amy develops her phobia of bridges because of something in her past. Rather than deal with that personal issue, she transfers the fear and panic to where it occured: a bridge.
Crippled by that fear, she avoided driving over bridges until the opportunity to grow up and get her dream job forced the issue. She had to choose whether to allow her fear to control her or to face it and overcome it.
The genesis for this plot idea came from my own, well-meaning mother’s attempts to keep us out of trouble.
Our two-story house was built on a hill and my lower-story bedroom had a door to access the roomy crawl space.
My mother did not want her children playing in there, so she warned us to stay out because “black widow spiders live under there. If one bites you, you’ll die.”
I taught my kids how to recognize one. Photo by Steve Ryan (Creative Commons)
Why would I not believe her?
Black widow information
I was terrified to go under the house and every time she gave me something to store under there, I hurried in and out as fast as possible.
(Until right now, it never occurred to me that an enterprising spider could have slipped under the door. I’m glad I didn’t realize that before!)
Just like the movie.
(I tried to cure myself of this fear by watching Steven Spielberg’s film one night. I only lasted five minutes before I, literally, ran screaming out of the room.)
When I reached adulthood, any spider spooked me. I’m fanatic about vacuuming spider webs found in the house. But our Connecticut home in the woods sported a lot of Daddy Long Legs (Pholcidae) who moved in every spring.
“Repeat after me,” my husband said, getting a grip on my shoulders. “The spider is my friend. He eats insects.”
“The spider is my friend.” I did repeat it.
Often.
After awhile, they didn’t bother me as much. But I still vacuumed them up.
Can Simple Fear=Phobia?
I didn’t want my children to be afraid of every insect with eight legs. I wanted them to recognize spiders like Charlotte, but from a distance.
So, we studied spiders and I learned, for the first time, how to recognize a black widow spider, particularly the red infinity symbol on the back of its bulbous body.
I’ve only seen three in my life.
But I stomped on all three immediately.
I can handle spiders now because I’ve used knowledge to overcome my fears.
I used to be afraid to fly, but I overcame that, again, by looking at the situation with rational eyes.
But not all fears and certainly not phobias, can be treated by logic and knowledge as Josh discovered in Bridging Two Hearts.
His teammate needed professional help to deal with a psychological-based phobia brought on by a near-dying incident.
The military, as it does in real life, sent the SEAL for treatment at a clinic dealing with claustrophobia. If he didn’t deal with the fear, he’d lose his SEAL designator, and thus his livelihood.
Sometimes it takes a powerful motive to help us confront our fears and phobias.
But the truth can set us free.
How have you dealt with fear in the past? Were you able to figure out why you feared something? Did learning about what you feared help?
Tweetables:
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I’m scared witless of bridges, MORTIFIED of being on or near hydro dams and absolutely and utterly TERRIFIED of being near or on an ocean going container ship. Since I grew up in Vancouver, we had all three. Bridges, I’m fine on, the ones where I live now are pitifully small. Although rope suspension bridges aren’t such a big deal, don’t ask me why.
Hydro dams, I have no idea why they freak me out, and I go near one about twice a year, so no big deal. But thank the Lord we’re up river from the giant container ships !!
My friends and I went out sailing in English Bay, one of the guys was trying to impress me and when I announced I was going below because the tankers were freaking me out, he sailed the boat as close as he could get without the harbour police catching us. Then he announced we were clear. I went above decks and I’m pretty sure I went into heart failure. I did not choose to spend any more time on his boat.
I have no idea why I have those phobias, but at least I don’t have a fear of dust. Otherwise I’d live in constant fear of my living room.
It’s curious how those things turn up.
I hate dust myself. When my mother died (I used to dust only when she came to visit), I suggested that in memory of her I never dust again.
My husband didn’t think that would be a good way of honoring her . . .
Recognizing the phobia is the first step. If you can live with it and it doesn’t affect your life, no problem. An old friend, however, realized that if she was going to raise Navy kids, particularly in Groton, CT, she had to overcome her fear of bridges. I babysat so she could see the psychologist–it didn’t take long, but deaing wtih the fear was important to her.
And her family.
It’s the container ship one that makes no sense at all. Really? Container ships?
I just had a memory, Dr. Ule!
I think the bridge one stems from when I was 6 and my (horrible) grandmother insisted we walk across a huge bridge. It had thin wooden slats on the pedestrian part of the bridge. In my little mind, if I could see the ocean between my feet, I would soon be in it.
Yep. That would do it. I’m glad you’re better now.
You might have been locked in a closet as a kid on a ship, who knows? I know I get totally creeped out by obsession stories. Who knows why?
Well, there was that kid–his parents went to college with mine–who always followed me around and wanted to kiss me starting when I was six . . .
Michelle– Good topic and well handled. Everybody is afraid of something. Most of us are afraid of revealing who/what we really are. In fact, the unwillingness to probe deeper frightens many because they’re not sure they can handle such self-knowledge.
I deal with that and related topics in my blog (samhallwriter.com) from time to time but there’s always new info and different ways of looking at the same thing.