What constitutes an irrational fear? Depends on who you ask, really. I am going to tell you what an irrational fear is to me. You may have a totally different opinion, and that is fine with me. We can agree to disagree.
The picture above is just that; a picture. I am not terrified of dinosaurs simply because I do not live in Jurassic Park. If you saw the movie, then I am sure it terrified many, if not you personally. From experience, I know that it frightened my daughter, even though she could rationally say to you that she knew it was just make-believe. That did not stop her imagination from working overtime.
There are several things that I know I have irrational fears about. Some, I am aware that there are some plans of action I could do in order to overcome them. Then there are others that I simply ask myself, "Why would I want to?"
Only once have I flown in what I considered to be a small plane. I had many wonderful experiences flying before going in this plane and had no fear whatsoever. Let's just say that my fear does have some rational reasoning to it. I boarded just fine. However, once we got in the air over the Rocky Mountains, the turbulence took over. We rocked back and forth and up and down the whole trip. People all around me were getting sick. This in turn affected me and I got sick. It was an hour of sheer misery. The pilot got on the speaker and informed us that this was one of the roughest flights he has ever flown in, BUT there was nothing to worry about. He and the crew had everything under control. For me? Nothing was going to be under control until we landed safely on the ground.
As we got off the plane, the friends and family waiting for passengers were all asking why was everyone so green looking? When I looked around me, everyone did look as if they were related to The Grinch. I just made a promise to myself then and there that I would not ever be on a small plane again. Knowing that I had to get back to Denver from Jackson Hole in order to fly the large aircraft back to Memphis, I had decided that I would be renting a car and driving to Denver. Problem solved. Friends and family that met me had other plans. They managed to get some Johnny Walker Scotch in my system and I was not able to drive. I ended up getting on the small plane and sleeping through the uneventful flight. At least, they told me that it was uneventful. Maybe so? To this day I still avoid getting on small planes.
I might add that I had a similar experience on a very large deep sea fishing boat. The captain said that the sea was as rough as he had ever seen. Good grief! Does Mother Nature follow me around on my excursions? I was laid out across the built-in ice chests where they kept the caught fish alive.
In my usually logical mind, I know that a cruise liner is so much larger than this large deep sea fishing boat. However, that one experience has made me just a bit terrified of taking a cruise.
Maybe one day. Maybe!
Now, let's go to another kind of irrational fear. These fears are for real and I really don't want to do anything about these fears except avoid these things:
Usually, I manage to do a rather good job at avoiding them. On those rare occasions that I don't, bedlam breaks out. This blog was on my mind to write this week because of one of our goldendoodles, Davis.
Normally, he has always been a model of the perfect dog. However, this past week, our perfect dog went out with me for the last trip to take care of his business before bed. Leaves had been falling all day and I noticed on our way in he grabbed at something, which I naturally thought was a big leaf. He followed me in with it to the screened in porch. It was there that I told him to drop it and he did. He followed me to the back door, only to turn quickly and went back to grab it and flew in to his bed. He put it down and looked up at me with his adoringly big brown eyes. I looked down and became totally irrational and close to hysterics. Steve came running in and so did our little goldendoodle. I put out my arms, waving them away and screaming for Steve to call them to their crates, quickly. Of course, he had no idea what the fuss was all about. I then barked out (literally) for him to bring two plastic bags fast.
You see, on the bed was a dead (thank goodness) mouse. I had no idea that dogs caught mice. As Steve came out, he saw the problem and put the dead critter in the bag and took it out to the trash. It was at that point that I needed a tall G & T with a twist of lemon. It helped me to stop hyperventilating and even considering changing our dog's name to Hunter or Killer.
This picture is obviously is not Davis but this is exactly what he did. I did not stop to take pics. The next day, I looked up dogs catching mice. There were a few breeds of dogs listed who actually are known for this. Goldendoodles were not on the list, nor were poodles or English golden retrievers. However, he looked me as if he should be praised for bringing me such a gift. He was so proud. I was speechless. Steve and others let me know that I should have thanked him and praised him. hmmmm
This is what I would expect, even though I have never really had a cat. Never would I expect our dog to catch one, kill it and bring it to me. Even though I have had a couple of times, a field mouse coming in our house, I know that I managed to acquire this irrational fear of mice from my Mother. She came in from her bedroom with her handgun when I screamed about the mouse that I spotted in the kitchen. Truly, at that stage, I did not know which scenario that I should have been more afraid of: the mouse who ran off to who knows where or my Mother standing in the doorway pointing a handgun, as if she could really shoot a mouse!
Then, some rational thinking had to be mustered up by someone and to my amazement, it was mine. I had to take the phone from her hands when she told me that she was calling 9-1-1 for the mouse in our house! Ya'll, this is for real! I just can't make this up out of the blue. Quickly, I took the phone from her and tried to explain that she/we would be fined for calling over a mouse - not considered life threatening.
After buying out Lowe's of all of their glue traps, I managed to get our problem solved with the help of my daughter. You see, she also is not fond of mice. She had to help shovel up the trap that the mouse got stuck in and place him into the bag that I held out and we took the bag out to the trash bin. We also called in my dear, sweet Uncle to check out the garage door where he guessed the mouse came in from the field beside our house. He fixed the problem.
There were also times when I worked outside of the home, that it was known there was a mouse problem. I kept my feet up off the ground when I had to sit in a meeting or work at my computer until the problem had been solved.
While at work, our building was being renovated. The ceiling tiles had not been replaced just yet, so all of the piping and insulation was exposed above the long hallways. I was out in one hallway with the locksmiths that were sent to our building. We were going over the blueprints where they were marking the doors that needed to have locks with keys installed. I was pointing at the pictures they had on a rolling cart just as a rat from above fell down right in front of us. I can still hear the sound of that rat as it hit the floor. DEAD. "SPLAT!"
"Looks as if it broke its back," one locksmith calmly uttered to me and his buddy.
At that stage, I grabbed my radio and managed to screech for a call of help from our building engineer. The call went into the office and to anyone else that carried a radio. People came out of everywhere to see what kind of commotion was going on. I was literally, helped into my office to a chair. No one could believe that my normally calm voice went into a wild banshee howling. That was the talk at work for over a month and still to this day, 17 years later, is still remembered.
There seems to be patterns to me encountering fears of rats. Just two days ago, Steve and I were leaving out of our garage to take our puppies to WGAC Doggie Daycare. With cold weather approaching, we have a few hidden places with sticky traps just in case one wants to come in from the cold.
As I backed out of the garage and put the car in Drive, we headed down our cove at a slow speed and heard a thump, thump sound from the rear of the car. Steve got out to investigate. He discovered a dead rat attached to one of the sticky traps that was in turn stuck on the rear left tire. Clearly, my fear of rodents manifested itself one more time. Steve suggested, "Let's just drive and hope that it comes off." It did! It was all that I could do to guide the vehicle on the correct side of the road. I couldn't even talk at this point. I am really hoping my irrational fear of rodents does not come in 'threes!'
I am not apologizing for my irrational fear. To me it is very rational. To this day, I will not go in a cave where there could be bats, look and watch carefully when outside where snakes could be and will use a shoe to kill a spider or spray it to death with bug spray or hairspray, whichever is close at hand.
What makes sense to you?
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