A while back I posted a few of my irrational fears. metal awnings...emery boards...cuttle bones...I am shuddering just thinking about them. They still make me cringe and want to roll up into a tight little wad in a corner somewhere. As bad as these things are, I have come to realize that I have another fear that presents itself several times a week...tweezers.
Ok, more specifically tweezers on the bathroom floor.
Yes, I know it is silly, but for some reason there always seems to be a pair of tweezers on the floor of my bathroom...and for some reason I KNOW that I am going to step on them, impaling them bone-deep into the end of my big toe. Every single time I see a pair of tweezers on the floor they mock me. I immediately visualize the shiny metal jutting out of my flesh, the searing pain in my foot, and the gushing blood. It has never happened before to me or anyone I know, but I am sure that one day when I have let my guard down it will.
Love your work!
ReplyDeleteAnd your vigilance is, without doubt, the only thing that has kept those tweezers out of your toe bone, so never let your guard down!
I am mostly phobia-free, except for a bathroom/toe phobia, as well - stepping over that ledge into and out of the shower, I'm sure that one day I will catch my big toenail on that metal strip and flip it up like a car's hood.
Saw that once when I accompanied a friend to the emergency room for non-toe related matters, and a woman there hobbled in with her toenail bed exposed like a car's engine.
It was the stuff of nightmares!
Bathrooms must be the scariest rooms in the house...
I hear ya....even with all the spider talk going on at my end of the world. Still hate those little (and sometimes big) buggers.
ReplyDeleteI remind my friends that it is a phobia is a "irrational fear" - yes, yes it is. So don't try to talk me out of it with that "that would never happen" logic :)
Cheers!
Thanks Dio, for that lovely image that is now burned into my brain. Thank goodness I have a curtain on my shower and not the sliding door with the metal track.
ReplyDeleteTweezers always on the floor? Is someone in the house mad at you? If hints of your other phobias start materializing in the next few weeks in other rooms in the house, I think you should buy your wife flowers.Might help make it all magically go away ;)
ReplyDeleteDavid you need to imagine just the opposite of pain, blood, metal thing sticking out of your foot. Imagine instead the you pick the tweezers up and lay them in a drawer... that your feet are clean and protected. Imagine that what ever it is that is going to "get you" cannot penetrate your space...
ReplyDeletetrust me I have irrational fears myself, moths, sharks in swimming pools (yes I just know someone put a great white in the pool for a joke!) lakes (for the same reason) heights, fear of falling....
We all have them huh?
Take care and pick up those tweezers! : )
Pattee
Pattee, I know how easy it would be to pick them up, but there is a problem with that suggestion...as soon as I bend down to pick them up, I might hit my head on the sharp corner of the countertop and knock myself out cold. It is much easier to avoid the little metal beastie than to deal with the awful altenative.
ReplyDeleteGF, my wife does chase me with an emery board every now and then...you might be onto something here.
The two best therapies for specific phobias are systematic desensitization and flooding. With systematic esensitization you slowly get yourself used to the feared object. Start by putting tweezers far away from you and slowly bring them closer until the fear diminishes. With flooding, you just overwhelm yourself with the fear and don't let yourself escape the feared object until the fear is gone. Go into a room filled with tweezers on the floor and sit with them on the floor touching them until all the fear is gone. I did this with my fear of heights. I rock climbed until the fear faded.
ReplyDeleteGood luck.