Your Greatest Fear?

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

Something Hugeunot said made me want to start this thread.

What is your greatest fear?

Mine is depression and hitting the bottom.

I wake up in cold sweats sometimes when my dreams have transported me to a dark place from my past and I have to reassure myself that I am a long way from that place now.

It still haunts me though, but not as badly as it used to.

[Bellenden Belle]

My greatest fear is that I will reach a point in my life where I feel utterly alone. I look back at my mother's life - a terribly difficult woman - and I realise that she was very lonely and isolated.

I am fortunate to have an amazing circle of friends and I'm fairly good at making friends - but it seems to me family bonds are very valuable and sometimes I wonder if that is something I will crave in the future.

edited because I used the word incredibly three times!

[benjaminty]

It has to be going down for a crime I did not commit. Can you imagine doing 20+ for something you didnt do?

I had a mate arrested for armed robbery a long time ago ... he didnt do it or have any connections but initially he couldnt prove his innocence. Frightening.

[Asset]

Oh My Gosh, I've got so many I don't know where to begin!

[mockney piers]

Stroke, go rubbish, no ability to express self, consign loved one to care for one self, she may not endure, be bullied by "care workers"...die.

Losing faculty of language scares the utter shit out of me....pardon my french......

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

Some good responses.

How do you manage your fear?

Do you find coping techniques or does it consume you sometimes?

I remember being terrified of nuclear war when I was a teenager. It used to keep me awake at night for months, until I suddenly thought, "if I get hit by a nuke I'll fry in 10 seconds so I won't even know anything about it."

That made the fear managable for me.

[Asset]

I actually didn't go to Ibiza last week because of irrational fears and a deep sense of foreboding. Flight was booked and everything. That would be an example of me not managing the fears very well.

I used to have the same fear re. being nuked Chav, where I lived I could hear the rumble of reverse thrust as planes landed and every time I thought 'this is it'. I think it was the time we grew up, my son is now displaying fears about global warming etc.

I also think my fears are a symptom of being a bit of a control freak.

[Guest]

As a child I was terrified of talking on the phone (grew out of it), disfiguring diseases and gruesome deaths (my mother used to terrify us with stories such as "she let the cat kiss her and then her throat swelled and split open"), also bombs, fires etc, possibly due to the IRA starting terrorist activities in the UK.

These days it's being rejected/living an isolated life (similar to BB, who seems to be doing a better job of preventing this than I am) and also dying without achieving something worthwhile.

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

Worms. Flying. Dentists.

[Guest]

Used to be afraid of flying but did Virgin's nervous flyer course last year which helped a lot. Really recommend it.

[Bellenden Belle]

I count my blessings, and know that in my hardest moments I have always felt supported.

I know a very tough therapist who insists on personal responsibility for everything. He views all thinking and all actions as a choice. This can be infuriating when he is teaching and says to us "I know you're tired and hungry but we have some more work to do, so I say to you just make space."

But I remember when I lost it for a morning shortly after leaving my husband - I could hear Paul's words -"Contain yourself...how are you going to do that?" And there was a huge satisfaction in actually making the decision to not give in to irrational thoughts and actually making a conscious choice to think and behave differently.

The trick is getting into a habit of being aware of what's going on within so you can catch it before it spirals. And then knowing what might work for you - whether it's forcing yourself to pick up a phone and make a connection with someone, or to get out of the house and do some exercise, or physically pamper yourself... even if that reverse action seems like the hardest thing in the world.

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

Sound advice BB. I try to do that when my irrational jealousy starts rearing it's ugle head and call my BF to explain how i'm feeling and why, even though my whole being is screaming, run away from the source of this emotional pain. It seems to be working cos he recognises how I'm feeling and after we talk I realise I was going off on one again! It is difficult unlearning our failed defence mechanisms.

[Marmora Man]

Greatest fear - retaining my thinking mind but losing control of my body - being unable to walk, talk, see or hear. It is the ultimate lock up.

I try to control it by being rational (it's a long way off) and atheist / humanist (it has to be sorted out by me and not some greater being I pray to) and supporting living wills and campaigns for voluntary euthanasia as a rational humanist response. I have already signed off such documents and my family are fully aware of my wishes.

[SeanMacGabhann]

Bellenden Belle's last post is wise, pertinent and stands on it's own as a piece of confessional writing - I love it

My own fear is that of stuplity... sorry, stupidity. Specifically, mass self-delusional stupidity - the kind that has swept across civilizations across centuries (eg Inquisition, McCarthyism, German social democracy) , and which each contemporary society thinks is above it. I live in fear of ever falling prey to it AND to being one of the few who has to stand against it..

[Keef]

Work

[jumpinjackflash]

Chinooks. Shudder everytime I see one on TV and in the papers.

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

When I was in Kingston (Jamaica) last month I heard what sounded like a helicopter, something I'd heard quite a lot at night, but it was intermittent and in the breaks I could hear 'bap, bap, bap, bap'.

I asked my boyfriend if it was someone firing at a helicopter and everyone laughed at me because it was an AK47 and a handgun being fired in some kind of battle a couple of streets away.

It went on for about half an hour in the middle of the day.

Since then I will add 'anyone I know catching a random bullet' as one of my fears.

[mockney piers]

I was having difficulty with this story until I realised you meant Kingston, Jamaica, not the one in Surrey...makes more sense now.

[missd]

mockney piers me too - re-read it twice and still thought 'what?' and then read yours and yes made much more sense. funny!

[david_carnell]

jumpinjackflash Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Chinooks. Shudder everytime I see one on TV and

> in the papers.

Do you say this as someone who has been in a Chinook and found it traumatic? Or merely as an observer?

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

Yes sorry, that was Kingston, Jamaica I was talking about, not the leafy suburb of London!

[SteveT]

Being a down and out.

It has driven me from the age of eighteen when I left home, to the present day. I became a work a holic which ultimately was the strongest force in my life to the exclusion of wife kids holidays etc.

Death of course, the fear of the unknown was conquered when I spoke to an old boy I worked with and he said 'frightened of death Stevie, you die every night'.

That statement has made me feel a whole lot happier.

[citizenED]

My dad had "Tramp Fear" - not fear of tramps, but fear of becoming destitute. It stalked him his whole life. Fortunately it does not seem to have passed onto me.

Looking at your original post CWALD, I can understand the fear of depression, but why so afraid of spanking?

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

Haha - very funny!

[Brendan]

Cabbages.