Comments on: Pupaphobia: Fear of Puppet

By: Carl

Carl — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 20:21:05 +0000

That child is autistic. His fear/anxiety, hiding behind others, and systemic behavior of hitting his hed with a chair is classic autism. I hope his parents are getting him the therapies he needs.

By: Rocky Rook

Rocky Rook — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:08:27 +0000

There's a lotta fear here! In the famous words of Davy Jones, "Do you fear death?"

By: Mouserz

Mouserz — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:41:18 +0000

this would be a great ad for Nerf chairs, preventing preteen suicides since 1959.

By: Graham M (UK YAY)

Graham M (UK YAY) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:32:47 +0000

My Aunt suffers from Pogonophobia.

A fear of beards.

Not sure if its just the people with beards she fears or if she think's she'll be eaten by a giant beard in her sleep.

By: ashleygrl

ashleygrl — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 03:27:21 +0000

@ omgcommastfu --the fear of feet is podophobia

By: Stacey

Stacey — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:57:30 +0000

mrsfosoty : i really hate people or myself touching my belly button or watching other wise touch theirs.. it makes me sick just thinking about it.

By: Aramax

Aramax — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:50:05 +0000

Electrophobia. Can't unscrew a simple lightbulb without proper mental preparation. It's annoying like hell.

By: BlindFox

BlindFox — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:14:41 +0000

I have a completely irrational fear of paper. I have no idea why, and it drives me mental.

By: scott, no the other one

scott, no the other one — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:26:14 +0000

I have a ferocious fear of heights that I try to challenge when I can. Still have not overcome it. It does not stop me from ladders (xmas lights aren't getting put up by themselves) but I do get vertigo and spaghetti legs on occasion. Since my son is autistic I tend to see the autism in everything, even when it's not there, but the last moments of this video make me wonder whether this child is exhibiting symptoms of a phobia or symptoms of autism. He's overstimulated, needing an escape for all that energy, and he's clawing at the other kid's hair and finally hitting his own head with his chair. Could be youth and fear or it could be sensory overload. Or he could just be a normal kid being freaked out by freaky puppets doing freaky things.

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:21:24 +0000

I've read that the proper way to desensitize yourself is to pretend like it's a movie and you're watching it. Then you're watching yourself watching the movie. Something like that. I still have a fear of heights, but I don't let that stop me from going up ladders (someone has to clean the windows). Turns out clammy hands grip really, really well.

By: Dianne

Dianne — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:49:36 +0000

Melinda: My late husband use to dream that he was in a room and clusters of bubbles were taking over the space. He had the dream a lot when he was little and occasionally as an adult. Very interesting!!

By: Melinda

Melinda — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:39:01 +0000

Kitten OMG!!! Yes! I saw that last week on there!!!!! I couldn't even eat the food that I had just ordered!!! n thanx, now i know there's a name for what my phobia! i used to just call it clusterphobia...but everyone used to think i was trying to say claustrophobia, lol!

By: davideo71

davideo71 — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:22:59 +0000

I have a physical 'allergic' reaction to the genie effect in OSX. The first thing i have to do when i do anything on some one's mac is turn genie effect off. Not sure what it is that does it, but it gives me shivers down my spine. (i find lots of things ugly but no other things bring out this reaction in me)

By: alice

alice — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:01:19 +0000

I have an intense fear of crane flies (daddy long legs that fly), it's called tipulophobia. And just finding that out has started my heart racing.

I once had a look at how you desensitize (sp?) yourself to them but had a full blown panic attack just reading the instructions, so I don't think I'll be doing that anytime soon!

By: Christophe

Christophe — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:00:51 +0000

I fear dentists.
I fear the dentists' drill sounds.
**** shudders ****

By: Eibmoz

Eibmoz — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:58:31 +0000

I have an irrational fear of grasshoppers. I cant stand them, I will cross the street to avoid them.

By: J.D. Iles

J.D. Iles — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:20:32 +0000

Our oldest needs to run out of the room any time any of the muppets come on the TV.

I always thought the chick in Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem was kind of hot!

J.D. Iles
http://www.signsneversleep.com
====================================

By: Kitten

Kitten — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:01:07 +0000

Melinda - it's called trypophobia. There was a recent, er, incident with Post Secret that lead to a lot of people learning of a new phobia!

By: artbot

artbot — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:39:38 +0000

A friend has a phobia about robots with red glowing eyes. As far as I could tell, she was not joking about it, judging from her reaction to some email images.

And yeah, the drawer closing is a little OCD-ish, though I don't have any of the straightening or neatness behaviors sometimes associated with it. My wife probably wishes I did. The room can look like a bomb went off in it otherwise, but I just have to close the dresser drawers.

By: TwoDragons

TwoDragons — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:12:50 +0000

I have a terrible fear of driving. Especially in heavy traffic. Heck, I don't even like being a PASSENGER in heavy traffic! Open country good. City traffic NOT GOOD SCARY BAD! Especially with big huge semis and buses barreling all around you...brr...

When I was a kid I had a horrible fear that a giant meteor would come smashing down on me while I was sleeping. I'm also repulsed by clowns, but I don't think that's so much a phobia as it is I find them mostly pointless and un-entertaining.

--TwoDragons

By: Melinda

Melinda — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:59:45 +0000

I don't know if there is an actual name for the phobia that I have, but it is an intense fear of clusters! Like, anything that is in tight lil circular clusters, or octagonal shape clusters... for example, you know the honeycombs that bees make...terrifying! or like when u open a pomegranate, the cluster of seeds in there just freak me out! or like when u heat up easy mac in the microwave n when u take it out all the mac in cheese are standing straiht up n when u look straight down on it, all the circles at the ends of the noodles gives me chills! n ostuff like that... It's really bizarre cuz I don't know where it came from... It's not something that's been from since I was a child(i'm 23 yrs old)... it actually started about 3 years ago.... n i don't know why... like really out the blue... it's crazy cuz i used to see those people on the Maury show with ridiculous phobias n thought it was just an act, but now i understand... i mean, don't get me wrong, i don't act as crazy, but what happens to me is that i start getting an anxiety attack... my tears automatically come to my eyes(i don't actually cry, tho), my body gets real hot n i kinda get real stiff n it makes me feel almost claustophobic.... i wonder if anybody else shares this same "phobia"???

By: Dianne

Dianne — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:18:29 +0000

I hate bats...the "make nests in your hair" kind. And when I was a little kid I had nightmares about quicksand. Everybody's got something they avoid, right?

By: renderanything

renderanything — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:41:50 +0000

I just wonder why the kid decided that picking lice from his friend's hair would be an acceptable thing to do during a puppet performance.

By: Skipweasel

Skipweasel — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:20:32 +0000

I wouldn't say he's frightened of the puppets at all. To me he appears to be frightened of the scary story the puppets are portraying; which is after all why the story's being told, to give children a delicious scare. This should be fairly easy to test: portray the same story with live actors and see whether he still finds it scary, though of course on repetition some of the scary might have worn off. His actions are somewhat exagerated, but anyone who's worked with kids knows that "normal" covers quite a wide spread of reality. I used to be like this with Dr Who - though in my case it wasn't the monsters that made the four year old me hide behind the sofa, it was the music. As soon as the tune stopped I was out enjoying the green slime etc, but as soon as the closing titles ran, so did I.

By: Scooter

Scooter — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:07:21 +0000

I have a fear of talking on the phone to strangers... Don't ask me why. I try to avoid making or taking any phone call where I don't know the person calling. I've never had a problem calling people i know. Weird huh.

By: l.a.

l.a. — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:47:29 +0000

I have a fear of syringes, so anytime I'm watching House or any other medical drama I freak out whenever somebody gets a shot. I've managed to control it enough to be able to get my vaccinations and what not, but I usually have to sit still for about five minutes after getting it to make sure I don't pass out.

I knew a girl in college who had a fear of cats, and one day we found a little kitten and brought it into the classroom. She and a friend walked in a few minutes later, the friend saw me holding the kitten and tried to put up a big book she was carrying to keep her from seeing it, and instead smacked her in the face with the book.

By: Misuko48

Misuko48 — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:43:33 +0000

I have a fear of crickets, too. Unfortunately, I once bought an anole at a fair only to discover the vendor lied (go figure) about its diet and it needed live crickets for food. So, for two years (the anole just had to live its whole life expectancy!) I kept live crickets in my house (OK, closet) and fed the anole every couple of days. Fortunately, some genius developed a special cage for feeder crickets that has removable hollow tubes the crickets crawl into so I never actually had to touch the crickets (unless they fell out of the tube while I was transferring it from their cage to the anole's cage--boy, was it funny when that happened what with all my screaming and jumping around!). Also, I have a fear of heights, which came in handy on my recent visit to Yosemite and Big Sur. I once tried to get over this fear by bungee jumping from 150 ft. but I guess systematic desensitization really is the best/only way to get over a phobia.

By: Gauldar

Gauldar — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:28:35 +0000

My friend says he has a fear of rabbits, and he's either full of crap or has step-by-step attempted to self develop that phobia since he has no rational explanation to it.

By: Cate

Cate — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:12:13 +0000

I run screaming through the premises if I see RED JELLO. Weird, huh?

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By: Anconite

Anconite — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:00:30 +0000

Oh I am also afraid of water where I can't see the bottom. A cruise sounds like the next thing from hell to me. I have nightmares of being in a beach house, with large plate glass windows, and watching a massive tidal wave come towards us. I also dread sharks.

Ironically I loved snorkeling in Hawaii, probably because I could see below me, and one of my favorite vacations is to the beach.