here you go, for those net-doctors

figure this one out... cuz no one so far has (a thread reminded me of this, figured i might as well ask... i'm quite curious why myself...)

anyways, until i was 18, i had the fear/imaginiation fo a 7 year old... it's embarrasing to admit, but i'm past that point now, and want to know why... now i'm normal... just the usual shit that would scare an 18-21 year old male, scares me, so i'm passed it and want to know what was up with me before..

here's the deal....

i couldn't sleep in my own room, i couldn't do anything alone... i was scared of bathrooms, i was scared of ANY room where there wasn't someone else... doens't matter when or where it scared the shit out of me.. i always thought there was some monster, or zombie, or ghost, right behind me, about to grab me and drag me into it's world....

this is where it gets harder to just 'explain away'... i KNEW it was impossible... i am, and have always been a logical person... problem is, this logic didn't seem to reach my brain... LOGICALLY i knew the shit i was going through was stupid to even think of... (and to imagine this type of fear, imagine you been kidnapped, see other people tied up on racks, and killers cutting body parts out of them while they're still alive, and you're next on this rack... that is exactly the level of fear i'm talking about) i COULD NOT stop it...

i knew it was stupid, but my body told me otherwise... i would freak out, i would run and scream, i'd have panic attacks many doctors have never even knew were capable... i must stress this... IT DID NOT MATTER THAT I KNEW IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE, MY BODY TOLD ME OTHERWISE WITH HOW IT WOULD FREAK OUT... so what the fuck...

yeah, overactive fear is common in anxiety patients, but NOTHING like this (i've actually had a couple of doctors tell me i'm making this all up, but ask my parents, grandparents, shit even my wife....) that fear was uncontrollable, and extreme... no ammount of 'conditioning' (facing fears) solved it, no medication solved it... i don't even truely know why it went away, just one day, it started not bothering me (at 16+)

so what was it? and why did it happen? i've NEVER heard of this in anyone else, and apparently, neither had any of my MANY doctors (like i said, some even called me crazy or attention needy saying i was making it all up)

but seriously, do these doctors think i liked having to have a friend or parent sit by the bathroom door while i bathed, or took a shit? just cuz i was so afraid while i was in there i was going ot disappear into some world worthy of a horror movie with some already popular movie villian chassing me deeper into his world? who the fuck, WHO THE FUCK, would make it up to such a point, tha tthey are constantly looking over their shoulder or looking around corners.. who the fuck would make or even fake shit like that? for years upon years... yeah, maybe i could understand a short time, just to get attention (a week, a month?) but years? fucking YEARS?

i want any explination, i want to learn more about what that was... i can't explain the fear i felt... this fear was so strong, (and i literally mean this) that i was scared to flush toilets, even with firends/parents/family standing outside, cuz i was scared it was goign to tell candyman (or the like) i was in that restroom and it was time to strike...

so wtf... someone please help me understand this... (i'm far over it so i don't need help 'dealing' with it... i just want to understand why most of my childhood was eaten away by this BS)

The Brain is a crazy thing isn't it?

It's just how your wired up there, the way you were built, and i guess you grew out of it.

You'd need a psychologist who knows you well to help you with this, but based on what you've told me, here's my best shot. A lot of this comes from what I've learned about child psychological development over the years during teacher training, reading as a parent, and in medical psychopathology class this year.

First, all kids have fears. We all have inherent neuroses and potential phobias. And that stuff is felt on an emotional rather than intellecutal/logical level when we're kids. When we're grownups, we can interpret it on two levels, both emotional and intellectual (logical). But kids don't yet have the intellectual capacity to understand the logical end of things. So they just feel things emotionally. That's why nowadays you can realize logically that the fears aren't or weren't rational but you still had them when you were a kid and can still have them now, too. Now as an adult, you can sort of see the logic involved, too.

The way adults establish a secure, solid routine for kids, who're able to calm down and develop properly when they're being raised in a steady, predictable way, makes a huge difference in how kids respond to their childhood fears. A regular day-to-day routine helps kids know they're secure and safe. It seems boring to us adults, but it's actually just what kids need. And how the adults in kids' lives respond to kids' fears helps quell those fears or aggravate them. My guess is that you didn't get a lot of reassurance about your standard childhood fears. But from what you've told me, you also didn't have a lot of security or continuity in your family of origin--and not a lot of predictable routine, either. To make things worse, before you were even old enough to know what was going on, you more than likely witnessed some fear-inducing things: crazy behavior, addiction, violence, possibly even traumatic scenes of various kinds. As a kid, no one protected you from that traumatic stuff, much less comforted and reassured you through the standard childhood fear phases. You displaced some of the fear from the crazy stuff you were witnessing on the routine, everyday things in your life--like bathrooms and toilets and the space under the bed or behind the curtains and around every corner. Those normal fears you would have had anyway were magnified, and then you were also exhibiting the irrational, constant fears of a traumatized kid, too.

See if that fits. This fear-and-trauma thing is why kids who're too badly traumatized and frightened sometimes dissociate and create a separate identity or psychological state to deal with those fears. Sounds like you were in touch with the fears for the most part, which was why you felt them so constantly as a kid. But if you'd not been such a strong kid, you might have separated yourself from those feelings or even developed an alternate personality. That tendency to dissociate, or separate, from those feelings is how in cases of extreme trauma kids can begin to develop alternate (multiple) personalities. It's a coping mechanism, and it's inaccurately referred to as schizophrenia, which is a totally different brain-physiology related illness. Sometimes dissociative disorders don't go as far as multiple personalities and instead just extend to altered or blocked-off states of consciousness where people dissociate from their feelings.

The reason the fears stopped to a large extent was that when you got old enough to incorporate the intellectual with the emotional you were able to see that some of those childhood fears were without rational foundation. You probably also by then had learned enough coping skills to suppress those fears enough that you could function in day-to-day life.

So now your job as an adult is to do a few things. You can't undo the past. None of us can. But you can deal with it as much as you can and keep helping yourself see the difference between rational and irrational fears. And you can work on staying in grownup mode where you're in touch with what's going on in your psyche instead of too much numbing out on substances, if that makes sense. That'll also help you break the cycle for your own little boy. By staying connected and in touch with yourself and your feelings and with him and his feelings, you can also help create for him the steadiness and predicability that was lacking in your own childhood so he doesn't have to face the same craziness. Give him a steady, predictable routine. Comfort him and make him feel safe. Shelter him from craziness if you can and help him process what he does see. Kids love repetition and routine because it's familiar and comforting. That's why they like to read the same books over and over and watch the same movies. That's actually very beneficial to their development and security, even if it tends to bore us.

Does some of that make sense??

I know what you mean hun, alot of people have weird phobias. I'm afraid of the lochness monster...(im not even kidding)

Yeah I have weird shit like that...but it's mostly just bad anxiety...like REALLY bad anxiety. I just deal with it, but having anxiety about shit like that doesn't happen too often, but sometimes it does.

thanks birdgirl, that does make sense... but i woulda never thought something seemingly so minimal could have such an outcome (not having a set routine, etc) like that...

Routine makes a huge difference for kids. That alone probably didn't cause the fears you had. My guess would be that the trauma and craziness played a bigger role in creating the irrational fears in your everyday life but that the absence of steadiness and predictability kept you from getting the reassurance you needed to offset the normal fears. The two worked together.

Some of the predictability factor is why it never hurts for new parents to be a little older and more educated before they have their families. If they've finished school and have gotten through the wild days of youth, they're generally better equipped to settle down and provide a steady routine for kids. Their wild oats have already been sewn, so to speak, so it's easier for them to settle down and raise kids through the formative years and endure that drudgery. Don't get me wrong. Kids are amazingly resilient. They can overcome plenty of bumps in the road. But they definitely benefit from steadiness and continuity. It gives them a steady emotional foundation. Emotionally steady parents help a lot with that, too.