#anyway. I gently encourage y'all to join me in the fight against our own fears.

[zerodaryls]

this is probably an unpopular opinion but I really think a lot of phobias could be overcome if people took the time to intentionally trigger themselves (i.e. exposure therapy).

before I go any further, I'm not fucking saying that triggering other people's phobias is okay. I'm not saying "I'm intentionally not tagging topics that are widely known to be triggers because y'all just need to suck it up and cope". if you trigger someone on purpose you're a fucking asshole.

but I do think that we coddle ourselves too much, especially in online spaces. I've seen trigger lists on Discord servers that are a mile long. and I know a lot of triggers pertain to PTSD and other issues, and that's totally valid and not something I'm qualified to address. but that's not what I'm talking about here.

I'm talking about certain types of irrational phobias (not things like an intense fear of assault, or other phobias that are based in more realistic concerns -- I've got those, too, and I doubt that "exposure therapy" would help anyone get over those fears; that's what professional therapy is for).

I'm talking about things we have no real business being afraid of, lol.

like, for me, it was spiders (and many other types of bugs; still working on learning to be okay with some of them!)

I think a lot of trigger lists end up serving as a way for people to just keep reinforcing and living in their irrational phobias.

but like...

a phobia is not a life sentence!

estimated reading time under the cut: 4.5 minutes

I swear some people cling to phobias like it's a core part of their identity. I know I did that to an extent with my arachnophobia.

but I'm happy to announce that I'm not afraid of spiders anymore.

I actually really fucking love them and am constantly looking around my home to see if there's a new spider buddy chillin' on the wall.

and before anyone comes in with their skepticism and tries to say "oh then maybe you just never really had arachnophobia to begin with", I know myself and my experiences best. I had arachnophobia.

if someone so much as talked about their own experiences with spiders, I would tense up.

on multiple occasions I would end up shaking and unable to sleep if I spotted a spider anywhere in my home, let alone in my room.

I once abandoned my apartment for an entire day and stayed at my mom's house because there was a big hairy spider outside. it wasn't even in the apartment! it was on the balcony! I rarely even went on the balcony, but I was so fucking arachnophobic back then that I was paranoid that this 8-legged buddy would somehow manage to squeeze in through a crack in the door and... honestly idek what I was afraid would happen after that... it would be in my home?? so??

yeah, I definitely had arachnophobia.

even just photos or videos of spiders triggered me. my hands would literally start shaking if I saw a picture of, like, some Big Boi Spider on a wall in Australia or something, lmao. I would get heart palpitations. I even teared up a few times. and mind, this was in my 20s. I was an adult crying over an image of a spider.

eventually I realized how much my arachnophobia affected me, and I remembered some cheesy Pinterest quote about "interrupting anxiety with curiosity" or something, and I decided to give it a try.

I decided to become curious about spiders. when I would see a spider, I'd ask, "what kind of spider is that?"

I started googling descriptions of spiders when I encountered them, and trying to figure out what exact species I was looking at.

it was uncomfortable as fuck the first dozen or so times. I still experienced extreme anxiety. but I kept at it, and reminded myself to be curious. what was it that I was actually afraid of? how realistic was that fear? is that type of spider even venomous? what does their venom do? are they likely to bite, or do they avoid humans as much as possible? (fun fact: very rarely will any species of spider bite a human just for funsies. they straight up don't want to fuck with us!)

you can show me just about any picture of a spider at this point and I'm good. I will even seek them out! I follow a bunch of spider accounts on social media and my suggested posts are at least 50% videos of freaky lil bugs (affectionate).

my dad bought me spider stuffed animals as gifts for my birthday and Christmas. he said he never imagined that I'd want something like that in my life. neither did I!

if you'd told me even just a year ago that I would overcome my phobia of spiders (and moths! nearly forgot about how much moths used to freak me tf out), I wouldn't have believed you.

but here I am.

my next mission is to conquer trypophobia. and I'll be honest, I'm not looking forward to it. I fucking hate seeing clusters of holes n' shit, it really freaks me out. but because those kinds of patterns aren't always avoidable, it'd be really great if I could encounter them without having a panic attack. so, I'm going to be forcing myself to look a little longer every time I see that shit.

ditto pregnancy; I've had severe tokophobia since I was a teen. it's not fucking contributing to my life, and now my best friend's wife is pregnant, and I wanna be able to cheer them on during this exciting journey! I don't wanna be grimacing every time they share updates! they're gonna be moms, for fuck's sake, and my dumbass irrational fear has no business getting in the way of that joy (especially since we need more examples of queer joy and queer families to celebrate right now)!

so, the tokophobia's gotta go. any fear I encounter in myself, I want to do my damndest to work through it, not avoid ever being triggered. I want to have more confidence in myself than that.

and yeah, I know, not all phobias are the same. and I'm sure we can come up with dozens of excuses to wallow in our fear.

but like. I truly believe that Fear is enemy no. 1 in life. that behind every evil thing humans have ever done, you can usually track it all back to some underlying Fear that they hadn't learned how to cope with.

and obviously I'm not saying that your fear of bugs or holes or pregnant people is going to make you commit atrocities, lmao.

but like. for me, personally, seeing the damage that fear does to the human spirit... I don't want that shit anywhere on me.

I want to go through life knowing that I'm bold and brave and that I consistently choose to stare my discomfort in the face and tell it that it doesn't have power over me.

if I'm gonna have a phobia of anything, it's gonna be fear itself.