My Phobia- Personal Narrative Essay

Living with anxiety is a battle everyday. I wake up and I’m not sure if today will be good or bad. It can start out good, but the next thing I know, I’m having a panic attack. The world around me starts to cave in, and the noise I hear becomes static; it’s as if I’m being swallowed whole. Suffering from a panic attack is incredibly embarrassing. Nobody understands what I’m going through, they all think it’s in my head or that I’m being dramatic. What they don’t understand is that, it’s a real problem. Just like any other illness, anxiety is paralyzing; so are panic attacks. There are days I don’t want to get out of bed because I’m afraid that today is the day everything will end, so it’s just safer to stay in bed. My anxiety is unpredictable,

“The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, and the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.” Henry Louis Mencken.

I am disconnected, lacking contact with reality. It happened in an instant and gradually intensified over time. October of 2015, I had just turned 14 and everything was average, mediocre. I was subdued at this time for reasons I cannot recall and hadn’t been talking much in class. The issue commenced in chemistry class in what lasted a second but felt like a lifetime. The class had been divided into groups, and we were assigned to create a poster. After half an hour of doing the entirety of the work myself, the poster was completed, and I was satisfied with it. Each group was to choose a person to represent their group and explain the poster. Fortunately, I was not chosen. After each poster was presented, they were each taped to the whiteboard

You are in an airport waiting for your plane to arrive. You've never flown before, and are more terrified than you can ever remember being. Everyone has told you the supposedly comforting statistics - "millions of planes take off each day and there's only a handful of crashes," "flying is safer than driving." You know rationally that there is no reason to be so scared, but regardless your heart is racing, your palms are sweating, and you're light-headed. Simply the thought of being up in the air, out of control, makes you feel faint. Finally the flight attendant announces that your plane has arrived. But as all the other passengers line up to get onboard, you grab your luggage and walk straight out of the airport,

Universal human phobia is close interpersonal violence that a person experiences throughout their life. This phobia is not brought upon by mother nature, but by the actions of another human being. In the book, the authors explained how people were not angry if a tornado sent them to the hospital and destroyed their house. Yet when a gang beats them and destroys their house, it’s personal and the victims are angry. The actions of others that causes people to be scared is the concept of universal human phobia.

The reason I picked these two individuals to interview is because I knew that they were both in a relationship and I knew them well enough personally that they would be comfortable talking about personal moments in their lives that would allow me to fully examine and evaluate their responses. My underlying fear was that both of the interviews would bring about very similar data with no room for comparisons, but thankfully my fears proved unwarranted. Both of the interviewees had a vested interest in happiness and relationships. To code my two interviewees, I will first regard what characteristics or backgrounds each person had that could have influenced their thoughts on happiness or relationships. Such traits could be their demographics, as both of them were Hispanic and were born in a different country before moving to the United States when they were very young. Both are bilingual in English and Spanish. Both have a younger sibling and a strong maternal figure. Employment status, another coding variable, was different between them. Interviewee 1 had had jobs, but was no longer working, but interviewee 2 continues to work his job during the graveyard shift. Both are in intimate relationships, but the happiness from each relationship varies between the two, along with the thoughts of their partners. Interviewee 1 rarely spoke of problems she had with her significant other while interviewee 2 listed several traits that he found damaging in his significant other.

The first dimension I will discuss is the psychological dimension. From age seven I suffered from severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (subtype scrupulosity). From an early age the disease ran rampant in my mind but I hid it for twenty years (which I hear is common for children who develop OCD so young). The impact of this disease affected my development in the way that my brain thinks, reasons and works. By the time my family realized something was wrong, I was spending hours upon hours performing rituals. My brain had trained itself to listen to scrupulosity and I had no control over it. I could not live a normal life…and the anxiety from the obsessive thoughts controlled everything I did. Every memory I have, OCD was present. Now

This feeling was unusual because as a youngster, I spent most of my childhood going on acting auditions and

When I was in my freshman year of high school, I remember my friend, Maddie, have an anxiety attack. She was frantic, couldn’t catch her breath, and dizzy. I didn’t know how to help her. I didn’t know what was wrong. I tried to calm her down the best I could. She eventually calmed down, and went home. A few days, she told me that she had bipolar disorder and one of her symptoms was that she suffered from anxiety. I thought it was a joke, I have some rough days and issues being decisive, that doesn’t mean I’m bipolar or that I have anxiety. I thought she was being overdramatic, as I knew Maddie to be sometimes.

of me. I remember how I felt after being awoken by the fear of death.

Fear is the number one obstacle everyone must overcome at some point in their life. When the word fear is brought up I like to think of past situations that I experienced. There are many different methods used to conquer and learn from our fears such and exposure therapy, having a growth mindset, and thinking positive. For example, when I was younger fear was my worst enemy, School was the main reason that caused my fear. My fear of failure was my biggest obstacle growing up so I used that as a method to learn from my fears.

Fear is a normal and an important human reaction to something dangerous, it keeps one out of danger, because fear is disliked and one tries ones best to avoid the object or situation of fear. It causes physical changes known as fight-or-flight reaction, which causes blood pressure to increase and the heart rate to speed up to pump blood to the large muscles used to run away, to balance this the human body has sweat glands which produce perspiration to cool the body.

There is an important event that happens in every person’s life. That important event may be a number of things. Such as someone winning the lottery or even having a tragic loss in the family. My important event in life was the day I conquered my fear of heights. Everyone has some type of fear or phobia that absolutely petrifies them. Whether it’s a fear of snakes, swimming, or even germs, it can be conquered as I discovered.

An unpleasant emotion or feeling caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat : Fear. Fear is a strong word, it can mean a variety of things and lead to a variety of things depending on who you are. My fear caused me to shake and tremble as if the world was coming to an end. It makes me feel safe around no one. I look back on my life and ask myself, was it all worth it for this? It makes me shrink and fall the size of of a humming bird. My stomach starts to feel like it never has before. My head is spinning in circles and my hands are trembling to the point where I think they might fall off.

According to my dictionary, Fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. When the word "fear" comes to my mind, I think of an emotion that's caused by a bad situation. There are many things in this world that put fear in me. My greatest fears are computer viruses, thugs, sick people, and clowns. Each of these fears make me very scared and give me goosebumps.