What Are Your Deepest Fears?

[Astrum]

Running out of warm water in the shower.

Oh, and whenever the internet is down, I have a mini-panic attack.

I really need to get a life.

 

[Evo]

This seems to be a false dichotomy to me. Can you cite this study? How does one determine whether or not one's brain requires outside stimulation or not? Is there not a continuum of brain response to stimulation?

The study was from over 20 years ago.

Here are a couple of studies, let's not pull this off topic. If you are interested you should research it.

That kind of exhiliration is particularly appealing to a personality type, aptly known as ''thrill-seekers,'' people who have been studied by Frank Farley, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin. People who are high in that trait, Dr. Farley said, ''seek variety, novelty, intensity and risk.''

One theory holds that the brains of thrill-seekers are usually at a lower level of arousal compared with most other people.

Why Do People Crave the Experience? - New York Times

Boredom Disconnects Parts of Your Brain

Researchers at the University of Michigan, led by Daniel Weissman, studied the interactions that occur between multiple areas of the brain when boredom sets in, and discovered that, as attention fades, so does the intensity at which several nervous centers communicate.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Boredom-Disconnects-Parts-of-Your-Brain-99817.shtml

 

[turbo]

I fear losing my wife to some kind of accident.

 

[davenn]

I'm trying to decide between looking my sight or my hearing.

I'm swaying towards hearing ... I greatly enjoy music and conversation
and the thought of being plunged into soundless world is a bit freaky to meDave

 

[Julio R]

Insects. Specially roaches. If there is any entomologist in this forum no offense, but I throw my shoe at the sight of an insect.

 

[inotyce]

OMG

I remember I was like this when I was little, I fear that something hidden underneath the bed might chop them off or something. :p

True, same as my imagination. I used to be afraid that there might probably be a big monster's hand from below grabbing my butt while I was sitting on the toilet bowl.

 

[lisab]

A loved one suffering, and me being unable to help.
Being poor when I'm old.

Some of my weird irrational fears:

Shipwrecks. Just everything about them, so creepy.

Having a bad toothache and being unable to communicate it.

And I didn't even know I had fear of open water swimming until I learned to SCUBA dive. The thought of my buoyancy compensator failing and not being able to ditch my weight belt, just going down, down, down, the water getting colder and darker...yikes.

 

[Charmar]

Losing my mind, dementia, Alzheimer’s etc., doubly so if I realize it is happening.

 

[BobG]

Flying doesn't bother me near as much as driving on highways where you're at the mercy of 100's of morons.

I do have some fear of driving through intersections - especially the ones that have already made the news because of a traffic fatality caused by someone running the red light.

Just the fact that I remember the news stories about particular intersections for years, or remember the tree that used to be on that street before an SUV killed it, etc, is probably slightly irrational. I certainly don't remember the murder stories that long.

Slightly off-topic: You ever notice how in movies, drivers are so afraid of collisions with motorcycles that they'll swerve into other cars to avoid them; yet they almost never see a truck coming and will fearlessly drive right in front of it?

 

[Borg]

For Will Smith and family, I would have to guess that their worst fear is watching Miley Cyrus perform.

 

[Pythagorean]

I do have some fear of driving through intersections - especially the ones that have already made the news because of a traffic fatality caused by someone running the red light.

Just the fact that I remember the news stories about particular intersections for years, or remember the tree that used to be on that street before an SUV killed it, etc, is probably slightly irrational. I certainly don't remember the murder stories that long.

Slightly off-topic: You ever notice how in movies, drivers are so afraid of collisions with motorcycles that they'll swerve into other cars to avoid them; yet they almost never see a truck coming and will fearlessly drive right in front of it?

Most of my worst fear comes from watching russian dash cam videos. And a little bit from experience driving on the freeways with impatient people or, driving 600 miles south through a snowstorm in Alaska once, there was an abandoned car off the road every 50 miles, probably 4 or 5 cases of full emergency crew at the site of an accident along the whole trip. Just living in the city, you can sometimes hear sirens going all night on the first freeze as the newcomers learn to adjust their stopping expectations to a reduced coefficient of friction.

 

[Dembadon]

Having to watch someone I care about die a slow and painful death while being prevented from helping them.