Here For the Memories
A thought-provoking audio memoir shorts filled with stories, humor, anecdotes, and commentary on social, cultural, business, and religious issues. Whatever Linden remembers and thinks will entertain, challenge, and inform is a possible subject.
Here For the Memories
Phobias: A Lighthearted Exploration
Ever wondered if your fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth is more common than you think? Or why some people have the compulsion to leap from high places? Join me, Linden Wolfe, as I unravel the bizarre and fascinating world of phobias on "Here for the Memories." Drawing from my own experiences with acrophobia and claustrophobia, I share personal stories that range from heart-pounding to downright hilarious. You'll discover the three main categories of phobias—social phobias, agoraphobia, and specific phobias—illustrated through real-life examples and sprinkled with my unique brand of humor.
Here For the Memories
Here for the memories, thought-provoking audio memoir shorts filled with stories, humor, anecdotes and commentary on social, cultural, business and religious issues. Whatever Lyndon remembers and thinks will entertain, challenge and inform is a possible subject. Possible subject the collection of memories about one's life allows for the development and refinement of a sense of self, including who one is, how one has changed and what one might be like in the future.
Speaker 2:Greetings and salutations. I'm Lyndon Wolfe, and this is here for the memories. I'm so glad you decided to stop by and listen for a while. I am mentally ill. According to NIMH, the National Institute of Mental Health, you see, phobias are the most common type of mental illness, with 12.5% of the human population experiencing them. I have phobias. You might have phobias. You certainly know people who have phobias. I think I've become fixated on phobias. I found my research fascinating. I was spellbound as I read and went down the rabbit hole of what mental health experts considered to be the most common phobias. Not only was I enthralled, but I was able to recall many people in my life's journey that had one or more of them. Heck, it seems as if almost everyone I know is mentally ill as well, and that does not make me feel better at all. Here are the three phobia categories. Here are the three phobia categories Social phobias, now known as social anxiety disorder.
Speaker 2:This phobia is marked by fear of social situations in which a person might be judged or embarrassed. Agoraphobia this phobia involves an irrational or extreme fear of being in places where escape is difficult. It may involve a fear of crowded places like malls hallelujah. Or even of leaving one's home, which begs the question is there a phobia where someone else has an irrational fear of me leaving my house? Specific phobias when people talk about having a phobia of a specific object, such as snakes, spiders or needles, that is a specific phobia. Here are some interesting ones and I'll spare you the technical names because most of them I cannot begin to pronounce Fear of flowers, peanut butter, clowns, spending money, not me knees. Cats can't be Afraid of cats. In my house we have eight permanent cats Currently have five fosters. That's a total of 13. We have a cat room. Sometimes we've had as many as 18 cats in this house. So no one here is a cataphobe. Buttons, food the color white, numbers the figure eight, paper feet the color purple, school vacuum cleaners the list goes on and on.
Speaker 2:I was well into my 20s before I discovered that I had a fear of heights, which is technically called acrophobia. I was climbing up the steps of a high water slide with people in front and behind me. About halfway up, suddenly I looked down and I had an impulse to jump. Most people don't realize that the fear of heights often has nothing to do with falling to your death. It's the urge or compulsion to jump to skydive without a parachute, and most often it happens in places where there would be the opportunity to jump Open space, even if there's fences or rails something that you could physically leap from and have a window to do so. And that doesn't happen in confined spaces like airplanes, which do not scare me at all.
Speaker 2:But here I was in my mid-20s and now I have a mental illness. I'm also slightly claustrophobic. You probably know what that is. I didn't think I was until I had a full-body MRI and I only lasted a few minutes before totally freaking out. Before the procedure, the technician asked me if I was claustrophobic and I said, of course, that I wasn't. I didn't think I was.
Speaker 2:Now, it seemed discovered with an extremely tight space, in this case so tight you could feel the breath from your nostrils bouncing off the tube and striking you in the forehead. Anyway, I was overcome with terror and felt as if the pounding of my heart would cause my chest to explode and of course, that would have messed up the interior of that very expensive piece of equipment. Anyway, they removed me from the tube as quickly as they could. I was embarrassed, not because I was now the victim of mental illness, but a second time. But because the mission had been aborted and I had to do it again. They said not to worry that I was a seventh person that day who had the same experience.
Speaker 2:I came back a few days later and they gave me two pills of a drug called Xanax. I swallowed one and one went under my tongue for rapid absorption Back into the tube. I went, and this time it was a wonderful experience. I feared nothing or no one. You could have dangled me from the edge of the Grand Canyon or the Cliffs of Moher and I would have been giggling. No thought of jumping, just drug-induced nirvana. That day my mental illness took a backseat to this wonderful medicine that I call my friend.
Speaker 2:A couple of years later I had to do a half-body MRI that's where the tube only covers your legs and this procedure was to check out some damage in one of my knees Before they could slide me into the tube. I asked well, where's my Xanax? They said, mr Wolfe, this is just a half-body MRI, that your torso and head will be fully exposed out in the open. That I shouldn't experience any type of claustrophobia. But my legs are claustrophobic, was my reply.
Speaker 2:But, but to no avail, though on deaf ears, and the procedure continued without the intervention of my latest favorite medicine. I presume that if 12.5 percent of the population has a phobia, that is a mental illness, and if I have two of them then I'm part of 6.25 percent of the population that that would be in the top 10%. That's the highest ranking I have in any life category, like IQ, wealth, educational levels, etc. So being in the top 10% of almost anything makes me feel like I'm very special. That is until I find myself in a high place where I do battle with the urge to jump and land, much like Wile E Coyote does in the Roadrunner cartoon.
Speaker 2:Do you have a mental illness that would allow you to be in my community of phobomaniacs? Surely you do, or at least you want to, or maybe not, although we know that some types of fear are healthy, such as the fear of walking blindfolded down a busy street in pitch darkness. More about this with a later podcast. For now, I just want you to assess your life history. When were you frightened? When were you terrified? Was it irrational? How did you respond? How should you have responded? Remember 95% of the things we worry about and fear never come to pass. I'm Lyndon Wolfe and you've been listening to here for the Memories. Hope to see you again soon. No-transcript.
