Phobias Revealed

By Nick Yielding

Phobias are a tricky subject because they, at least in my case, can have many origins and reasons. Some of these reasons can be very off the wall, but I think that, when you really get to the bottom of it, they all have basically the same root. And that root is perception of one's own environment.

Many of the strange fears I had originated from my perception of other peple's reactions. I did not want to do anything that would cause any sort of "drama" or major change of pace from the adults because I felt like I was making a scene (not to mention it caused an unexpected change in plans and thus a rather frightening sequence of chaos from my perspective). So a lot of times, when something would happen that would cause the adults to react loudly or in any way that seemed dramatic or negative, the fear that the uproar invoked would be displaced onto the object that seemed to have caused it.

I don't know if that makes sense but I will give you an example of this. I went through a phase where I was terrified to flush the toilet or even sit on the toilet. I would hold my bowel movements in for days at a time to avoid having to sit on the toilet. My parents thought that I was afraid of the toilet, and even that I was refusing to go to the toilet (which I was, but not necessarily in a non-complliant way).

Turns out what had happened is that our pipes were getting roots in them and it was causing our sewer to slow down, so sometimes when you would flush the toilet it would back up and overflow, especially if you flushed something solid. Needless to say, an overflowing toilet causes a swift and seemingly panicky response by the adults in an effort to stop the overflow. This chaotic reaction, not the overflowing toilet itself, was terrifying to me. But since the toilet had caused it, I knew that there was risk involved with flushing it. I also knew that the phrase "stopped up" referred to a solid mass blocking the drain, so I became afraid to flush anything solid, including bowel movements, down the toilet. However, I couldn't just go and then leave it behind and not flush it because that also produced an undesired reaction. Thus I would hold it in as long as possible and refuse to use the toilet.

Unfortunately there was no way I could explain this to anyone, so no one understood why I was afraid to sit on the toilet. In fact I was not afraid of the toilet at all, but rather a frightening turn of events that could be triggered by messing the toilet up.

There are other times, though, when I misconstrued what was said about a particular place or object, and that misunderstanding can lead to a phobia attached to that particular place or object.

I'll tell you a story about a rather crippling phobia I had when I was about 2 1/2. My mom used to get upset when I would go in the back yard barefoot because the back yard was littered with debris -- namely my dad's spare car parts -- and she was afraid I would cut my foot on some stray metal. But all I knew is that when I would go outside she would scream "No! come back in here! You're bare-footed!" And I associated that anxiety with the phrase "bare-footed." I didn't know what the phrase meant, but I knew that anything that could freak my mom out like that must be a pretty tough customer, so I figured that something really scary-looking must be out in our back yard that would get me. So I associated the phrase "bare-footed" with the meanest, scariest looking car part that I saw in the back yard, which turned out to be an intake manifold. So after that association, now instead of worrying about me going into the back yard barefoot, my mom couldn't get me to go outside for anything because the "bare-footed" would get me.

Of course, she had absolutely no idea what I was afraid of, but I would always say "it's out there." So, since life couldn't really go on as normal without me ever passing through the back door, she finally had to drag me, kicking and screaming, out into the yard to show her what the "bare-footed" looked like and identify it. She managed to convince me that if I would point at it, my dad would kill it (my dad was very big and imposing from my perspective, so I figured this was true). So from a safe distance, I identified the offending object and my dad promptly removed it from the yard, essentially solving the problem.

In both cases, what you ultimately see is an "unknown" stimulus in the environment that, until it is effectively explored and solved, is a constant stressor and thus a source of fear.

So how do you actually get to the root of the fear in someone who can't explain to you what is going on? Now that's the million dollar question. That's because many times the child is not really able to understand what is going on, let alone able to explain it to you. I can tell you, however, that I often played out my fears with my toys just as I played out my obsessions. Often a fear would itself become an obsession because I wanted to understand how an object that everyone else saw as trivial could affect me so adversely.

And very often, in unlocking all the secrets about the object, either by asking a zillion questions or reading encyclopedias or books, I would gain knowledge of how the object fit into my world, and thus how to cope with it.

I think that a child that exhibits a bizarre phobia should be watched carefully during play in order to see if any clues can be garnered as to what the root of the fear is, because sometimes it's not the place or object itself, but a displaced idea that has somehow been attached to the object in question.

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Nick Yielding is a senior member of Autism-pdd.net where he helps others by sharing his experiences living with Asperger's. You can reach Nick at stickboy_127@yahoo.com.