Okay mods… sorry if this is the wrong topic… Iwasn’t sure where to put this.
okay so… I have always been afraid of the dark. It seems like… It has gotten worse as I got older… It’s not just the dark I seem to hallusinat a whole lot… and I don’t know… It was getting better… I started forceing myself to sit in the dark or something or walk half way up the street( It’s really dark in my neighbor hood) but… lately it’s gotten worse.
It’s gotten to the point that I can’t even sit in the dark anymore… If I have a little light on and there’s a corner that doesn’t have light on it and I can’t see if there’s anything there, I’ll freak out!
I don’t know what to do…
I use to be able to even sleep in a room with someone in there with it completly dark but I can’t anymore unless they are right next to me… like… lol don’t take this the wrong way but like cuddleing… I feel safer then. but now It’s gotten so bad I can’t even sit there…
I just wanted to know if any of you guys have the same problem and if you have advice… or anything to give me to help me out…
I don’t want to take any kinda of medication or anything though… cuz then I’d have to talk to my mom bout it and she…uh…has no idea… haha…yea… idk… so yea… I just need help!!!
I had that too, a little time ago. When I was thinking about it over the day, it seemed silly, but when I turned off the light, I just kept making out evil scenes. And I still can’t really walk up the street at night, which seems silly to me right now, that it’s day. I can sleep in a room with no lights though, just because I got used to it and I just think there’s nothing here, it’s safe in my warm bed.
Anyways, good luck at overcoming your fear, a bet a few guys here can help you.
Trying to understand the fear may help you. The fear of darkness basically comes from the fact that you don’t know if there’s danger where you cannot see.
If you’re at home, with the main door closed, and you live on a enough floor that is not ground floor, then think that there aren’t (nor can enter) any dangerous animals or people to worry about.
Aww man… I used to get so freaked at night, 'cause I was always an insomniac and nobody else was awake. It was mostly after scary movies, but ya know. Another factor that messed with my mind was my horrible eyes. My right is pretty much blacked out when the lights dim, so I had to (and still do) rely on the left. (not sure why that is, to be honest)
Soooooo… yeah, I got over it. You will too. If you want, maybe you could lock the door and put alarms on the windows if you’re afraid of outside threats. If it’s what’s inside that’s scaring you, check out your room in the daylight hours, then lock it up for the rest of the day. That way, nothing could have gotten in while you were gone, and things will be safe when you return.
Well, fearing the darkness is a very normal thing, I think nearly everybody got that to some degree. You just got a bit more of it at the moment
If you feel that you want to change it I would indeed talk to a doc about it. I don´t know about your mom and why she shouldn´t know. I´d tell her, but if you don´t want to, she doesn´t has to. Doctors are obliged not to talk about their patients. However, I don´t know where you live and how your health care systems works (e.g. who got to pay for it).
Anyways, apart from that there is a little trick. I don´t know wether it´s advisable and all, but anyways, it works pretty good:
Confronted with a threatening situation, all animals (including humans) go into a “flight-or-fight” mode. This means that you decide to attack or to run away. So the two emotions “fear” and “anger” are very close to each other. If you don´t want to fear the darkness, you can try to get angry instead. It gotta be something “outside”. Perhaps you imagine some kind of being anyways, ghost, burgler, doesn´t matter. Just get angry at the phantom for making you frightend.
With such a strong fear, I would personally be tempted to say that the fear is something else but connected with darkness. An underlying fear that is causing a very strong negative connection with the dark.
There’s a few things that I could think of, but hesitate to say them publicly.
As far as curing goes, you have to prove to yourself there is nothing in the darkness that can hurt you. Sitting in a dark room can have negative effects though. It’s best to cut down the light in stages slowly, other wise you could risk a panic attack - which needless to say in a dark room is not something you’d want. You do need help if you want to get past it, try speaking to a counselor or someone who you can talk to free and privately.
Not neccesarily. When late at night, everything is dark and everybody is sleeping and I’m walking through the house, I still get a afraid. It’s something in our bones, maybe it has got something to do with evolution? If we don’t see everything, something can attack us. We don’t see the enemy.
It’s just another form of fear of the unknown. You can’t see, so you don’t know what to expect, so your mind runs wild. When i was a child, i can’t deny that i wasn’t scared of the dark. But one night, i woke up, and saw a wierd but scary silhouette, of a tall man. I was so scared, that i eventually got angry at myself for allowing myself to be this scared. Deep inside i knew that it probably was something stupid. So i decided to confront it. I got up, and slowly walked towards it, then opened the lights. It turned out to be my jacket hanging eerily on my new hanger.
The way i’ve always thought about it, is if i can’t see someone who could be there, then there’s no reason he can see me.
EDIT: Just read the second part of Tapirs’ post. What he said is true, Sarah; that explains what happened to me, and i do think that could be a good way to overcome that fear, in stages if not all out.
The getting angry adwise was funny. Because sometimes I wake up at night and see hallucinations I first get freaked out and close my eyes, then I gather my thoughts and say “I know that these are hallucinations” and open my eyes and stare into every bit of my room and actually TRY to see something scary and when I do I try to figure what it is. Often its light illuminationg on something or shadows that morph into scary stuff when you are hallucinating. But when I figure out what it really is (light/shadows) I feel better and relaxed.
Just stare into darkness and if you find it scary try to explain yourself why. It might be scary at first but when you get used to it it relaxes you.
Other thing, Imagine a bubble around you that NOTHING can penetrate and that this bubble activates everytime you are in the dark. So you are completely protected and even if there was something it couldnt touch you.
Thanks guys… I think most of this will help… I’ll try it!
er… I just hate that it is stupid little things thta freak me out… I do tell myself I KNOW IT’S NOT REAL! over and over in my head… it’s just yea… It doesn’t work… cuz the other part of me is telling me to run it’s gonna kill me…