# dreaming about your phobia.



## heliotropicDissonance (Jun 20, 2014)

so, i have tocophobia (the fear of pregnancy/being pregnant/childbirth) and lately, it's been invading my dreams.

i absolutely hate it. i hate remembering what i dreamt about. i hate the feeling. i hate the thought. i hate that i can't get it out of my head, that it's haunting my subconscious. i want it to go away, but i don't know what to do. i don't even know what it means. whether it's me, a fictional character, or somebody else, it's just _there. _

does anybody else have this problem? if so, what do you do about it, or how do you try to rationalize it? i want to stop dreaming about it, somehow. i just don't know how you overcome a fear that's so easy to encounter.


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## ShatteredGlass (Oct 12, 2012)

Could you not use that font please? It's a little bit difficult to read.

In my dreams, my phobias disappear for the most part. I have had nightmares about swarms of giant insects (bees/wasps) though. 

Bleh.


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## tehuti88 (Jun 19, 2005)

My phobias are just about as much present in my dreams as they are in reality, unfortunately. :/

My particular phobias are fear of heights, water, ants, and of course social anxiety.

It's rather frustrating that even in dreams, whenever I find myself in a high place or over a body of water, I'm still frozen with fear. (For this reason, flying dreams almost never go well for me.) Only once in a great while are there mild exceptions.

Seeing as the fear is the same in dreams as it is in reality, things like reality checks wouldn't help. (Plus I've had reality checks fail on me!)


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## Gwynevere (Oct 6, 2013)

If you have an actual phobia, then this isn't uncommon at all. Your dreams are just your mind and the things your mind thinks of, and if you spend a lot of your day thinking about how scared you are of something, you're going to spend all night thinking of that too.

The most obvious and probably only way to permanently fix this is to cure the underlying phobia. I don't know much about treatment for phobias but you can see a therapist about that and I'm pretty sure phobia treatments are pretty standard.

The main thing you should know is that it doesn't mean anything. People love to try all these insane dream interpretation things, and might even try to convince you that you secretly want to get pregnant. No! All it means is that you're afraid of this, and therefore think about it a lot.


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## heliotropicDissonance (Jun 20, 2014)

okay. (sorry about using that font). i know i should probably work on curing my underlying fear, but the thought of doing that freaks me out even more than my phobia itself, so i just kind of mentally block it out. what i hate is that it seems to intrude on things that i want to 'protect' from it (like myself, or my fictional worlds).

all of this is just kind of making me feel crazy. i see a therapist right now, but i don't feel comfortable enough discussing that. with her, i'm more focused on my trauma/anxiety/dissociation than my phobia. perhaps i can look into something else, however.


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## Gwynevere (Oct 6, 2013)

heliotropicDissonance said:


> okay. (sorry about using that font). i know i should probably work on curing my underlying fear, but the thought of doing that freaks me out even more than my phobia itself, so i just kind of mentally block it out. what i hate is that it seems to intrude on things that i want to 'protect' from it (like myself, or my fictional worlds).
> 
> all of this is just kind of making me feel crazy. i see a therapist right now, but i don't feel comfortable enough discussing that. with her, i'm more focused on my trauma/anxiety/dissociation than my phobia. perhaps i can look into something else, however.


I didn't mean it in any sort of mean way, just that honestly, professional help and curing the phobia is really all that's going to help. There's not much other advice you can really get on the subject, dreams are rarely within our power to control.

Anyway, I don't know if this is what's scaring you about curing the phobia, or if it's something else, but it might put your mind at ease: curing the phobia *does not* mean that you have to learn to want to get pregnant or be okay with getting pregnant. You can still not want to get pregnant, you can still dislike that idea and never want to do it. Getting rid of the phobia does not have to mean changing who you are as a person or what you want out of life.


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## heliotropicDissonance (Jun 20, 2014)

i guess i don't get why it's becoming so bad that it's starting to sink into my dreams. i feel like i'm losing control and i hate it.

you're still right, though. i want to get over it already, so i can stop having to do this elaborate ritual of blocking things out.


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