2026, Family, home, Mysteries, Uncategorized

YA Cave

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Claustrophobia, agoraphobia, hydrophobia, hemophobia, acrophobia, Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.  There are a LOT of phobias out there.  Luckily I’m only stuck with two that occasionally bug me. 

Acrophobia bugs me the most.  I don’t like to take the escalators at the Mall of America.  I don’t like to stand near the edge of anything and a couple of those tall tall buildings in London did throw me for a loop.  Three weeks ago, my next-door neighbors got a new roof and after a couple of hours, I had to take my book and move downstairs because watching them work out of my bedroom window was giving me the heebie jeebies.

My claustrophobia is milder and mostly manifests in my deep desire to not be underground or in a cave.  Oh, and I don’t care much for curtains – give me a good valance any time.  I’ve passed twice on the underground river at Xcaret in Mexico and doing the big cave on Gibraltar really got my heart going.  I even stopped reading the Anna Pigeon series after a book set in a cave.  Ish. 

YA doesn’t have a titch of claustrophobia and years ago hung curtains in her room in addition to window shades (I am NOT a window shade kind of gal).  Yesterday a package got delivered and she swooped on it immediately.  Curtains.  When I asked why she needed new curtains she said that her shades had started to curl on the edges and she decided black out curtains would be better.  Black out curtains.  I’m not making this up.   If she only pulled these curtains during the night, when we have a lot of ambient light from living on a county street, I could kind of understand, but like her previous curtains, these have been pulled shut 24/7.  It’s dark in there.

I’ve never wanted a cave of my own so it’s hard for me to get her desire for one, but it’s her room so if she feels the need to have a grotto of her own, so be it!

Any fears you’ll cop to?  Do you like serious darkness for sleeping?

20 thoughts on “YA Cave”

  1. I have a weird form of acrophobia that involves the fear of jumping off any high ledge I get too close to.

    I love mountaintop views, just don’t ask me to go to the edge and look. Took the trip to the top of the Sears Tower (don’t know or care who bought the current name of it), but I desire to chase other height.

    That’s why they invented drone cameras, right?

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  2. Same two fears.
    I have black out curtains. I have yet to hang them in the bedroom here, which, as it happens, will fit perfectly. When I have very bad headaches or when I have sensory overload I lie down in a room as dark as I can make it.
    Clyde

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  3. I am a bit claustrophobic and agoraphobic. I don’t like being in crowds, probably due to my lack of height (barely 5’1″ now). The one advantage of my small size is being able to dodge around people quickly (sort of like a sneaky running back) to avoid being trapped behind slow walkers. The worst crowds are at the State Fair, which is why I go early and am gone by noon or early afternoon.

    I don’t need a dark room for sleeping. My bedroom has white pleated shades which block direct rays but not the light. I worked the overnight shift at the hospital exclusively for about 20 years and never had a problem sleeping during the day. My small condo has all white woodwork, light colored paint, and light colored carpeting to keep it as light and bright as possible. No indoor caves for me!

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  4. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I like the room pretty dark at night for sleeping, but it is really hard to get total darkness with all the little blue lights emitted from everything–TV, smoke alarm, CO alarm, air filter. Roman shades in the bedroom, etc rather than more formal curtains, has been my window covering choice for years now.

    I have done some cave tours, and the deep mine tour in Tower-Soudan Mine State Park. I do not enjoy that but I do not feel terrorized, either. I really do not like heights. That is when I feel terrorized. MIG has it right–drones are for heights! I also used to suffer from serious performance anxiety until the adrenaline blocker medications were invented (Inderol) which solved that, thank goodness. That made performing much more tolerable.

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  5. Claustrophobic.
    Being squeezed, unable to move is a horrible feeling. For such feelings at night, I keep a bottle of lavender scent to calm myself.

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  6. I’m very, very uncomfortable in crowds. That, and the hot, sticky, germy everything at the State Fair is why I don’t go. I’m even more uncomfortable in crowds since the pandemic. If possible, I prefer to avoid crowds.

    I’m not claustrophobic. I don’t like caves though. All that weight of earth above your head, and stories of mining disasters…

    I had black-out curtains at my former home. I like to pull the curtains at night and have no light seeping through whatsoever. That isn’t possible here. There is a very bright street light directly across from my bedroom window and my back patio door. I mentioned it to a couple of the city workers, who didn’t think they could do anything about it. I might have to ask the city if it is possible to put some kind of hood over the thing so that it shines downward instead of outward. I know that other cities have hooded lights. I have cellular shades that pull down. They do block quite a bit of light, but not all. That street light shines in around the shade.

    Black-out curtains also helped me with AC bills at my old place. I closed them before the sun came around and shone in, keeping it relatively cool so the AC didn’t have to work so hard. I’m on the north end of the building here, so it’s the afternoon sun on the west side that gets hot. I’ve been closing the vertical blinds.

    My WP experience is like PJ’s. Sometimes I can’t like anything. Sometimes I can, but I notice that later, WP has taken my “like” away. I have always had to log in every single time. I’m starting to think that some of my issues have to do with iPad use. The app didn’t work at all, so I access WP via Safari.

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  7. I am very leery of heights, and I don’t like being up high, driving through mountains, or even seeing photos of people on the edge of cliffs.

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  9. I don’t mind being on a high cliff, etc., as long as I didn’t have to use a ladder to get there… My fears at this point are anxiety about technical stuff, which I’ve mentioned here before. It’s what I’ll be tackling while the UUs are on summer break.

    No problem sleeping with some minimal light at night, but in this season I do use an eyeshade for the last hour or so of sleep.

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  11. Luckily, I had a project in my studio tonight that allowed me to sit online with the happiness engineer at WordPress for over an hour. Anyway, the report button is gone. Barbara was right, but your three Admins on this site do not need to have that option. And in fact while we don’t get many trolls or spammers, if we do, it’s much easier to handle them from our dashboard then to have people clicking on comments on each blog. So it’s gone now. I don’t know how it got turned on. It’s not in a place where any of us could’ve gotten to it easily and certainly wouldn’t have clicked it by accident, but who knows

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  12. I am glad to see the report button is gone. When I am online, there are many things that might tempt me to report them, but not in this agreeable forum.

    Heights bother me. I read about Philippe Petit’s tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers, and just thinking about it produces a sense of dread and panic in me.

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  13. i get weird tingles in my legs when heights related reactions pop up. i have openly laughed at them because they are so transparent but real.
    i love anne lamott and she has mentioned numerous times her fear of the feeling of driving her car off a cliff, into a bridge abutment or into oncoming traffic. she is so worried about it that she talks to people who are there to consult her like a shrink or similar and she says they always say “ everybody does that” i found that odd. i dont think everybody does!

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