Voices: Dream and Conquer
We all pass the occasional joke about "being allergic" to the workplace environment, but cartoonist Scott Adams wasn't kidding this week when he diagnosed one of "Dilbert" characters with "ergophobia."
Still, I had to laugh out loud when I saw the nerdy looking bald dude complain of his "abnormal and persistent fear of work." I laughed in part from recognition and in part from relief. Recognition because ergophobia-induced anxiety was what I imagined myself to be suffering from as Tuesday once again began evolving into Wednesday and this column still hadn't coalesced in my mind.
The relief was because I had suddenly realized exactly what I was going to write about.
The irony was just too tempting.
Call them fears or phobias, we all have them no matter how cool we'd like to play it. Billy Bob Thornton is afraid of antiques. Fonzie was afraid of liver. My otherwise fearless six-year-old daughter is afraid of ants.
While killing time on a road trip recently, some friends and I were talking about our irrational fears. All people are strange in some way, right? Sure we are, but somehow by the end of the confessional session - surprise - I ended up being the super-weirdo.
The claustrophobia was swallowed like sugar and they surprisingly understood as I admitted my fear of disembodied voices. I use a telephone when I have to, or am really burning to talk to someone, but basically cord or cordless, the whole experience freaks me out. I'm talking legitimate anxiety. It sometimes takes me 20 minutes to work up the nerve to order a pizza
But when I brought up my fear of holes, they were perplexed.
You can stop your Freudian notions right now. I'm not talking about troglophobia, which has been defined as "a fear of holes, caves, and other similarly deep, dark objects." I guess it would be suffocating at the bottom of a well, but I'm talking about lots of holes. Lots and lots of little holes all lined up next to each other in a somewhat consistent pattern. Think facial pores, for example. I'll never forget physically gagging the day I looked off a third floor dormitory patio and saw all these little holes punched into the ground where they had planted grass. Honeycombs can do it for me. Even textures sometimes - especially when placed under a magnifying glass and the bumps and crevices are blown to immense proportion.
OK, so maybe it's not the most notorious phobia, but is it really that crazy? I've since discovered a whole blog full of people at www.unusualphobias.com that suffer from the same affliction. Yes, that one guy also wears aluminum foil hats because he's afraid of having his mind read, but not all of us hole-leery are wacked to that extent.
No one wants to be afraid, especially when there's no logical rhyme or reason. The consolation comes from managing your fears. I'm proud to say I keep my phobias under control. Pores or not - I can look in the mirror as calmly as anyone. Bring on that toasted, butter-sopped English muffin. I can handle it. It's mind over phobia.
I'm more confident of this fear controlling ability than ever since a dream I conquered last night. As I sat on the couch and let my mind wander aimlessly in hopes that this week's column concept would suddenly come to me, I fell asleep. Oops.
But that's when the reoccurring nightmare overcame my REM-desperate brain. It's that one where I'm ice skating out of a seemingly endless cave for fear of being captured by these anonymous bulky hockey players. Naturally, they skate much better than me. As I was replaying the dream over and over in my mind, like a video game, I somehow figured out how to stop. Not how to stop, I suppose, but that coming to stop, even though the creepy hockey guys were chasing me, was actually in my best interest.
The ice sprayed upward from my feet and I noticed this one guy who seemed to be in charge. The next time I had the dream everything was different. I actually chose to go into the the cave from the outside. I wasn't being chased anymore. I skated right up to the guy in charge and the cave walls disappeared. All I had to do to stop being afraid was stop and change my perspective.
-- alicia grega-pikul, 3 June 2004
Send e-mail to:apikul@timesshamrock.com.
