Does this picture scare the hell out of you?
If you answered Yes to any or all of these questions, you might suffer fromthalassophobia.
What is thalassophobia?
Lets face itaquaphobia and hydrophobia arecrazy, but not thalassophobia.
In fact, over half of all adults are thought to have some form of thalassophobia.
I have a confession to makeI have a SEVERE form.
I have thalassophobia like nobodys business.
All of the fears I described in the first few paragraphs?
I got em allandmore!…
All that murky darkness.
Its a phobia I have.
What causes thalassophobia?
Although a legitimately recognized psychological disorder, science has not yet pinpointed a direct cause for thalassophobia.
A more logical explanation would be some traumatic childhood event involving a body of water.
Or even getting bitten by a baby crab at the seashore when you were making sand castles in kindergarten?
Or maybe you werent the kind of kid who found the dancing killer whales at SeaWorld all that cute.
Maybe you were observant enough to notice their giant teeth.
Whether or not thats true, it certainly doesnt help!
What are the symptoms of thalassophobia?
In more extreme cases, you might avoid large bodies of water altogether.
You might obsessively think of horrifying deep-sea scenarios and find yourself unable to brush them from your mind.
In extreme cases, you might vomit, get dizzy, and launch into a full-blown panic attack.
This is seasickness, all rightbut not from the seas movements, from the seas veryexistence.
What does thalassophobia feel like?
I call it the fish flake feeling.
A massive fish swam under me and my brother had to haul me out before I drowned.
I also looked over the edge of the great barrier reef once while snorkling.
My worst fear would be to be stranded at night in the middle of the ocean.
Then Im totally fine, enjoying it even.
The darker the water, the worse.
I was coerced into going cave tubing once and it remains among my worst memories to this day.
The thought of night scuba is too much to handle.Bigbuttress
Is there a cure for thalassophobia?
Hypnotherapyinvolves hypnosis designed to get at the psychological root of ones sea phobia.
Over time, once the root is identified and targeted, it can be pulled.
If youre brave, maybe youll go snorkeling afterward in waist-high water.
(Just dont look out toward the horizon when youre underwater.
At leastnot yet.)
Neuro-linguistic programminginvolves retraining the mind to create a completely different response than fear to the dreaded stimuli.
OK, not goblin sharks.
Theyre like the cockroaches of the sea.
No, waittherearegiant, ocean-floor-crawling arthropods the size of beagles that look like cockroaches.
More neuro-linguistic programming pronto, just!
Plain psychotherapyto see what it is about your unconscious that frightens you so.
What are you hiding, hmm?
Staying the hell away from the ocean.This is the one I use.
