Smells Like Humans
Top 5% global podcast! Smells Like Humans is a seasonal podcast dedicated to bringing a humorous perspective to quirky and curious aspects of human behavior. Each show, the SLH crew will focus on a different topic, and share personal stories and observations in a way that sounds like you’re hanging out with your funny friends. The stories and commentary are presented with humor and warmth, since let’s face it: we all smell like humans. (Contact us: contactSLH19581980@gmail.com)
Smells Like Humans
SNEAKY PHOBIAS AND PANIC ATTACKS
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Jaimee joins Ross to discuss their phobias. Tangents include: Scary birds; weird bumps; copper mines; the main problem with public bathrooms; tiny French elevators; and the power of self-talk.
Notes:
- https://www.talkspace.com/blog/cognitive-behavioral-therapy-what-to-expect/
- https://www.talkspace.com/blog/list-of-phobias-common-therapy/
- https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/phobias
Contact us: contactSLH19581980@gmail.com
It's all right.
SPEAKER_05Some of the disgusting fingers and the little holes that you have to turn.
SPEAKER_00It's penis fingers.
SPEAKER_05That's it.
SPEAKER_00They're damn penis fingers, and now I'm it's like I'm basically touching their penis right now. It's like, it's wouldn't it be better for me not to wash my hands? Welcome to another episode of Smells Like Humans. This is the podcast where we explore the curious things that people do, the very human things that grab our attention and cause us to wonder, what and why? I'm Ross, your host, and today I'm absolutely thrilled to have as my guest the always entertaining and super cool Jamie. Hello, Jamie.
SPEAKER_03Hi Ross.
SPEAKER_00And welcome everyone. As always, I ask you, I even beseech you to help us grow our community. And the very best way to do that is to share the show with anyone you can, any way you can. At the end, I'll mention some other ways you can help us, but right now, let's get to our discussion. I'm gonna crack open this can. Listen.
SPEAKER_05Some ASMR.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, a little ASMR. Okay. So, Jamie, we know that it is human to be afraid of stuff. And the earlier versions of humans who were not afraid of things are no longer in the gene pool. So the people that would hear a noise in the bushes and think, oh, that's probably nothing, those people got eaten. They're gone. They're not there. The people that heard that noise and Scooby-Doo, those people are who we are. We're from those people.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_00So a moderate amount of fear is normal. Performance anxiety is normal. Feeling goofy hanging over the cliffs of Moor in Ireland is normal.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_00By the way, I did that.
SPEAKER_04Did you?
SPEAKER_00So I wanted to see if I could look through binoculars while hanging over the edge of the cliffs of Moor in Ireland and see puffins that were supposed to be down there. Now, I was afraid I might slip over the edge, so I enlisted the help of a stranger.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_00There was a woman there who was willing to hold my ankles. But that kind of stuff should get your heart pumping. Pardon?
SPEAKER_04I would hold your ankles.
SPEAKER_00Oh, thank you. I think everyone should have at least one person who will keep them from swiding on it. The ankle holder. Jumping out of an airplane, doing bungee jumping, asking your boss for a raise, being mummy wrapped and thrown into the trunk of a subaru, all of that should be a little disconcerting and raise your blood pressure a bit. But sometimes, sometimes these normal feelings of trepidation can morph into something less tolerable, specifically into full blown phobias. And a phobia is a fear that's out of proportion to the actual danger presented by an object or a situation. The way I like to think about phobias is because a lot of us have fears and things that raise our uh makes it make us feel anxious, but I think it it morphs into a phobia or becomes a phobia when it's preventing you from living your life the way you want to live it. Okay, so it interferes with your choices and behavior. So if you have this dream job you're offered and it's everything you've ever wanted, but it requires some air travel and you're afraid of flying, and so you don't take the job, that might be a phobia. Yep. Or if your fear of public speaking is so intense that it you get passed over at work for promotions and stuff because you're too afraid to talk. Um, or fear of heights keeps you from visiting your best friend, or fear of public spaces prevents you from going to your kids' graduation. That's the kind of thing we're talking about. And uh sometimes it may be those things, but it also just can be the anxiety that is so upsetting and so stressful that it really is intolerable. On the other hand, if you're a hermit and you never have to go on an airplane because all you're doing is sitting in a cabin with no electricity, typing angry letters to the government.
SPEAKER_05COVID has made me quite hermit-y.
SPEAKER_00You've become a hermit. Um now you may want to work on your hermit stuff, but I'm pretty good with it.
SPEAKER_05I'm happy with my hermitiness.
SPEAKER_00You've connected with your inner hermit. Yep. But those people, that that hermit may have a fear, may have a phobia of flying, but they're never gonna get near an airplane. They don't care, they don't want to, they don't want to leave the cabin. So for them, I don't know, they don't really need to worry about it. But for a lot of people, it can feel like when you're having a phobic reaction, it feels like what people would describe as a panic attack. So it's the feeling like you have to leave the situation immediately or you're gonna die. Yes. Your heart rate goes up, you might start sweating, you might have trouble breathing normally, and it really does feel like you, if you stay in the situation too long, you're done, you're gonna die. And sometimes just thinking about the situation, not even being in it, but just thinking about it creates a panic reaction. Just anticipating. So a lot of people say they're afraid of public speaking, and if they have to do some kind of presentation, just thinking about that can induce a panic attack, and they're not even doing it, they're just thinking about it. So today we are gonna talk about phobias, and both Jamie and I have a lot of empathy for those of you out there who may be suffering from a phobia. By the way, it's estimated that maybe around 12 to 15 percent of Americans, for example, have full-blown phobias. But I think much higher. It yeah, I would think so. But I think there's a couple things at work. Uh I think some people say they have a phobia when it's not really a a a true phobia. They might have intense anxiety, they might have intense fear, but like I'm like they could say, Oh, I have a phobia about flying, and yet they fly.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_00So I'm talking when we talk about phobias, I think the reason the number's not as high as we suspect is people just in a colloquial sense will use that term a lot. I have a phobia about this and this and this and this. Right. And it it's not a full-blown phobia. And I think another thing that happens, uh, a lot of people don't they find ways to work around it so it never really gets diagnosed. They just make choices in their life so they're not in those situations, and they haven't really come to the grips with the fact that they have a phobia in a classic sense, and they haven't ever been diagnosed. So when we when we say that number is like 12 to 15 percent, it's based on di actual diagnoses. So there it could be much higher, probably is. And certainly people that have a lot of anxiety, and again, it may not be diagnosed as a phobia, but the anxiety is so high that it's pretty darn close. So I think the actual number of people struggling with this is higher, which is why we're talking about it. We have empathy for you because we both got phobias.
SPEAKER_03We got it.
SPEAKER_00And we're gonna talk about that. I was uh interested to see you're official, is what you're saying.
SPEAKER_05Aaron Powell I'm official, yes, medicated.
SPEAKER_00Um so we I'm official, I'm medicated.
SPEAKER_05I'm ready to go.
SPEAKER_00We got the medication, we got the talent. Um so I was interested to read that they think phobias uh can be genetic. They can also be to due to environmental factors, and of course, that's what most people think is like you had some early experience with a situation that was anxiety-producing, um, and that turned into a phobia. So, Jamie, I've got to ask you. Yes. What the hell are you scared of anyway? What are you so scared about?
SPEAKER_05Have you ever heard of um ornithophobia?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell Uh yes, but I can't quite remember what that's a fear of.
SPEAKER_05Aaron Ross Powell Ornithophobia is an abnormal and persistent fear of birds. Aaron Ross Powell Oh yes. Birds. I have an irrational or irrational, maybe, fear of birds.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell Okay, tell me about that.
SPEAKER_05Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. When I was a kid, um locked in the basement of my house, as we talked about on a previous episode. I lived in the basement.
SPEAKER_00You have to go back to my room in the basement. But suffice it to say, she had an unusual childhood. And you were locked in. And I was an important part of this understanding.
SPEAKER_05But at a certain point, I was in my bedroom, and my bedroom was like the furthest away from the actual door to get outside. And at a certain point a a bird got trapped in the basement.
SPEAKER_00How does a bird get into a basement?
SPEAKER_05That is an excellent question.
SPEAKER_00Were there windows in this basement? Okay.
SPEAKER_05This was a different house, actually, than the one I talked about.
SPEAKER_00We're not talking about a lock-picking bird.
SPEAKER_05We're talking about Yeah, it was just like a small bird. I have no idea how it got in uh in the basement. But it you know, when a bird is trapped in a space, they freak out. They don't like it. They hate it.
SPEAKER_00They have anxiety about the Yes.
SPEAKER_05And their anxiety gives me anxiety. Right. Um so this bird was freaking out, trapped in our basement, and I was the only one down there. Um and I didn't know what to do. I was a small child. Um I think eventually we got like a a sheet and we had like one person on either side of the sheet holding it, and we kind of like directed the bird out of the house.
SPEAKER_00Okay. That sounds very uh functional.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, totally. Mm-hmm. And we got the bird out, but it was it wasn't my favorite thing that ever happened to me.
SPEAKER_00Okay. But when did it become a a phobia?
SPEAKER_05Aaron Ross Powell That's a I think that that's where it started. Also, when I was a kid, we had a lot of very weird pets. So at a certain point we had pet ducks. I don't know why. Ducks are they're not I I'm sure that some people enjoy having them.
SPEAKER_00Can you snuggle with a duck?
SPEAKER_05I I think I've seen like Instagram videos of people snuggling with ducks, but when I tried to snuggle with the ducks, they just like scratch.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they're kind of bitey, too. Yeah, bitey and scratchy.
SPEAKER_05And they I just remember um having like big scratches from their feet on my chest, and then uh that was when I know. And then uh we would go to my dad's house on the weekends and he had some kind of like antibacterial or some sort of serum that he would put on the scratches to keep them from getting infected, and it was like burning. It was torture. I'm sure it would did the job, right? But it was just the whole experience was kind of uh Negative. Negative, yeah, with the birds. Um so now as an adult human, uh when I walk down the street, I'll I will like legitimately cross the street if there's pigeons in the street, or if my boyfriend's walking with me, I make him run into the crowd of pigeons to like chase them away before I get there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So if you go into somebody's house and they have a bird in a cage, how's that?
SPEAKER_05No. Bird people are um Bird people are weird.
SPEAKER_00Even if they're in the cage, the birds in the cage.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Even if it's like a small bird like a parakeet, are you does that get you anxious?
SPEAKER_05Maybe that would be all right. I don't know. I just feel like birds are they're shifty and they're unpredictable and they got the beaks and the claws and you don't know which way they're going. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00Birds are intense.
SPEAKER_05They're intense.
SPEAKER_00Now I know this because I had birds as pets for a while. You were a bird person. I was. Until well, part of it goes back to the fact that we weren't allowed to have real pets because we had too many kids. And my mother would always say, Why do I want pets in the house? I have kids. Right. And she also would say, I know what's going to happen is that I'm going to end up having to take care of whatever this thing is. And so no, it's just no from the jump. But we were allowed to have almost pets. An almost pet would be something like a chinchilla, or I was allowed to have a mouse, or you could have a bird. These are all things that my mother wouldn't have to take care of that were self-contained. And if you didn't feed it, that's on you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's not like anything she has to deal with. So that's why uh at some at some point I graduated to birds and I started with a parakeet named Frankenstein, and he lived for a pretty long time, but then he died, and I kept him in a box for a long time in my room. Some people thought that was weird.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Bird in a box.
SPEAKER_05That is uh interesting.
SPEAKER_00It wouldn't fly. Notice I don't know if that would have bothered you. Uh then I graduated, I moved up to cockatiels. They're a little bit bigger. They're like a miniature cockatoo. And uh that was fun. And we had that different cockatiels. And then at some point, and this I don't think you would have liked this bird, I got an African gray parrot. They're big. They talk, which is funny. Too smart. They're very smart. And this one was had a rough childhood or something because it was mean. Okay. And uh and had to had to give it away when I had my first kid because the parrot decided it was gonna kill the baby.
unknownOh no.
SPEAKER_05See? I was telling you birds, they can't be trusted.
SPEAKER_00There were times when the bird when we had birds that flew around that I'm guessing you wouldn't have liked it.
SPEAKER_03No.
SPEAKER_00And that's what I've known. I've met people who say, I don't like the idea of birds flying around in a closed space. Maybe in your case, in an open space.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Anywhere. I'll duck down if a bird is like 30 feet above my head. I think it's like coming for me.
SPEAKER_00But you're absolutely right. And like all you have to do is like watch the first Jurassic Park to be reminded like why birds are.
SPEAKER_05Birds are dinosaurs. They're tiny little dinosaurs.
SPEAKER_00And they're and they're spooky. And I we used to go to this place. Um, it was like a really bad um like animal adventure park where you drive through and retired circus animals would be mostly sleeping. Yeah. But they had this and then you could feed them and they would come up and eat.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um, there was this ostrich there. Have you ever been to big and those suckers are scary. And if you don't think an ostrich is scary, you just need to see one up close and personal. And this thing was aggressive, and you would hold out your little bucket of overpriced kibble or whatever it was, and it what it would do is it would rear back and slam its beak into the bucket really hard and knock it out of your hand so it could eat it all. And then you'd have nothing to feed the dying. Whatever. Yeah, whatever hyena that was like a two-legged hyena, whatever it was. And that would be a good example of a specific phobia. Some people, it's dogs, they are just uncomfortable, they get very anxious around dogs. Other specific things like traveling through a tunnel.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like they won't travel through there's people who won't travel across bridges because they're afraid they're gonna fall down. Yeah. And we live in a place called Bridge City. Yeah. It's one of the nicknames because there's so many bridges here. And they tell us that any kind of earthquake, which we're due for, but any kind of earthquake, all the bridges are gonna collapse. Yeah. None of them are gonna There's not one bridge that they say this is a good bridge.
SPEAKER_05They say nope, you're all bad.
SPEAKER_00All going to be bad. So it's kind of a reasonable thing to be anxious about. But if you're so anxious and you can't cross the bridge, that's a problem here.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because that's all we have. Um so birds.
SPEAKER_05Yes. The other um the other weird one that I have that I don't know if you've ever heard of is um tripophobia.
SPEAKER_00Oh wait, this is the one I didn't think was real.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00This is the one that's real, basically.
SPEAKER_05Is this the circle clusters?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Okay. I I read about this and I'm like, I don't even understand what this is. You're gonna have to explain the circle clusters.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I couldn't figure out what a circle cluster was.
SPEAKER_05It makes me mad to even think about this one. Oh my gosh. I have uh such an averse reaction to this.
SPEAKER_00Well, I appreciate you sharing it, but I really have no idea what this is. I'm not just saying uh Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So it's um it's basically an irrational fear of like small holes or bumps. So like say you saw a photo of uh like a uh honeycomb.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Or like if you zoomed in super close on the pores of someone's nose or something.
SPEAKER_00Which would be a huge mistake in my head.
SPEAKER_05We don't want to see You don't. Uh yeah, so I I don't know how to describe what this does to me, but it m makes me it makes my stomach feel itchy and I get really mad and I want to destroy the thing that I'm looking at. I want to crush it and light it on fire.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So is that I that is a real thing. Right? Uh itchy stomach and you want to light things on the fire.
SPEAKER_05It makes me irrationally angry. And some of my friends know that I have this thing, so they'll like send me stuff on Instagram and then I open it up and I see it, and I immediately have to like throw my phone out the window. Aaron Ross Powell Makes me super uncomfortable. And I God, I don't even know how to describe it. Like yeah, irrationally angry. It makes me so upset to see these things.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell So these are things in real life.
SPEAKER_05Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, things I'll see in real life.
SPEAKER_00And you'll just encounter them by like you're looking at pictures of something and then you'll something will be a close-up of some kind of and it'll have this pattern of bumps and holes and you're just like Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um what I in my Googling of this, uh it seems like the reason that some people have this was, you know, back in the day to protect yourself. So like if you saw a hornet's nest, you would be so repulsed by how it looked that you wouldn't go grab it. You would be hightailing it the other way because it looks so disgusting. You want to die.
SPEAKER_00It's an exact again, it's an i it's it's a not necessarily an unhealthy thing to have some amount of trepidation about a hornet's nest, but to the extent that it makes you have an itchy stomach and you want to light things on fire, it's just it's an it's out of proportion. It's gotten it's like it's it's it's too much of a good thing. Now, I would imagine that that one it's it's something that's hard to avoid because you don't know when you're gonna be presented with that kind of and my boyfriend all the time asks me, uh he'll see something and it'll be like, oh, does this do it for you?
SPEAKER_05Like, does this do it? And it it's uh some of the things that he points out, he I could see how he would think that they would do it, but they don't always. I remember being at um a restaurant one time, and it was like a sports bar.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_05And there they had uh their logo uh on a wall, but the wall was all baseballs. There was like a bunch of baseball stacked together, and I had to like sit on the other side of the booth. I could not look at this wall of baseballs.
SPEAKER_00Because you were starting to feel the itchy stomach and the anger.
SPEAKER_05Anger.
SPEAKER_00And you wanted to do something.
SPEAKER_05Scrape them all off the wall. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. So it's almost like a compulsion then at that point. Like I you have to do something about it. Have you ever lit anything on fire or destroyed it?
SPEAKER_05I don't think I have. I mean, sure, I would destroyed something that looked disgusting, sure, but I don't know if I lit it on fire.
SPEAKER_00Is it to the point where knowing that that place has that poster or whatever it is on the wall, where the next time someone said, Hey, do you want to go here, would you say, No, I'm not going there?
SPEAKER_05Absolutely. Okay.
SPEAKER_00So once you know that there is a bunch of baseballs or a bird, you're like, no.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And if you met the perfect mate, let's say you were single and you met the perfect person, you have this great sort of meet cue and everything's going great, and they turn out to be a bird person, is that like, mm-hmm. Then what?
SPEAKER_05Uh I feel like that's gonna be a deal breaker for me. I'll be single.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. So that's how you know it's like that's how you know it's in a phobic area because it's like pr you're changing choices. Now, not going to that sports bar when you can go to another sports bar, maybe that's not such a big deal, but the amount of discomfort that you feel, that is a big deal.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's what I call a sneaky phobia.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because you have it, but you don't know where it is. And it sneaks up on you and suddenly it's in front of you. So the bird thing, you can they're everywhere. You can you but you can manage it some of that by using your uh boyfriend as sort of the guinea pig bird chaser person. Yeah, like go chase all those birds away. Maybe he has to carry like one of those. They have I live downtown in Portland, and sometimes they they have a lot of crows and they have to shoot guns like to get them out of the trees.
SPEAKER_05Crows are too smart. They're super smart. They recognize your faces.
SPEAKER_00And they and they pass that down to their offspring. Like if you're mean to a crow, they'll their kids will remember it. They'll hold a grudge. And they'll and crows will be I've seen them smoking cigarettes. Really? Yeah. And I've also seen that they have tattoos. They fit in Portland perfectly. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Crows are very crows are very smart. They're very smart. They know how to use tools, they have a sense of humor. Uh they can be sardonic. So, but I have a sneaky phobia. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_05What's your sneaky phobia?
SPEAKER_00It's it's a common one. It's fairly common. It's claustrophobia, but it's not it's sneaky in that I don't know it's gonna happen because it's not every small space.
SPEAKER_05Totally. I have the same thing.
SPEAKER_00So like for example, I have no trouble riding on an airplane. Even though it's just a enclosed tube and you can't get out.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, same. I'm okay. I don't get clustered on airplanes either.
SPEAKER_00I am okay in elevators. Even if it's crowded. Uh uh I it's not my favorite, but who who really does? Nobody loves an elevator. Like to be in an elevator uh with a bunch of people, especially now with COVID time. Um and so the things like that, so those don't bother me. But there is specific situations where my movement is extremely limited, and that's when it gets me. And I don't it's I call it sneaky because I don't look at a thing and immediately say, oh, that's a small space, I won't like it. Because 95% of the time I'm fine.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So as an example, I was in Paris once, and I went into a building and it had a basically an elevator that was so small it was basically big enough for one person.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I get in the elevator because I thought it would be fun to ride on this little elevator. So there's no part of my brain that says, uh-oh, small space. Yeah. I get in there, I'm still fine. I'm fine on the small elevator. It's really small, it's basically one person.
SPEAKER_05Imagine a coffin on a string.
SPEAKER_00Yes, a coffin on a string. Is that a toy for children? So I'm fine. We go up one floor, we, me, by myself, goes up one floor, stops, two French maids get on. Now there's three people in a one-person elevator.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's when it gets me. So suddenly I realize big mistake. Yep. And I start to feel a panic feeling. I start to, my heart goes up. I have trouble breathing, and like the world closes down. It's this narrow, it's like my my experience of the world becomes extremely narrow. Yep. And now I'm like like looking through like a tiny crack into the world, and everything else is just panic.
SPEAKER_05Yep.
SPEAKER_00And I believe I believe the first time this happened is when I was probably about five or six years old. I was with my older brothers, and somebody got the idea of climbing through a sewer under a road to do something. It's just something that kids think is fun. Let's climb through the drain. It wasn't a sewer, it was like a drain. Yeah. And um you had to crawl through it, and that's as much space as you had. No. So that's how small it was. If for a little kid, it still felt really compact. But I was like, yeah, I want to do that. And I got about halfway, and I suddenly felt that feeling of panic. And I made people back behind me, like, I gotta get out, I gotta get out. That's the one I remember. But again, I was already halfway in. You know, there was nothing about it that made me think, oh, this is not for me. Another similar experience, I was probably, I don't know, probably pretty young, but still, you know, like late teens. So I was at an amusement park. There was some kind of ride, and I don't even know what the thing did. It was two-seater, and you did something. I fly around or something. So I get in with another person, I'm fine. And I'm like, oh, you have to pull down the top to get, you know, to for it to I'll just do it myself because the ride operator usually goes around, make sure everybody's belted in, and the top of this thing had a roof that comes down once you're in. And I pulled the thing down, and it was now I felt immediately right then. So there was no part of me before that that said, uh-oh, if I pull this down, it's gonna feel really tight, it's gonna feel really uncomfortable. No, because it and it's not until I'm in that space and I realize I can't move and I can't get out. Yeah. So I am in panic mode and I stick my head out of this. It's like I I wish I could, I wish I could show you this picture somehow. I'm in this little tiny compartment and I'm trying to cram my head out. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And I'm yelling at the ride operator, wait a minute, wait a minute.
SPEAKER_00Because I'm feeling like if this ride starts, I'm dead. Yeah. Like I'm not gonna make it. That's how intense it is. And fortunately, he came over and was like, what are you doing? I got I can't do this ride, I gotta get out. And they're like, let me out. So my experience for the most part, when these things happen, is totally unexpected. I willingly put myself in the situation, and then it's when I realize I can't move. And that's the that's the one for me. If I can't move, like I can be in a small space as long as I can freely move my arms and legs and kind of move my body around. But if it's so that I can't move, then it's bad.
SPEAKER_05Do you feel like if you're in a really dark space, even if you're not like confined, if it's really dark, do you does that set off your claustrophobia?
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_05Okay. When I was a kid, uh have you ever heard of the Kennicott copper mine? It's like a I think you can see it from space. It's in Utah. Okay. I do like it.
SPEAKER_00I do like copper.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Well, you maybe you'd love it. You'd hate this elevator though. Uh-oh. Because when I was a kid, they put you in this, it's like this metal uh elevator that has a bunch of holes maybe that's why I didn't like it, it has a bunch of holes in it. Wide open my whole phobia. Um so there's an elevator and it's got holes in it so you can just see like the leaky walls of the mine and lowers you down. But as you're getting lowered, not only is it a small elevator that a bunch of kids are crammed into, but the farther down you get, the darker it gets.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So the darker it got, the smaller the space felt. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yes. I see what you're saying.
SPEAKER_05And you're a small child in a mine. There's not really anywhere to go or anything to do.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_05But talk about panic inducing if you're claustrophobic.
SPEAKER_00Trevor Burrus, Jr.: So what did you do then? How did you just have to stay there? Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_05I just had to stay there and freak out.
SPEAKER_00You didn't start shouting, wait a minute.
SPEAKER_05Wait a minute. I was like cripplingly shy when I was a kid. Oh, that's the worst. I know. Yeah. So I probably was freaking out internally, but not externally. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_03Horrible. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I hate thinking about that.
SPEAKER_05And then they take you through the mine and it's lit up, and they say, we're going to turn off the lights so you can see how dark it is in here. And I was like, oh no. And they do, and it's so dark that you feel like you're the only person in there. Ooh, that's a that definitely does it for me. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, I've been in those kinds of underground things, and I always ask. So when I know I'm going into something like that, I will I won't just do it. I will say, can I do what, you know, can am I able to move and I show them like I move my wave my arms and can I do this? Because I know I'm going to be okay. Yeah. As long as I can do that. But if I'm on my hands and knees and I'm like wedged in and I'm trying to squeeze through a small space, that I know I'm not going to do well on.
SPEAKER_05I had to stop getting massages because I had a full blown panic attack from putting my face in the little face cradle on the massage table.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Okay. I know that there is a whole room around me, but for whatever reason, I was like, there's the I can't breathe in this small face cradle.
SPEAKER_00Trevor Burrus So that's a pretty that's a pretty extreme version of claustrophobia, but at least you uh it's not as sneaky.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And y it's easy to fix. Like you start feeling anxious. So the very last time this happened, I had a and it's been a while since I've had any kind of claustrophobic panic attack. But the very last time I was in, I was gonna go on a plane ride. It was a very small plane. And I've been on a lot of small planes. But this one was one of those planes where if I wanted to, I could have pushed some buttons in the cockpit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's how close it's like five people on the plane, six maybe max. Very small. It's like a plane you might build in your garage that kind of small. Talking about a small plane. It's very small. And yet I have no problem. I get to this because it's gonna be like a sightseeing flight over these mountains, and I don't have any, I'm like, oh, small plane, I've been in small plane. Like there's nothing about it that's I'm feeling any degree of anxiety.
SPEAKER_01None.
SPEAKER_00Get on the plane with a bunch of other well, there's like six people, so it's a full plane, there's hardly any space. I'm still fine. We're sitting there waiting to go, the pilots are doing whatever, taking a couple of shots, whatever they do. And and it's still fine. Everything's fine.
SPEAKER_02Everything's great.
SPEAKER_00And then he says, Hey, I know it's stuffy in here, but once the engine starts, the air will start circulating. And he said the word stuffy, and I go, stuffy? Oh, and I start looking around, I start realizing how tight it is in there. And it is feeling kind of stuffy, and then it started feeling enclosed, and I start into a full-blown panic attack. And I got to that wait a minute point, like I have to get off. Because that's how you feel. If you've never had a panic attack, it feels like not just uncomfortable, it feels like you have to get out of the situation. Yeah, or yeah, like or I'm gonna die. And I was one click away from saying, I'm sorry, I have to, you have to let me off the plane. Yeah. I was right on the edge. And I said, I know what you're supposed to do. And this is part of the therapy that you can get for your phobias. It's called cognitive behavioral therapy, and essentially is changing the way you talk about the experience as you're having it. And so what the pattern is for me is I say, This is horrible. I feel like I'm gonna die, and I need to get out.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay, but you can say other things to yourself besides that. And one of the things I started to say to myself in this moment was, Well, I know this is very stressful, but I also know that I can control my breathing. So I'm gonna start doing that.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I started to intentionally instead of that, yeah. That I started intentionally, you know, taking a deep breath, holding it and letting it out. And just doing that for a little bit helped take a little bit of the edge off. And then I was traveling with somebody else, and I and I um and they loved to talk. They were a big talker. And so I kept saying to them, tell me again what you were saying about whatever remind me again that story that you like to tell. And I just kept like focusing on their story, even though I didn't distract yourself. Yeah, it was like, let me focus on that and let me keep breathing. And as soon as he started the engine, I was fine. And I was fine on the trip, and then we flew back the same plane on the way back, and I was fine. And so I was really happy about that because it showed that that kind of therapy, it's called cognitive behavioral therapy, you can look it up, um, can work when you find yourself in that situation. And in my case, it's always by surprise.
SPEAKER_03Totally.
SPEAKER_00And um, and I I was, as I said, was right on the edge of just jumping out and just saying I couldn't do it, which would I really would have regretted that. And I just the only thing that kept me, I said, I know I can do this. Like I know that I'm not gonna die.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I know I feel like I'm gonna die, but I know I'm not gonna die. And there's a lot of uh evidence out there that shows when we change how we label our physical feelings, it can change the experience of those feelings. So I've I've been a performer most of my life, and it's natural to have a certain level of performance anxiety before you take the stage. Sure. Or give a talk or whatever you're doing, right? It's normal.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00If you don't feel any kind of nervousness, there's probably something wrong with you.
SPEAKER_03You're probably a sociopath.
SPEAKER_00And you have bigger problems than phobias. So I so one of the things I did early on is because you would feel, especially like on an opening night, you'd feel like this uh more tension.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And it you start you start wondering if it's going to interfere with your performance. And I just started labeling that as excitement.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00And uh after a while, after doing that over and over and over again, I would label it as excitement, and you want to feel excited about something that you really have a passion for doing.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00And that changed, it actually changed my uh experience of of that tension. And it's welcome now. It's like a welcome thing. It's like, oh, I like feeling excited. That's why I perform because it's exciting. Right. And it and so that was a one way to manage sort of the stage anxiety that's normal for people to have. But this thing with uh the claustrophobia that was so much more intense. That was always been so unpleasant for me and always felt like something I had to run away from. Some people have a real one of their social phobias is they can't use public restrooms. And you can imagine that would really limit it. Sounds funny, but then when you think about it, you can't go anywhere.
SPEAKER_03No.
SPEAKER_00Away from your house, really. Because you might have to go to the bathroom. Now I gotta tell you, I don't have a phobia about public restrooms, but they are one of the most disgusting places on earth. I don't know what it's like in the ladies' side.
SPEAKER_05It's not much better.
SPEAKER_00Well, you've obviously tried both, but the men's side is bad.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh and I don't understand. I I don't understand what's going on with guys, male identifying people who come uh it's like they were they've been holding it for a fortnight. They come in, it's a mad rush. Yes. They break, you know, they're hammering down the door if the stall if there is one. And then there's this cacophony of noises and grunts and straining. I'm like, what is going on? Did someone bring a circus animal? Yeah. Like, why is what where what has your life been like that you have it's gross.
SPEAKER_05It is gross, disgusting.
SPEAKER_00It's yeah, so it's it's usually not very clean, but it's just mainly it's the it's the men. The men are smelly. Smelly. And it's like, what? It's like they're delivering a child sometimes. Like, what are you doing? And um I remember, so I'm not a big fan. I always feel like I want to touch as little as possible in there. It's like sometimes I think you're better off not washing your hands because you don't have to touch that many things. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Right. Like the worst thing is to go wash your hands in a public restroom. And they don't have an automatic towel dispenser. They have one of those things where you have to crank it yourself. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_05And it's all disgusting fingers and the little holes that you have to turn.
SPEAKER_00Trevor Burrus, Jr.: It's penis fingers.
SPEAKER_05That's it.
SPEAKER_00They're damn penis fingers, and now I'm it's like I'm basically touching their penis right now. It's like it's a d wouldn't it be better for me not to wash my hands? And you remember you're probably not old enough to know, but they used to have these really disgusting things which were like towel, like they were like a fabric.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that you pull and it circulates the towel. And it just goes. Where does the whole towel go?
SPEAKER_00And you're white. It's again, you've got penis fingers all over it.
SPEAKER_05Like I don't want that. Also, side note, you should always sanitize your cell phone. Your cell phone is a disgusting cesspool of disease. Penis fingers all over your cell phone all the time.
SPEAKER_00I've been thinking about that. But it's I so I've heard people say that, but if you're just if it's just you using your phone, isn't it just your penis finger?
SPEAKER_05Can you touch like the handles of the sink or someone's penis fingers or penis finger?
SPEAKER_00It's penis finger transfer. It is transferred. That's what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_05But don't you like set your cell phone like on the sink or something?
SPEAKER_00Oh, you are bold, aren't you? You are bold. You are a trusting person. You know what? You're like one of those thrill seekers.
SPEAKER_05That's right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You don't need bungee cords. You don't need to jump out of an airplane. You're setting your phone down.
SPEAKER_05Oh. Disgusting.
SPEAKER_00Yikes. I would just toss that phone out. I would just leave it there. It's like, do I really need it? Yeah. The other thing, of course, that you're you've been apparently trying is medication works. Yes. And the other thing is to do some sort of uh exposure therapy. So it's a form of cognitive therapy, but where you uh usually with a therapist, but you could do it yourself. I mean, in theory, but it's better with a therapist, obviously, especially if it's an extreme condition that you're wrestling with. So the way it works is you break the scary event into as many individual steps as you can imagine and think might be relevant. And you can even expand it further if you find that it's not enough. So let's say you had a fear of flying.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So step one might be thinking about going on an airplane trip. Not any specific trip, not any specific plane, not any specific day, just thinking about the idea of it. And that's going to raise your anxiety a little bit. And then the next thing might be booking the flight, and the next thing might be packing your bag day of, and the next thing might be riding to the airport and going through security and whatever all those steps are then. And you're totally in control of what the steps are. And with the therapist, typically you work through each step and you achieve you work until you have relaxation in that step before you. Experience the next step.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00So you go to the next so let's say you're only on step two and you're already starting to feel anxious in in just imagining it. Then you work through your breathing and your self-talk and other whatever other relaxation techniques you're using until you feel okay. And if you don't feel okay, then you go back to step one and start over. And over time you work your way up through all the steps.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00And then you can do things like um do some of those things in real life. Like you could actually go to an airport. Now you can't get through security unless you have a ticket, so you probably wouldn't do that part. But you could actually go to the airport and sit around in the airport and listen to the announcements and see people bustling about with their luggage. And that could so there are ways that you increments. You go in small increments.
SPEAKER_05Start with a hummingbird and you end with an ostrich.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Who's just rage bad ostrich was meaning.
SPEAKER_05I could never, I simply could not.
SPEAKER_00It was a gang ostrich. The goal isn't to necessarily get so that you're like, hey, I want to, you know, s sleep in a coffin tonight. I love small spaces. It's more about when you get in these situations that you have you don't get to that point of panic. You feel the the tension rising and then you go through your process and you can get through it. And to the extent that you're limiting your life because of these things, it's kind of important to take a look at it. The main thing I guess I want to leave you with is that if you feel like you're suffering from a phobia and it's getting in the way of living the life you want, try to get help.
SPEAKER_05The best thing I did was go and seek out help and figure it out. And it was a long journey, but I feel great now.
SPEAKER_00Well, I just want to thank you for spending this time talking about phobias, Jamie. It's always a pleasure to be with you. Thanks been a treat for being here. And the whole time you seem very relaxed and calm. Thank you, everyone, wherever you are, for joining us for this episode. If you like what we're doing, we sure could use your help. Follow the show on Instagram or Twitter. The thing that would really help us, and a handful of you have done this, but if if more of you could rate us on Apple, I think you can rate on Spotify now, I was reading, but wherever you can rate us, give us the highest rating that they allow, give us a glowing review if they allow for that. I know it's a hassle, and most people don't do things like this, but when you're a new and independent podcast, it really does help people find us if there are positive ratings. Um and so if you like what you're listening to, um sharing it is the number one thing, word of mouth or just sharing links to the show is very helpful, and we appreciate those of you who are doing that. But if you can um also give us a glowing rating that apparently is helpful too, we're also on Patreon and you can support us that way. We appreciate it, we appreciate you, and we're glad you're with us every week. And we hope you will tune in to another episode because whether you are just realizing that you're stuck in a tiny elevator with a bunch of French maids, or just someone with an itchy stomach waiting to light someone's nose on fire, it's important to remember that we all smell like humans. Bye, everybody.