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Being in the house alone

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  • 12-07-2011 2:36am
    #1
    gypsy_rose
    Registered Users Posts: 453 ✭✭


    Hi everyone, hope this hasn't been posted before.

    Basically, I have an awful fear of being in a house alone. My mother is gone to her holiday home in another county but I have to stay here because I got a job for a few days. This means staying in the house alone. When this happens in any house I'm staying in (e.g. in college in my flat alone etc.) my only coping stragey is to drink, have the TV or radio on and the light on in my room. Having the light on means I don't sleep well, and really I will only sleep when daylight comes. This is especially bad in my father's house, I try to avoid being there if possible because I have to sleep with the light on, stay up until I am completely exhausted and succumb to sleep.

    If anyone out there has similiar problems could you please give me some advice as to how you cope with it?

    I don't want to be drinking all the time to calm myself down and I know in the future there is a good chance I could be living by myself with maybe a job to get up to in the morning and so could not stay up all night till morning comes.

    I don't know what exactly I'm afraid of, I just can't go to sleep in the dark like I can when I know other people are in the house, maybe it's a fear of being alone or something, I don't know, I do enjoy my own company.

    I'm always just afraid that something is going to get me!
    Sounds completely ridiculous and childish, but this is obviously an irrational fear and therefore a phoba.

    I'm 21.

    Thanks


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    #2
    paddyandy
    Site Banned Posts: 2,037 ✭✭✭paddyandy


    Well there's nothing irrational in that.Some people have a fiercely strong imagination that can play havoc in a poorly lit room.I am such a person and i had to give up writing years ago because i was scaring myself with my thoughts.My own background had a lot of ghost stories and hammer films in the 50s ireland when i was a child and those fears have never really left me.Add to that i lived in houses that were large and poorly lit with oil lamps making moving shadows on walls .There was no electric in parts of ireland in the 50s.When my mother was not at home i panicked until she returned.I was only 5 or 6 but i remember it well and then the disney films did me no good either.Nuns and priests scared me brothers even nice people in black worried me.A visit to the doctor petrified me and tears flowed on a visit to a photographers studio in dublin around '55 .This camera was a big box affair and he put a cape around him while taking the picture ...he had a real job with me no doubt.i'M in my 60s in very good health (tg) and i put a warning on the Disney Store saying kids don't need it.I still today can't stay in a building on my own and there has to be a certain amount of light in the room at night.Takes all kinds they say.


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