>>23139
Honestly, not much. I had the default half-disgust half-curiosity towards critters, natural fear of the dark, the occasional nightmare after a terror / horror film, and got spooked here and there. I didn't even grow up fearing death, to the point I have died dozens of times in my dreams (much to the chagrin of old wives), only to chill out around as a ghost (it's usually boring though). I had never really felt that something was truly dreadful when I was a child, until after watching The Exorcist III, when I was 11 or so, and seeing church porcelain statues opening their eyes, smiling, frowning, etc. I got spooked to hell and back and I still occasionally get the heebie jeebies when I see a creepily-made statue.

My parents, other kids at school, future.

nothing at all
and all these year later i'm still too stupid to figure out what to watch out for, fearlessness and idiocy are two sides of the same coin.

My parents.

Growing up and getting a job. Most kids can't wait till they're old enough to drive or buy beer. Me, I saw the number 18 as a death sentience. I hated school, but I knew it would be nothing compared to being an adult with job and responsibilities. At least I was able to skip school when I felt like it, stay home and play videogames and so on. I couldn't get away with that sort of thing at a normal job I thought. While it's true I can't skip out on work and stay at home whenever I feel like it, I was at least able to find myself in a relatively easy line of work. It's been one dead end job after another, but I can goof off and get paid while watching movies/anime on my laptop or gaming with portable devices. Can't get a better deal than that.

>>23277
>Can't get a better deal than that.
I don't know if "fear" would be right term, but I fear I will never find such a job when I have to get one.

>>23277
Those were exactly my thoughts when I was younger. In school, leading up to the end I had that on my mind. "It's only going to get worse from here". While I did handle that fine all things considered, the freedom of that time isn't something that comes easy.

>>23277
Me too. Still at least for me school had its ups and downs, along with college. Now that I've started working I just don't have the energy to goof off on video games anymore, although my current situation still allows me to be lazier than most (and my pay isn't that bad even post-taxes). I remember almost every day in 11th-12th grade I could just run away to computer games like they were a second life, even had more friends there as well. Although I was forced to do summer school many summers, I still had a handful of good, relaxing summers as well that I could lose myself in games, anime, books, and straight-up daydreaming, and now vacations will be hard to come by, even the weekend feels too short in comparison. I can't goof off that much on my job, but it isn't the hardest either and I don't have to deal with people much at all there, I've gotten good at pacing myself as to not burn myself out after getting home.

>>23277
This. Although I still don't have a job and fear that it's going to be kill me tier.

Unconsciously saying what I'm thinking, or acting upon split-second impulses.

I'm also somebody that was afraid of having to work when I was a kid. I hated school and I hated the thought of having to do something that I didn't like or want to ever do just to buy video games.

I guess that that explains why I don't really have much of a "dream" growing up. I really did not want to think about the future at all. Now, I just feel like if I ever grow to be old, it'll be full of regret and hate, almost like those manga panels where the old guy is laying in a hospital bed and filled with regret that he didn't live his life to its fullest.

people

Never amounting to anything, never falling in love, never "succeeding" in life, having a job that I hate, making a fool of myself. Turns out I was right about all of those. Probably a self-fulfilling prophecy, though.

Also this.
>>23299
I did a lot of stupid shit as a kid that I regretted immediately. So much so that I stopped trying to make friends with the other kids because I was afraid that I would say something stupid and they would hate me.

I had a terrible fear of the Devil, strange because God never almost appeared in my thoughts. Nightmares about Satan, vivid images of the suffering of hell , people being gutted alive by demons, boiling in oil, hanging from hooks in fiery pits, all have accompanied me since early childhood.

Besides that, I had a deathly fear of home invasions, murderers, criminals in general. My parents really shouldn't have let me watch those late night sensationalist true crime shows

the sound the ps2 makes on the intro.
I would usually turn on the ps2, wait a few seconds, and then turn on my tv.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9Ln-qyvX_I

it actually still kinda creeps me out to this day. I also used to have dreams in which I would hear the sound at random times. always freak the fuck out!

after asking around on various websites, it seems like I'm not alone on this. lots of other people used to find it scary

>>23338
Now that's odd. I never had a PS2 so wasn't aware of this intro sound until now and found it a slightly on the relaxing side. I thought it would be like the THX sound (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWkJ86JqlPA).

>>23338
It is a bit mysterious sounding, but I wouldn't say it scared me.

The ps1 version on the other hand always gave me the chills.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAhvQoLpvsM

>>23339
it kinda was like the THX sound. there were times when one would sneak out at night to play ps2, and you didn't notice the tv's volume was high. when that happened, the loudness was enough to wake everyone up.

also, the second thing I feared about the ps2 was when it couldn't load a disk and it gave you this screen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uHLQHjtPLE

to be fair though, I was a pretty big pussy when I was a kid. almost everything scared me.

Moths, specially, for many years.

There was a time, when I was like 9 or so, that one big brown landed on my back while I was drawing, late at night. I first though it was someone's hand, but I saw no one; when I checked my back in the mirror I yelled in terror, got paralyzed in shock and had to stay in bed for the next day to recover.

Years after that, I saw a dead moth of the same kind lying on the street. I first eluded it, but then made up my mind, got a pair of scisors from my house and cut its wings (barely touching it had me at my limit). I did it in order to preserve at least the wings, watch them calmly and try to overcome the fear; it didn't quite work.

Even further years later, I started doing sc. illustration of butterflies and started collecting them myself; I also got moths. Studying, understanding, drawing and manipulating them (apart from killing them of course, sometimes), finally allowed me to cope with the fear. No that it completely disappeared: they still affect me immensely; but I can now control myself and even enjoy their prescence (my room walls are now cover with them).

BTW: Ascalapha odorata; that's how the one from that time was called. I own a pair now, male and female.

Post edited on 8th Feb 2018, 9:19pm

>>23139
Reaching adulthood alone without ever having experienced any sort companionship.

It happened. And I don't want to wake up tomorrow. Or the next day.

>>23347
I haven't seen you post in a really long time.

>>23360
I feel the same way...

That my parents would divorce. That my granny would die. That I would never leave my hometown.

All of it came true.

When I was 12 or 13, my uncle showed me a documentary about heroine addicts. That night, I became terrified that an addict looking for drugs would break into our apartment. Fortunately, I found that documentary so disturbing that it's permanently scared me away from doing drugs now.

That I would grow up to become a normal, boring person living a boring toiling slave life like everyone else and that I wouldn't have the balls to either quit the game or try to make my own desires a reality. In the end, I never had a choice, even as abnormal as I might be to the sociable I am still nothing more than one of billions of peons.

Snakes. I'm still absolutely terrified of them.

My mother is similarly terrified of them and one day my father decided he would play a prank. He killed a snake in his garden and put it on a shovel. Then he brought it inside. This was a trailer and outside of windows there was one way in, one way out. My father isn't very bright and chased her into the back bedroom with the shovel containing the dead snake. I came out of my bedroom (the front bredroom) and saw it happening. By this point mother was really freaking out and screaming at the top of her lungs but he just didn't stop. It wasn't until she had thrown several pairs of shoes he had realized that maybe, just maybe things went a little too far. Before that snakes skeeved me out a little bit but afterwards they became fucking terrifying.

A more mundane fear is financial ruin. My parents are both awful with money and always seem to be getting fucked by getting charged double or a bill not going through when they actually paid it. This is a problem I've never had but I still get this persistent feeling financial destruction is right around the corner. Just thinking about it arouses so much fear and frustration.

>>26300
Snakes can be cute

>>26303
>>26300
hiss

>>26300
You should not do that, snakes can still bite even if you cut their head off. You should not go near them until after a day.

I feared ending up alone

I think as a kid I was more carefree and less worrying than I am now. One of my current, recurring fears is that I'll no longer be able to derive enjoyment from watching anime or that I'll gradually lose my emotional attachment to my favorite shows – resulting in only the factual memory that it was something I used to like but which no longer conjures any emotional response. It's for this reason that I'm scared to rewatch shows; those initial pleasant memories might be overwritten by a gaping void of emptiness. I'll also avoid finishing shows that I've started on out of a worry that my environment isn't quite right (e.g. thoughts along the lines of "perhaps I should watch this tomorrow when I'm more awake and receptive" – except that tomorrow slips past into weeks). Similarly I wonder if at some point in the future I'll become "desensitized" to anime (if such a thing is possible) where new material isn't as evergreen as it once was and I'll be stuck mechanically going through the motions of watching shows but not really deriving any comfort from them.

>>26330
Sometimes I worry I'm already at that point, but it really seems to be more that I have higher standards and I still really enjoy something if it is exceptional. I also spent my early days watching lots of seasonal crap, so despite being over a decade watching anime I still have tons of old classics that I just never got around to.

>>26330
For me I'm more worried about general otaku media declining in quality to where even I, with my low standards, won't be able to tolerate it anymore. When that happens I'll have to resort to the series that I have kept on hold for so long but once those are done they're done. To enjoy them again I will have to wait a long time for a dulled effect. When that happens it's all just done.

>>26353
Even if it isn't declining from a qualitative point of view, it's shifted to a different style which I don't like so much as the stuff I got into 15 years ago. This is bound to happen and one of the worst parts of the passage of time: the time period in which you develop most of your preferences, tastes, and beliefs, will never return.

>>26357
I share the same sentiments, I've come to the realization that perhaps it has less to do with degradation in quality but rather a consequence of aging and the shifting of the predominant "fashion". Despite my love for otaku media, perhaps there will come a time where I will no longer be able to relate to it.

>>26330
Some of the things you've mentioned are already happening to me but I don't really worry or fear it as much as you do. I think in relation to the other posts above, ones tastes/preferences/beliefs are an inherent part of one's self and a result of years of painstaking cultivation. Even if one day you might "grow out" of certain things you like it isn't likely to be too drastic and acceptance will come quite naturally. Frankly I wasn't really into anime until about 5 years ago, prior to that I was a manga and video game person and I only mostly enjoyed hard-boiled, male-oriented stuffs and I couldn't stand anything cutesy. Nowadays most of the things I watch are cgdct SoLs. I can also relate to putting off watching certain shows until I'm in a better state of mind to enjoy it.

I've been into anime for more than 20 years and while time ago I feared I could grow up from it, it never happened. I still watch shows every season and I don't think I'm stick to any particular era or style. Some people are really fond of first 00's anime but I'm not particularly nostalgic about it.
What worries me is someday I could become so stressed, anhedonic, numb and mentally fucked I wouldn't be able to enjoy anything at all. I feel like there's some dark force leading me there but I try to resist.

>>26359
Man, I'm jealous. That anhedonia sucked me down right after I turned 19 and I've been there ever since.

>>26360
How old are you? Maybe it's just a phase.
Also I think my childhood helped, I didn't have shit but a black & white TV I could only watch at the evening, I was 14 when I had my first computer and could play videogames and do shit for the first time. So at 20 yo everything was still fresh.
But things are still getting worse year by year. I blame mental degradation caused by social exposition.

>>26361
25 although I can hardly believe it. It feels like the last five years passed in a couple months. I didn't really have access to games or a computer either until I was around 14, but I burnt out pretty quick. I wouldn't say it was that I watched or played a lot of stuff, I just have been tired all the time.

I remember being really afraid of heights despite rarely ever being anywhere very high. I think maybe I used to have dreams where I was falling because I had the idea that falling was the most horrible feeling in the world (where else could I have got this idea?)
Even the drop in rollercoasters was almost too much for me. The feeling of what it's like to fall for a prolonged period made me want to vomit and pass out (and still does).
Also the dark and really any place that felt too exposed and vulnerable to attack.

I always felt in a state of turmoil, never felt stable. I suppose that's why the idea of losing even ground beneath my feet or being somewhere exposed/indefensible/inescapable were my worst fears.

>>26976
Heights are probably my greatest fear. Because you could trip or slip and fall to your death at any moment and also the fact that there is nothing you can do about it once it happens, if you fall from a great height, that is it, you are dead. I feel less frightened being a metre away from a brown snake than a metre away from a tall cliff or ledge.

>>26364
You never know you could legitimately have some health deficiency in addition to whatever else is ailing you.