Today, I want to share some of my silly fears - from a tiny snake that startled me in my backyard to my irrational fear of heights.
While I know these fears may seem trivial, they hold a certain power over me that I can’t quite shake off. I also touch on the strange discomfort I feel when faced with annoying noises, a fear that’s fear-adjacent.
What are some of your silly fears?
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Transcripts
Matt Gilhooly:
I'm Matt Gilhooly, and this is the Life Shift. Candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever. Hello, my friends.
Welcome to day 15 of 30 days, 30 episodes of the Life Shift podcast. This is no longer a little experiment. I am now halfway through. Well, when I finish recording this, I'm halfway through the month.
And it really is some kind of, like, weird groundswell of challenge, but also really interesting. And I hope that if you're listening to this, you're getting to know me a little bit more or. I don't know, it's.
It feels really good to be able to share like this. So I don't know if I'll do more of this in the future. I definitely won't do every day, all the time, because that's a lot.
But I am really enjoying this experience. To be honest, the hardest part for me is not the sitting down and recording and editing and releasing and all those pieces.
The hardest part is really determining what is, quote, unquote, interesting enough for me to share each day. And so that's why sometimes it's just. It is what it is and what comes off.
So maybe in the future, as I do this more, or if I do this more, I will have to put a little bit of time into planning what could be valuable for everyone. But for November, just go along with it. Is 30 days. It's a challenge.
It's trying to get me out of my comfort zone and maybe stretch me a little bit and offer the audience a little bit more insight into my crazy brain. Anyway, so day 15 is inspired by last night and this morning.
And what I mean by that is, last night when I was taking Molly out before going to bed, I looked outside on the ground right outside the back door, and there was a snake. And I hate snakes. So today we're going to talk about my silly fears. So first, let me explain that this snake was tiny.
It was probably, like, I don't know, maybe about 10 inches long, but it was so thin. It was like a pencil thin, and it was brown with, like, some tan kind of markings on it and whatnot.
So I don't think it was anything dangerous, but it freaked me out nonetheless. So it was sitting on the step, Molly went out, and it stayed there, and Molly came back in.
And then I went to bed, and I woke up this morning and let Molly out. That snake was still there, but this time it was curled up under where kind of the door hangs over the outside.
And so it was just sitting there and probably sleeping I guess snakes must sleep, right? And I panicked. So she went outside. I closed the door real quick and I'm like, oh, crap.
While the dog's outside, she needs to come back in, so I'm going to open it again. And then the snake started coming inside. So I was scared. Just going to be honest, I was scared. So I jumped back, probably like five, six, seven feet.
And I screamed. I did. It was like 7:30 in the morning. Definitely screamed over this little tiny snake.
Luckily, I think my scream or movement scared it and it went back outside. And who knows where it is now? As long as it's not inside, I don't really care. I just don't like snakes.
So I guess maybe I'm just kind of like Indiana Jones.
Because when I remember when I was a kid watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, when they're in that palace and they're sitting down to eat and they've got like the monkey brains and the eyeball soup, totally fine with those. But when they brought out that snake and then they cut open that snake and all the little snakes came out, I was done. That's too much.
So one of my big fears is snakes. I just. They're so gross to me. I know some people love them.
And I was talking to my friend Olivia at work today, and she loves figuring out what type of snake it was. Was. And so she kept sending me all these pictures.
And then I started to like, get a little nauseous and, and panic as she was sending these pictures, which just sounds so silly. I'm 43 years old. I shouldn't be afraid of snakes. But I'm sure that other people that are listening have fears that are kind of.
They're not able to explain why. Another fear that I have, and it's a little bit. I guess it's probably common, but it's a fear of heights. But it's not fear of all heights.
It's fear of any height that I feel like I could fall from. So, like, I'm not afraid of going on an airplane. I'm not afraid of going on a roller coaster.
Although at this age, my head rattles around and I can do one roller coaster and then I'm done for like two weeks, knocked out. So I'm not afraid of those kind of heights if it's enclosed, like an indoor.
Like if you go to the Freedom Tower in New York City and they have that big glass window and you can look out and you can walk right up, not too afraid of that. But, like, I Went on the top of the Empire State Building and we went out to the edge last year.
And as I get closer to railings or the walls that kind of protect you from falling over, I do get a little bit panicked. And it's silly because those walls are like 10, 15ft tall.
I don't know, they're, they're taller than I am and really I'd have to climb to be able to fall over the edge. But my brain immediately goes to like, well, if I walk this way and then what if I trip?
And then somehow when I trip, I fly up, go over the wall or the railing or whatever it may be. So that's another big fear of mine. I don't know where it came from. I don't know why. I don't know anyone that's like, had a dangerous fall like that.
And weirdly, I'm not really afraid of like being on a roof or being on a ladder. Those really don't scare me. But really high heights, I guess I envision what that fall might be like and what the landing might be like.
So snakes and height that I could fall off of are big fears of mine. Trying to think if I have any others that are just like totally off the wall. I guess, like big bugs and stuff like that. I don't want them near me.
I don't know that I'm afraid of them like I am of snakes or heights. But one thing that drives me crazy, which isn't quite a fear, but as I've gotten older, this is going to make me sound really old.
But as I've gotten older, these like constant noises kind of bother me.
So I've looked it up and I guess it's like misophonia or something like that, which sounds phony, but when think about it like when other people are like chewing really loudly and it's like this constant like annoying noise or this beeping that won't stop. One thing that used to drive me crazy is as a teacher for over 15 years in higher education, I taught a lot online.
And a lot of these classes that I taught, students had to submit videos. And so they would record, you know, 3, 5 minute, 10 minute videos, whatever they were for the particular assignments.
And no lie, like at least a handful of students in every class that had to do those videos had the smoke alarm beeping behind them in their videos. And I, as soon as I hear that, I can't hear anything else. It's just like everything washes away. And that's the only sound I hear.
And I think, how could the person lived there?
Like, as soon as they go off in my house, it's like an instant panic to figure out where that smoke detector is and how quickly I can change the battery so that I don't have to hear that noise. So that's a. Like a. A fear adjacent is that I fear the panic that I have when I hear these. These noises that kind of grate into my head.
So another weird thing for you. So there is today's day 15. Two of my fears. Definitely snakes, probably just as bad as fictional character Indiana Jones.
And heights that I can fall from, and mostly heights that I can fall from and would likely die from, although I'm not afraid of dying, but I am afraid of dying in that way. So I guess that's another thing to add to that little fear of heights.
So I'm sure we could go down a whole rabbit hole of ways to die and ordering the ways. That would be the most terrible to me. But I think I'm gonna save that and not talk about something super crazy depressing on a Friday afternoon.
So this is day 15 of 30 days, 30 episodes of the Life Shift podcast bonus series. I have more awesome episodes with guests coming out every Tuesday.
I've recorded enough to get us through close to the end of January now, so lots to come.
Next week is going to be one about overcoming addiction after a great loss of a loved one and all the things that it triggered and how much they miss this particular vice. And it's a really interesting conversation.
So I hope you tune in on Tuesday, but before then, I will be back Saturday, Sunday, Monday with a daily episode, and who knows what I'm going to talk about? So until tomorrow, have a wonderful day, have a wonderful evening, do something nice for yourself, and I will see you tomorrow for day 16.
For more information, please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com.
