![]() I would rather eat my own head than dive to the bottom of that cold, cold lake in Scotland and make eye contact with the Loch Ness Monster. I would lose control of excretory functions if I were to be standing in a rowboat at the exact moment a sperm whale grazes underneath it. I can think of few things more troubling than standing in shallow clear water and looking straight down the bottomless yawning chasm of an ocean sinkhole. I don’t care that whale sharks only eat tiny plants-I don’t want to share the water with a living creature the size of a city bus, thank you very much. My butthole clenches at the idea of snorkeling a few hundred yards out from the shoreline, only to look down and see a forty-foot whale shark headed straight toward me. All those creatures that I can’t see but that are staring at me right now, I just know they are. I get almost green with nausea at the thought of standing on a small coral reef and looking down over at a sheer 4,000-foot drop to the ocean floor. All of the fears I described in the first few paragraphs? I got ‘em all-and more!… I have thalassophobia like nobody’s business. I have a confession to make-I have a SEVERE form. In fact, over half of all adults are thought to have some form of thalassophobia. ![]() The ocean might as well be another planet and human beings have never explored most of it, so that is naturally scary. Let’s face it-aquaphobia and hydrophobia are crazy, but not thalassophobia. Hydrophobia is a basic fear of water itself and can be so intense that people are terrified of drinking any form of liquid. It is different from aquaphobia, which is a fear of flooding and all bodies of water, even a bathtub’s worth. “Thalassophobia” comes from the Greek words thalassa (sea) and phobos (fear), and it generally refers to a deep, irrational fear of the ocean’s vastness and what may lurk deep within it. If you answered “Yes” to any or all of these questions, you might suffer from thalassophobia. Have you ever had a nightmare where you’re standing on a beach minding your own business, when suddenly you look up and realize a hundred-foot tidal wave is cresting right over your head?ĭoes the thought of being surrounded by sharks and whales and giant squid and giant jellyfish and all sorts of ugly crabs and eels and glow-in-the-dark deep-sea monsters all adrift in an endless black watery expanse have you clutching your blankets and screaming out for your mommy? By Jerome London Updated FebruDoes this picture scare the hell out of you?ĭo you get a morbid sense of dread deep in the pit of your stomach when you think about how vast…and deep…and dark…the ocean is?
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