Ligyrophobia
Fear is an incredible emotion. Fear of failure can motivate someone to success just as easily as it can prevent someone from ever trying. It can freeze even the bravest in their tracks. It has also been the root cause from some of the greatest atrocities in human history.
Everyone has a fear of something. Some people don’t like snakes or spiders, for example. In most cases, fear can be reduced by education. If someone doesn’t like snakes, exposure to snakes and learning about them can often times get rid of that fear. Given enough time, they will see that a snake is just an animal like anything else and all they want to do is eat, sleep and survive. There is nothing inherently evil about them or their nature. The same goes for most other creatures we’re afraid of.
Except clowns. Clowns are always evil. No exceptions.
There is a certain point, however, where a fear is so extreme that it is referred to as “irrational”. There is no amount of education or reasoning that will truly get rid of that irrational fear. People will recoil is absolute and unfathomable terror at the sight of their tormentor. Something as simple as a roach or a dirty counter top, which is completely mundane to most of us, is the stuff of nightmares to someone with an irrational fear.
The technical term for those fears is, of course, a phobia.
The term phobia is thrown around a lot these days and it’s often used in the same vein as “literally” or “OCD”. How often have you heard someone say something like “When I saw Susan there I literally died”? Not to jump on the bandwagon but using the term literally when you mean figuratively makes me want to literally beat my head on a desk until I’m stupid enough not to care anymore.
But I digress.
If you don’t like spiders, you don’t like spiders. If the sight of a single spider puts you into such a hysteria that you would rather burn your house down than confront the spider even if it’s to spray it with bug spray, that’s a phobia. The distinction is important.
To someone who doesn’t have a true phobia, the fear makes no sense. They look at it as “just a spider” or “just a little dirt”. There is no way for a person to understand that crippling horror and, on the other side, there is no way for the person with the phobia to truly explain why they’re so scared of the subject.
All of that was to clarify where I’m coming from when I say this: I have a phobia and, taking that phobia into account, I am a complete and utter moron for taking up this particular hobby.
I am terrified of loud noises. The louder they are, the worse I am. Some noises, can even put me into full on panic attacks. The technical term is “ligyrophobia” and in my **cough** years on this planet, I’ve learned to cope with it and to hide it as best as I can. I’m also convinced that the stress from it has shortened my life a bit. At the very least, it’s definitely made some things quite difficult.
Theme park rides, for example, are hit or miss for me. I rather enjoy theme parks and many of the rides but every now and then I find myself on a ride that has me regretting my whole trip. A perfect example is a ride I went on a few years ago at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. The ride was called “Dinosaur!”. It was hell. I won’t waste time going into detail as this is already a bit longer than I wanted it to be before getting to my ultimate point but still, the noises on that ride had me shaken up for the rest of the day and it took a long time for me to calm down. I noticed that my heart rate sped up a bit as I was typing about it, if that’s any indicator.
So the fact that I enjoy shooting is a bit of a mystery.
Aside from the situation where I needed a gun, I kept up the hobby out of the thought that it would help me to get over my fear of the noise. In a way, it has and it hasn’t. In the past, whenever I would arrive at a gun range, the first couple of shots I heard would put me into a near panic attack. I can’t describe to you how horrific the sound is to me. The muscles on the back of my neck tighten up, my legs become shaky and my heart rate goes through the roof. After a few years of shooting, my heart rate still climbs but my panic has subsided. I don’t have the uncontrollable urge to run away when I go to a range.
My hands still shake like crazy with a pistol and I have the damnedest time keeping a tight group. In many ways, it’s disappointing as hell because I don’t shoot my pistol as well as I’d like to. It’s still a more than acceptable level, in the grand scheme of things, mind you. The way I see it, with all the stress I go through to shoot in a “calm” practice environment has, in some ways, helped prepare me for a time when my life depends on it. When you think about it, I kind of know how to shoot with adrenaline and fight or flight response in full swing. For someone who’s never dealt with a phobia, they’re probably thinking “yeah right, a bit of noise doesn’t prepare you for defense”. For me, it’s not just a bit of noise: It’s the audio equivalent of a knife to the throat. I don’t think anyone is ever truly prepared for a defensive scenario, but I think knowing how I react in a fight or flight helps in some way.
I’ve also found that rifles and shotguns are far more manageable for me. The human mind is a strange thing and most of how it works makes no sense at all. In this case, I’m guessing there’s something about the recoil and the sound profile of them that doesn’t bother me as much. I still hate the noise and I still have to do a lot of deep breathing to calm myself down before I start to shoot. My hands don’t shake, however. I can hold the rifle or shotgun still long enough to get an accurate shot.
So what does all this ultimately lead to? It’s very important to know where your weakness is. Once you know that, you can either work to strengthen it or work around it. I’m not going to fool myself: pistols will probably always be difficult for me. I will continue to work on them but, in finding out that I’m better with rifles and shotguns, that allows me to focus on what I’m better at and improve those skills rather than push a rock up a hill. In the meantime, don’t hold your breath to see me competing in any 3-Gun competitions.
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