h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"What is it about touching people that scares you so much?"

Haphephobia patients are a lot different than germaphobes. Sometimes they are mutually exclusive and sometimes they are one in the same. I don't have a fear of germs but I do have an accute distaste for certain sensations.

For me, touching people scares the everliving piss out of me because people are so unclean. They sweat, they have body grease, they have foreign lotions and things on them. I can't stand to apply lotion to my body let alone soap, the idea of somebody else's... skin and fluid... coming into contact with me, even if it is the most innocent fluid like a lotion... it scares me. Shaking hands is something I have to deal with on a daily basis but if somebody's hands isn't impeccably clean and dry then I have to excuse myself and go wash my hands. If somebody bumps their arm into mine in a crowd it sends shivers down my spine. The idea of being caught between two people is enough to send me into a panic until they've walked past me. Who are they? Where have they been? What's on their body? Are they wearing makeup? Do they bathe regularly? Are they, for lack of a better word, clean?

My relations with the opposite sex is kept to a minimum because, quite frankly, I can't stand the exchange of saliva, let alone... you know. If I absolutely, positively cannot control what goes into or on my body it freaks me out. Using public bathrooms, phones, exchanging money, anywhere where humans are or have been and have left *something* behind frightens me. I distaste using them and I absolutely go livid if I cannot wash my hands and face after using any of them.

It is irrational. As an adult, unless you are a germaphobe, you know it is irrational, and that is the worst part. What is there to fear about touching another person? But we are terrified of it nonetheless.

"Do you find actually talking to people and being around them okay?"

Talking to people is fine. I dislike people being very close though, unless they are very close friends. Then the rules are a lot more lax. Then an arm across my shoulder or a hug can be fine with long-sleeved shirts on. It is still somewhat bothersome but it is a lot more tolerable. That is, if I know them to be clean. If not then stay the hell away from me, friend or not.

"Is it just getting close to them that's the problem?"

Sort of. The best way that I can put it is the irrational fear that people have of roaches and mice. Roaches do not carry diseases and are actually clean insects. Mice do carry diseases and rabies but, for the most part, household mice are clean as a whistle. Yet they have the bad rap of being unclean, unsanitary and generally pesky disease-carrying vermin. Should we be afraid of them or should we kill them at every crossing? Not really, but we are.

It's the same with people like me. We don't like people touching us, because society says so we have come to deal with certain common gestures like shaking hands, but the idea of extensive contact or even rubbing elbows can be socially crippling.

"How do you deal with that?"

I have to. It is an irrational fear which gets worse for me slowly but surely. Sometimes I'll begin a relationship with a lady I rather like only to abruptly end it and cough up some lame excuse because even kissing was too much. All I can really do is prevent the bottle from closing up. My fear of heights and spiders lessens the more I experience them. My fear of touching people only grows - with the exception of concerts. This is going to sound like the lamest thing in the world but I suppose that is the healing power of music. For two hours at a time I can take my mind off the ringer and just let my soul be part of everyone else's who is there.

Bump into me, throw me around, push me into the stage, hold onto me, it doesn't matter. At a show I can ignore all of my problems, all of my fears, all of my joys in life and partake in the thing which I love more than anything else in life. The sweat, the beer, sometimes the piss, everything, it doesn't matter while the show is on.

As soon as it is over and I'm out of the club and in my car, though, you can bet my attitude changes and all I can do is jet home, hop in the shower and get the stink of the smoke and the other people off of me and clean up. Ick!

"How long have you felt like this?"

When I was 14 I became very depressed. My mother told me that she read that most people who are depressed just need more hugs. She insisted that everyone around me give me as many hugs as possible. I resented it then and the very thought of that nearly sends me to the grave now.


I hope you found this interesting... I don't really like to talk about it where lots of people can read or hear. Most of my friends hear it from my lips or from a mutual friend but never at a party or a group going out or anything so I wanted to post this off the board... I don't mind talking about it if you have any questions, but in front of lots of other folks...

It's fairly humiliating that, unlike germaphobes, I have absolutely no reason to feel like this.

Have a good one,
Bryce

That's incrediably interesting Bryce, thanks a lot for sharing it all with me. I have a lot of sympathy for you. The reason I was quite so interested is that I have problems with this too, however mine are reasonably infrequent and linked to my depression.

I will very often freak out in train stations...well you can imagine how nasty it might be, and generally out and about and I was wondering how someone who suffers from it all the time deals with it.

Do you feel that you are missing out on something?

Does it get so bad sometimes that the idea that you live in the same world breathing the same air that someone else has breathed already etc scares you? Sorry I might have now put something more into your head!

How do you feel about yourself? Does the way your own body works make you uncomfortable? Is everything in your house incrediably clean too? Do you shower a lot?

Sorry I know I seem to keep coming up with more and more questions...do feel free to tell me to sod off, I won't be offended I promise.

Thanks
Kat

Train stations are just about the nastiest place this side of bus stations. Though on trains you can walk around at least!! I'm going to be holed up on a bus next week for four straight days... eep eep eep. :| Though trains are much longer rides I'd imagine!

I'm glad that yours are at least infrequent. Perhaps one day when your depression has passed they can be even more infrequent... yes? That would be nice I'd imagine.

To answer that question I do feel that I am missing something. I try and pass it off as just being eccentric or it being the downside of a genius mind but I never convince myself. I know it's simply because my head doesn't view things like normal people do, or something isn't connected right. I have obsessions with making sure papers stacked on one another are as even as possible, and I arrange sugar packets in restaurants so that they are properly situated. I loathe having greasy hair or dirty skin and the idea of the digestive tract is scary. I'm a vegetarian because I feel healthier when I only eat veggies (I eat eggs and drink milk though) but I sometimes wonder how much of that is in my head. I also only drink caffeine because of how it makes me feel and how I don't like how my skin seems to want to crawl away from my body when I do. My workspaces are all messy but what I keep clean I am obsessive about. I shower once a day normally, twice a day at most, but I take incredibly hot showers for about half an hour, just letting the water pour over my body. I then turn the water freezing cold. I guess I feel it cleanses me, lets my pores open up and my skin breathe. If that makes sense.

Breathing other people's air has never bothered me, at least not in the traditional germaphobic sense. If someone is close to me then it bothers me, but if someone is coughing or sneezing or smoking around me I tend to just go elsewhere. Not because I'm afraid of getting sick but because all three make the hair on my neck stand on it and my skin crawl. Smoke especially, it makes me feel so icky.

Most of these don't seem related to people but they are. If a fire is smoking it won't bother me, a dog sneezing just makes me laugh. But around other people... and when I have a stuffy nose or a sore throat I practically die. The worst experience I've ever had in my entire life was when I had an allergic reaction to something when I worked at the bank. I broke out with hives. Salt bathes five six seven times a day. It was unbearable. I had to put creams on. It was a death sentence until my doctor gave me steroids for it.

I realize I am rambling now and for that I'm sorry. I find talking to be very cathartic and, well, rarely does anyone ask questions about this aside from "How do you have sex?" which is mostly just annoying to hear.

I do have one question for you though. Is it hard to get under control when you freak out? Is it hard to put it into your head that it's okay, nothing is really wrong, you're just having a mental reaction to something?

For me... it is getting better. I am a generally outgoing person and when something does freak me out it usually takes just a breather to get going again, to at least put it into the back of my mind and go about the day. When I do freak out big though I lock myself away for a week or more at a time. Coming out only for work, staying safe in my room and ignoring the fact that other people exist, only speaking to my friends online or on the phone... these still come from time to time... the last time was triggered by someone speaking to me about all of the germs that currency holds, how many touch it, how people who work certain places are required to sanitize their hands after every checkout because of how many people have handled money... this was while I was at work. The thought of being connected to thousands of people just by touching money made me get off register and shut myself off for the rest of the day...

Rambling again. It is Friday night and there are people to be having fun with so I shall be off... as an aside I've found that drunk people are the worst to be around because they always insist on touching you... hope I didn't talk your ear off. Goodnight

Bryce

Don't worry about rambling. I think you have a very interesting and friendly style and it's made me smile today when nothing else has. Thank you for that.

The bus thing sounds awful! I don't know if my idea is perhaps clouded by the fact I also get horrifically bus-sick though Where are you going? Somewhere exciting?

When I freak out, how I deal with it often depends on how I feel otherwise. I panic and shake, and may end up running through huge crowds of people, sort of deliberately making myself worse until I finally freak out so badly I've run down some random street, am completely lost and exhausted. Other times I'll freeze and start crying and then of course get freaked by myself for all that snot etc. Both those situations are quite extreme and I just have to go home and the day is done for, I won't leave the house at all for two days after that.
Most of the time though I just walk in a very brisk and hostile manner and look like a scary and mean person I find it minimises human contact wonderfully.

Many people find it incrediably bizarre because a lot of the time I'm a very tactile person, well no not PERSONALLY obviously, but I do like to touch things, people etc. This is because I have a VERY poor visual memory. You know those things where you have to imagine you're looking out of a window or something and they want to know, I don't kinow, what colour the curtains are or something? I can't physically do that. I can tell you how the window sill or the glass felt, I can tell you what emotion I felt, I can tell you what I could hear, but I could NOT tell you what I saw. I'm always terrified of being a witness to a crime!

Anyway yes, I'm normally very touchy-feely and it's taken everyone a long time to get used to the idea that sometimes I will be very huggy one day and by the next I can't stand the thought of being on the same side of the room as someone else. My parents still take great offence at it, as do people at school as they aren't aware that there's anything wrong with me or anything. It took my girlfriend an awfully long time to understand because obviously she felt it was something personal that she should be an exception to the rule. Now she understands better but doesn't understand that I do still want to actually TALK to her! My oldest friends tend to just put up with me now though. They're so used to me doing any number of strange things that it's just one more thing to take in their stride. Over the years my depression etc has made me do so many weird things that it's difficult to shock them now

I'm really glad it's getting better for you. I can imagine that it could be one of those things that can get worse and worse if you don't keep rationalising it all in your head and working really hard at it.
I recently restarted school after a two year break of hiding in bed and being around all of those people completely freaked me out and I had to go onto automatic and be really outgoing and full of myself so that I could pretend to myself that it was all fine. Do you ever find yourself doing that?

You know, you should tell me other things about you! I'm not just interested in all of this I promise! Your PS says absolutely nothing about you, whilst mine says loads and loads about me

Kat

Oh, with all things, style comes and goes, doesn't it? You should see how I get when I'm not speaking to someone who I enjoy speaking with about a topic I don't enjoy speaking about. My mood swings are severe.

Regardless, I am glad I've made you smile... I know the value which that can hold. Such a seemingly overlooked little notion... a smile does more for me than a hug, a kiss, an "I love you" or a gift... to smile is to be. Not to be human, not to be happy, just to be. You know? It's magic...

But I digress... you are correct on the bus trip being awful, but sometimes we must brave the wild for the fruit we so love, yes? I can survive the dirty, crowded, stuffy, loud bus to see one of my favorite bands last shows... Rocket From the Crypt... on Halloween!... in San Diego. I live in Texas. A far bus drive but it will be worth it. I'm far from being an overtly sentimental person but when they are gone I know I'm going to have a hard time keeping it together on the bus ride back.

Not to belittle your description but that sounds like it is something right out of the movies... a part best played Julia Roberts before she became a prima donna or Winona Ryder (despite the fact that you may look exactly like or nothing like them! That's Hollywood though, right?). I can picture it in my head. Could build up the scene just from what I have in my head. I guess what I'm trying to say is... I understand exactly what you mean. You've also put it into words which I can picture it, even though I've never experienced it myself. Though I do imagine that it would keep folks away unless you find that one humanitarian soul who wants to help...

And yes I do understand about having no visual memory... I myself have a very poor visual memory but an incredibly detailed imagination and a phonographic memory. Sensations and sounds are my two strong points... emotions, vision, scents, not so strong... the idea of being a witness to a crime is scary one, especially because most people's instinctive reaction to hearing "I don't remember anything..." is to want to shake you and scream "How can you not remember anything!" As if I have a choice. :/

To be quite honest, I'm glad your depression hasn't caused you to shut down completely. Two years in bed is better than a week in total submission to your own guilt and self-loathing. I'm glad you're going back to school, that's fantastic! You'll find the strength to deal with such an atmosphere, and at the very least you can laugh later about making your classmates and teachers jump with fright when you bolt out of a room! If we don't have humor then we don't have much, I suppose...

I do find myself feining normality to fend off the freaking out, though... to be honest yes I do feign being full of myself... being outgoing... my opinions take on a force with which they normally don't... it's a self-defense mechanism for me... to weed out the people who actually want to get to know me from those who are just fairweather friends... As The Who said, "Can you see the real me? Can you? Can you?" The fakery has its problems, though... most of all people buying into it... underneath every caustic exterior is a very weak, soft, and brittle interior which needs love and support just to keep itself going... or so I find. These thoughts jumble around my head quite often, who am I, what am I saying, who are these people, what do my friends think of me... it often makes me wonder if I really know who I am. That sounds a lot more melodramatic than it really is, but some days it's hard not to feel out of your head when you have to live two lives just to get by...

You want to know about me? I always have trouble starting these responses, I always feel so egotistical... Um. My name's Bryce, as you know. I'm 22 (Happy Birthday me, Happy Birthday me, 7 days ago!) and I was born and raised in Dallas, Texas...

I love music. It has saved my life. It is the *one* thing I can count on. As such I play guitar, before that I played drums, and I'm learning to play piano... mostly teaching myself to play piano by taking my knowledge of guitar and theory and applying it... I have incredibly big hands (12 key reach ) so it works... I'm in love with rock and roll... I have been since I was 11. I love all music, quite literally, ranging from choir monks on up to rap... my favorites being rock and roll, blues, jazz, and country from the middle of this century... with all classical being very important to me.

My favorite band is Local H. I wrote the entry here on h2g2 for them. It needs to be updated but I don't have the willpower to go through the update process at the moment... but it is rather complete and thus I am happy... then we have Pink Floyd, Rocket From the Crypt, Oasis, Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana, Soundgarden, a ton of blues... as much as I dislike myspace here is the best place to see my tastes in music and movies and such... http://www.myspace.com/5180412 and http://www.last.fm/user/Met_K/ and that's only what I listen to on my computer... my vinyl and cd collection rival most libraries... it is so cathartic and soothing I find...

I also love movies. I guess I have an infatuation with them. For the longest time I wanted to be a cinematographer. To get the good shots and to make the films that are so beautifully filmed that they go down in the halls of time... how cool would that be? I also want to be a writer but I suppose teenage dreams must come to an end sometime... reading is an incredible way for me to take my mind off the hook because I can so easily be lost in the story... I have a very, very solid, firm picture of what the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy should look like because when I read it, I know what Marvin and Arthur and Slarti and all of them look like, in my head, and I'm not reading the words, I'm imagining them acting out what Douglas Adams has written...

Um... I have very eccentric habits... I'm a bit of a punk. I take delight in punking on others in the old sense of the word, not the new, Ashton Kutcher sense. It causes a lot of pain when I reflect on the things I've done to friend and foe alike because I've stepped over everyone I know... and yet I still have many very close friends... I'm not so sure what they see in a charlatan like me... but then again Orson Welles is my favorite director so I suppose they expect nothing less than a little trickery in me...

I'm an alcoholic. I guess... I'm not so sure... how does one elaborate upon that? The more time goes on the more I depend upon my few passions (music, movies, literature, drinking, and friends) to get me by. I'm a very, very happy person, but my mood swings are severe. That's hard to cope with, as is being so fake sometimes. Trying to put on a front that everything is all right and that you love people. I'd like to think that by the time I hit my early 30s I'll be past all of this, but instead I just see the sarcasm and the cynicism getting a stronger hold on me. I'm not so sure, and I think I'm delving a little too much into philosophy for a "Who are you?" question so I'm sorry, I've run out of things to say for now anyway...

Sorry about the rambling... I normally am much more coherent than this but on subjects such as the phobia and who I am I tend to just ramble to no end waiting for someone to tell me to stop. Your PS does tell quite a bit but you know... I always like hearing/reading it from the person's own lips. If I can trouble you so... who are you?

Have a wonderful day.

Bryce

Heya, I realise that it looks as if I'm answering other threads and ignoring this one. I'm not at all. It's just that I'm at the girlfriend's house for the week and also not feeling very good so I can't concentrate or think about anything very clearly so I'm not really taking care of proper conversations much right now. I'll get back to you as soon as I've got a bit more of a grip though. Sorry about that.

Kat

Some of the best conversations had are those that must wait. I'm a big fan of waiting... I have been ever since I discovered that the best moments in jazz have always come when the note is held a little too long, the chord progression is a little played out and the musicians are struggling to keep it together... and then the crescendo! If we didn't have patients we wouldn't have much at all. Boy, that entire passage sounds pretentious as all get out.

I hope you and your girlfriend are having a fun time! Feel better and take all of the time you'd like.

Bryce

I'm back! If you take a look at my journal you'll see that everything's getting a bit heavy at the moment but I would definitely like to keep my conversation with you alive so here I am.

How was the concert and the dreaded bus ride? I went on the bus for fifteen minutes today and by the end I was ready to scream!

Perhaps you would like to hear the piano pieces I am learning for my next exam...

http://www.geocities.com/happytincbh/allegro_sonatinaEflat_Op19no6.wma

http://www.geocities.com/happytinch/Feelin_Good.wma

http://www.geocities.com/happytinch/Chopin_PreludeBflat.wma

You may have to wait a while between each of them because the data transfer seems to go over my limit after downloading two of them.

Bit tired to say anything much else right now.
Hope you're doing reasonably well?

Kat

I actually did read that entry and was planning on commenting on it tonight before I noticed you had replied to this post. I certainly don't expect you to respond, and things are getting rather shaky on my end at the moment as well. To be honest they're getting downright terrible. I understand how you feel lately, especially with the thoughts that must flash across your mind of "And folks with real problems must surely think I'm melodramatic and depressive."

Believe it or not I'm rather well versed in classical and contemporary music, especially piano and orchestral pieces. Those are some beautiful pieces of work which you will be playing. You'll ace the exam I'm sure.

I'm sorry that school and work are taking such a huge toll on you. Hopefully the drink is alleviating some of the stress and not creating anymore of its own. I'm right there with you in bed most of the time. I find that some days lately I cannot even work up the strength to challenge the day, lying in bed even though I am wide awake. It is amazing how people of all types will address disappointments, fears, and depressions with the same common treatments.

Keep your chin up. I'm not the best at saying supportive things nor do I really have anything to say which isn't cliche but I've got your back as much as someone on this big old web can. I'm rooting for you. I never had anyone to root for me... I always think I'd be a lot better off if I did. So if I can ever say or do anything to help come a knockin'. I guess I'm trying to say that I hope things go well, rah rah rah, but I'm bad with words so...

As far as the bus trip and the concert go I'm going to be writing a journal post about it. The short is... it was incredible. Absolutely amazing. The best (and worst, quite literally) experience of my life. It is leaving me absolutely destroyed, shaken, and depressed however. I saw my second favorite band go off in a blaze of glory, I met one of the most amazing people I've ever met, and now that it's all over I'm completely overcome with fear, with pain, with very accute depression and paranoia about the future, and various other things... but I didn't freak out once... you'd be proud... all the way there I kept hearing my favorite songs again and again and again, closing my eyes and shutting the world out until I met that wonderful person on the bus, and then we talked and talked and talked for hours and hours and hours, we spent the whole day of the show together, spent the show together, then spent the night together in a hotel (not like that, though! as friends), then spent most of the bus ride back...

I was able to function as a normal human being despite it all... it was amazing, I felt so alive... so relieved that when she fell asleep on the bus with her head on the pillow on my lap I could even rest my arm along hers and fall asleep too... I felt... I thought... this is what friendship is, this is what comfort is and human contact is...

And once I got home it all came unraveled and I lost it. I wonder sometimes.

Oh well... short version or not more is to come. My mind has wondered and I feel like I have been me me me in this little post... take care of yourself! Whip school's butt and I know you'll ace that exam... I know your playing is tops... and a whole bunch of other positive energy going from me to you.

See you later,
Bryce

I did forget to mention one thing which kind of paralysed me until Tucson... I was on the bus for no less than three hours when a kid threw up on me. I got up, calmly went to the bathroom, then proceeded to OCD myself to death trying to clean it off of my only pair of pants. Afterwards I calmly went back to my seat and zoned out. It's about this time when I repeated the lyrics to "Tiger Feet Tonight" by the band I was going to see at least a million times in my head.

I'm not sure why I didn't just lose it. Perhaps because I knew that everything on this trip hinged on timing, hinged on everything working out, hinged on getting there and dealing with it. I just couldn't lose it, so I forced myself not to.

Weird though. I dunno... it was nice... to be away. A really breath-taking experience that made me happy to think that I still can be a normal person.

Here's a quick stop in and hello. I hope life is treating you well and that everything is going as best as it possibly can for you!

Take care,
Bryce