Interview Transcripts

Transcript 1:

What does fear mean to you, and can you describe how it feels?

Its hard to differentiate between fear and anxiety sometimes. It feels very overwhelming, I get quite jittery, little bit. I guess I just go into myself quite a bit like defences are up, I do put up a wall. 

Is fear always about something tangible?

No, a lot of the time my fears kind of, uh, their like social situations, or me going out and something going wrong. Even though its like, I have no evidence that thats going to happen its just how I feel. So its more just, again its just anxiety. Like anxiety of leaving the house …and then I have to rationalise it in my head to think why do I not want to go outside the house? And I think ah cause theres danger. So yeah.

I mean technically what you’re describing is similar to agoraphobia, which is a phobia. Like I would class those feelings as anxieties but technically its a phobia. 

I think I probably have the mildest version, I think actual agoraphobia is quite .. you know, and you cant leave the house and when you do you start panicking. I don’t start panicking when Im out, things are kinda fine when I’m out but I am quite on edge, so a lot of the time I’m kinda, I don’t know. I’m looking around, double checking everywhere, making sure that no-one has followed me. Holding my keys in my pocket.

How do you think fear evolves and changes from childhood to adulthood? With the growth of rational thinking.

Urm, yeah you grow up, you kind of understand that fears aren't, like when you’re a kid its kinda like oh Im afraid of this and this and like you don’t have as much experience to kinda tell yourself you’re being silly so you believe it a lot more. But then when you’re older you got a lot more experience and you kinda understand that it may be irrational, so you can get yourself past it. You’re not as panicked as you were as a kid but I feel like a lot of the time if you don’t deal with it properly as a kid it can kind of grow to be much worse. I feel like a lot of phobias stem from something that happened to you as a child? So apparently I was afraid of dogs cause when I was a baby umm my parents would drive me to my gran’s and they would have two dogs and as soon as they opened the door they would jump in the car and like start barking and like bark in my face and stuff and I’d cry. And I never liked dogs barks so. But it really, it really pisses me off cause everyones like ‘ooh why you scared’ and I’m like ‘I cant fucking help it’. If I hear a loud noise like that Im going to jump.

Can you describe some more abstract or irrational fears you have?

Uh yeah general fear of leaving the house, its not as bad since I moved back to Leeds but yeah. Doesn’t help that I smoke weed, I think when I smoke weed I cant leave the house. I find it hard if its dark and I’m high, I just wont go out. I just don't see the point. I don’t enjoy the (social) situation anyway, so a lot of the time I’m being forced into it, but yeah, thats a different subject.

Uh yeah also the fear of being cheated on, that kind of thing, but thats just from experience. I guess its, yeah, I guess fears are just, like you're not going to be afraid of something you've never encountered. so, to have a fear, you must have some experience, some negative experience of that. Even if you hadn't noticed maybe. 

When do you believe fear becomes phobia? 

when it affects you so much that you don't, that you cant rationalise it. like not being able to calm yourself down as well. its just like it captures you like you cant really escape it.

Do you put any rituals in place to deal with fears?

Not really, I just don't put myself in situations I feel uncomfortable with. 

Technically that counts

Yeah its premeditate.

What in your opinion is the difference between a healthy fear and an irrational fear? 

A healthy fear is just something that you're afraid of but you can kind of work around? what is a healthy fear? I guess I've never really come into contact with that before. i guess fear always has a negative 

No well a healthy fear would be, say you're being held at gunpoint, the fear of being shot. Something thats very direct, or obvious.

Yeah yeah, that can kill me. 

Evidence tells you that it wont end well.

I guess all fears kind of, you never really have a fear about anything thats not gonna either physically or emotionally harm you. but thats just defining fear. urm, difference between irrational fear and healthy fear, is and irrational fear is something that you've got no real reason to be afraid of. or its something that you could be afraid of but its been blown so far out of proportion in your mind

Yes, or its so far removed from actuality

yeah. then its not really like, rational, or relevant. something that stops you from doing things.

do you experience intrusive thoughts? 

yeah. but its more like watching too much tv and then finding, or doing socially... the only word I can think of is perverted [laughs] ... perverting the course of social normality or whatever. anything that kind goes against the social norm, i find innocently jumps into my head in a situation and I think 'oh it would be funny if you did this', but I wouldn't do it. its not really related to fear. I don't really get any violent thoughts.

doesn't have to be violent, could just be the little voice in the back of your head say when youre up somewhere high that says "jump", but you wouldn't go through with it

yeah I get that when Im up high I get the fear that the glass will shatter or something. I was in my high school building going to guitar or something and I looked out one of the windows and it was really high up and it was just like floor and then a glass window, and i just got really freaked out that the glass would remove. like harry potter or something. I went over tower bridge and they have like, you can like walk over these bits of glass and see directly underneath you. the whole time I was just standing on the steel beams, just in case anything went wrong. theres no way to rationalise it but I would still just stand on the steel beams and not on the glass. or at least close enough for me to hang on to. If I'm in a dangerous situation ill make sure there are precautions Im taking to be as safe as I can be. at least to make sure I survive, not necessarily everyone else [laughs]

do you think intrusive thoughts can be potentially dangerous for people?

yeah people wouldn't understand them, and if they just see them as like... like cause you don't really think about how your thoughts are what you believe. find it hard to differentiate between what you'd actually do and just what you think about. and people think that the stuff that they think about determines who they are as a person. but, it doesn't. its just like a process. a way for you to process everything I guess if you're not thinking bad things then you aren't really thinking about everything. if you're just taking in the good stuff then, I don't know. even like a lot of people just take in the bad stuff and don't appreciate anything good thats happening to them. 

do you think there is an effect of intrusive thoughts on how the person perceives themselves, or how they imagine other people perceive them?

they get quite socially anxious, and they think that people will judge them for these thoughts, and a lot of people do judge people for those thoughts because they feel like what you say is what you mean and what you are able to do, but a lot of the time its not. I got some friends who are like the nicest people, like most harmless people Ive ever met but they will say like the most horrible, violent, disturbing shit ever. like me. I mean I like "The Thick of It" and stuff like that, and like I had a little thing where I would just like shout at people and just swear at them loads, then turn around and laugh to myself and they would be like "oh why you being so weird for". Im just taking the piss, like, but then I get quite self conscience about it immediately after. 

Transcript 2:

So the interview will focus around irrational fears and intrusive thoughts. 

first question, what does fear mean to you, and can you describe how it feels?

So theres kind of, I suppose there would be two different types of fear. One would be anxiety and worry, and stress, which then i think becomes independent of actual rational stress about something. it becomes its own thing where its a mental health problem. where the anxiety takes over, and thats a kind of fear. but then theres also the fear that I get when Im walking in the dark, like in the woods, and thats kind of a fear of danger, or like the idea of scary things being in the dark.

the unknown, maybe?

the unknown, or maybe what I project onto the darkness, so like I know that when I walk through the woods at night. a thought pops into my head, like I get the babadook a lot. and then i have a creature called an "ayesha" (eye- ee- sha) which is something that Ive made up but I get very scared that its around because they're very scary.

circling back, what does fear feel like to you?

well again if we are talking about the two different types, the the anxiety one is like uh, it kind of undermines the confidence, and then it will be kind of like a swiftness of thoughts where, thoughts occur to me too quickly to be able to rationalise them properly. and thats why I think it becomes separate from the actual stress, the ideas whirl around so much that it becomes just an anxiety, and its kind of feverish. the other kind is more urm, I guess sensory where Im in a certain state of like easily startled and my focus changes a lot. erratic. so very, quite erratic, but I think the actual fear is colder and more kind of in the bones. Id associate it with cold more.

is fear always about something tangible?

no, definitely not. I think it kind of for me urm, exists in the gulf between what I can rationalise and what I cant. so in both cases it will be something in between the thought and just my ... yeah something extra to what the thought and the feeling. theres something thats not quite right between those things. the anxiety one will be like there is something I should be dealing with, but then theres this other thing on top of it which is the fear. which is the anxiety. that like, becomes a driving force. 

how have your fears evolved, or even disappeared with the growth of rational thinking? so from childhood to adulthood, whats changed?

certainly urm the anxiety has become more specific to like my future as a human being, and my situation, and I suppose more realistic things that Im worried about. the other kinds of fears have kind of lessened. I was a very afraid child, like I was scared of those machines that grab things and tear their heads off. i was afraid of the dark, anything. fireworks. fire. I'm less afraid of those things now

because you understand now?

not just that, Ive also had to relinquish some of those fears and kind of challenge them.

so would you agree that when you become an adult, because you have more responsibility you're forced to repress certain fears?

I think you've got to ask yourself a question of do i really want to be afraid of this thing anymore? then, if the answer is no, then you have to work on that. but then worrying about bills and stuff, that is a very new thing. and that is fear. and that kind of fear is definitely way more enhanced then when I was a child. I don't think it really existed when I was a child. or it did to some extent probably, I was worried that I wouldn't turn out to be a rockstar. I think then that some people do carry their fears from childhood, their irrational ones, with them. I don't think necessarily when they grow older rational thought can hit everything because there is stuff that works in your head that kind of defies rationality. i think there does come a point where you're super afraid of a certain thing, its challenged through experience and ego. I do think the monster under the bed type thing goes away with age.