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Fear of balloons
Since I remember myself I was afraid of balloons. I can't stand the sound they do when they pop. I totally freak out and start sweating and shaking when something like that happens.(The same happens with fireworks, too) I'm not afraid of the balloon as an object but I can't be near them because I think they will pop anytime. This ruins my life. I can't go at parties etc. I need your advice about how to overcome it. I tried doing it myself but after a balloon popped in my face I don't want to blow them up again. I went to a pshygologist,too. It didn't help, cause i didn't like her way. Please help!! (PS I'm from Greece)
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There are tons of different phobias out there. This is no different as that it is exactly what you are dealing with.
From my own personal struggles and search for answers, I can only make three suggestions. The first one is to give it a try with another therapist.
Secondly, and likely what a therapist may recommend, I would consider trying a form of Cognitive Behavior Therapy. One that is proven to have good results for many people is called ERP or Exposure and Response Therapy.
As a last resort, or possibly in conjunction with ERP or visits to a therapist, you can try to look into hypnosis. There are some methods you can find to do it yourself or you can seek out a professional for this as well.
I am confident that over time you can overcome this or at least learn to cope with your phobia in a manner that limits its impact on your life.
Good luck.
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I can completely understand what you are feeling. As a mom who threw big birthday themed parties for my daughters, I had plenty of balloon blowing to do. And after a couple blowing up in my face, I tended to become quite anxious feeling myself when blowing them up and would never fill them quite to tightly full anymore. As an adult, I realized it was my subconscious mind reacting to it. Our subconscious mind is what runs in the background, always concerned with what would be the utmost best for us. It keeps us taking our next breath and blinking our eyes without having to give it a conscious thought. So on the subconscious level it is looking for things you find unpleasant and trying to steer you away from anything that brought up negative emotions of being scared, angry, sad, all in wanting to protect you. Your sub con. mind will continue to act this way until you take the steps that rainhorse mentioned.
My opinion is that some sounds are just too loud for my ears and when certain sounds set my ears ringing or give me a headache. It is natural and actually quite a smart thing to do ones best to avoid extremely loud noisesin some cases so that over a prolonged amount of time there is no hearing damage to the ears. These is why those training in target practice with firearms wear protective ear covers because the loud report of the guns are way more loud than balloons and also close to the ears.
What you could try to do is something I did with the kids after a party to get rid of all the balloons, stomp on them til they burst. You know they will break but the noise is away from your head and ears, still loud but won't hurt. Also, you are doing it on purpose, anticipating the popping, not being caught by surprise.
If I wanted to pop a balloon with a pin, I still had trouble purposely doing that after a couple pops that had my ears ringing and I resorted to using a needle or pin to poke a tine hole into the stem of balloon near where it was knotted or tied with string, enough to let air leak slowly out. After a while of handling balloons like this, I grew less afraid of them popping. I was even able to buy the packages of the long skinny ones that could be twisted into shapes like animals and got them for the kids as a fun summer thing to do and had to show them how, and found it didn't worry me if they popped any longer.
Good luck.
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Very specific (and irrational if you think about them, in that most other people seem OK with the same thing) fears like this are quite common. Probably the best way to overcome them is to face them until the fear is disarmed. Like people with fears of spiders can lose them completely by handling a large (but harmless) spider in the company of an owner. Also, you might notice that military horses that take part in ceremonial displays where the crowd are noisy and even old-style canons are fired seem completely untroubled and perfectly behaved? Their natural tendency would be to bolt. They are introduced to it bit by bit in training until a ceremonial salute of gunfire doesn't worry them in the slightest. So. If you can bring yourself to do it, sit down with a close friend (so it's a controlled and safe-feeling environment), and a bag of balloons. And blow them up and pop them deliberately. It'll be hard at first, true. But with any luck you'll soon be blowing one up yourself, poppoing it with a pin and laughing, not freaking out! It IS incredibly hard to talk and reason yourself out of this kind of fear (often termed 'phobia'). That's because of the place in our minds where they 'live'. It's not a part we can have a direct dialogue with (or 'talk to' if you like). You can say to yourself or hear it said "Balloons aren't dangerous. There's nothing to be frightened of." a million times and it doesn't make any difference. The process we've talked about (actually getting 'hands-on' with the dreaded balloons) gets straight to the root of the thing. I picked the horse thing deliberately. A horse hasn't got any idea what a canon is. You can't tell him in words. It's just a sudden scary bang. But familiarity (basically a whole list of actual experiences of the scary loud bang, which did not turn out to harm him at all) disarms and overrides the fear. Good luck.
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