Legit fears

I found a list on Pinterest called 30 Things my kids should know about me and think it's a great idea. I'm going to steal some ideas (hopefully that's okay) for blogs posts and some will go in my journal if they wouldn't be interesting to the general public. Please link to your blogs if you answer the same questions or just tell me in the comments. Today's topic is 3 legitimate fears.

#1: I am terrified of the dentist. I get anxious and tend to cry for about two weeks leading up to making an appointment and then two weeks leading up to that appointment. This fear has several contributing factors. The first is that things in my mouth that don't belong there make me dry heave. I can't do mouth guards and had to quit soccer when they started to require them. I can't stand any strong flavors so I can't do flouride or even tooth polish. I can only stand regular Crest toothpaste because all the mint toothpastes out there make me sick and the crest took me many years to tolerate. The second HUGE reason is that when I was a kid, I was freaking out and crying and my dentist told me that if I didn't knock it off I would never see my mom again. You might think that my child's mind exaggerated this but years later I met a new friend and she told me that when she was a child, her dentist told her that if she didn't stop crying he would take her out to the woods and tie her to a tree with itchy ropes and leaves her there. Same dentist! The kicker is that this man had a daughter our age and one younger and they were both total sweethearts. Scarred me for life. Intellectually I know that he was just being a jerk and that no dentist is going to threaten me now but I'm terrified of them anyways. Having their hands in my mouth makes me so sick that I feel wrong for weeks afterwards. Like I've been violated in some way. Yucky.

#2: Big dogs. I have never had a bad experience with a big dog but my older brother got chased or bitten or something when I was young. I think part of my fear is that I can't fight back. The idea of hurting an animal is so abhorent to me that I can't even process the idea of kicking a dog that was biting me. I know that would be the solution but would I just let the thing gnaw on me until someone helped me? That's how I picture it in my head. Plus, teeth dude! Teeth are scary and dogs have sharp ones.

#3: Being dead or injured in some fashion and my younger kids being helpless. I am terrified of a car accident or stroke or something where my kids are alone and can't ask for help. I really need to start training my preschooler to call daddy or to run to the neighbors' houses if she ever needed help. I just don't want to scare her because she's already afraid of silly things and this is such a remote possibility that I don't want her to worry about it needlessly. Sigh! Parenting is full of all these things where you can't go too far but you have to address it and it's so hard to walk that line without screwing up.

I'm sure I could think of many more fears that I have but these are the biggest and the ones that take up the most space in my brain. What are you afraid of? Anything that your intelligent brain tells you is stupid but your primal brain says FLIGHT FLIGHT FLIGHT?