What's your strategy for dealing with obsessive fears?

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The fear of using a toilet is something I can actually relate to. It was dream related in my instance. It's also a rather complicated story, so I won't get into details. What it boiled down to was that one of my "fears" (in my case it was a reality expressing itself in a dream) became personified as a creature that was in the toilet waiting for me. I was absolutely terrified of going to the restroom for months after this dream, and would hold it until the last possible second, run into the bathroom, pee and run back out again. I also suffered from constipation during that time period.

I didn't have my mother around to help me and I was uncomfortable in the environment I was in so I had to try to resolve it alone. I wish I had my mother to help me even if she hadn't understood. Sometimes just knowing someone else is aware of what you're going through can help a little.

I would encourage you to honor her fears (as DW_a_mom did with her son) and see if she can draw something about it, write a story about it or talk to you. Try to convince her that getting it out of her head with words and pictures will help her get it out of her head. I think I recall this being something she has had trouble with in the past. A lot of the time, desensitizing yourself will help eliminate the fear. That's what I practice with my son and it has worked really well for us in the past. He's a lot younger than your daughter and a different kid, I'm not sure whether it would work for her but I wanted to offer it again anyway.

Irrational fears are actually a normal part of development. They are irrational to us because we know better. To a child who believes in magic and Santa and the dangers of pop-rocks and cola, very little is known still and many implausible situations seem possible. Our kids are pretty immature too, so while some children go through this much younger ours do at a later age. This makes it seem that much more bizarre.

The first cartoon I can vividly remember making me have an epic panic attack was an eppisode of "Biker Mice from Mars". There may have been others but this is the first I can remember. It was nothing I saw but something I heard that freaked me out. I think this scientist dude stole one of the motorcycles and said to it, "I'll just cut you open and look at your brain." That still sends chills down my spine...even as I type this. I don't know why but that quote tottaly freaked me out and I had panic attacks about it for years and eventualy anything Biker Mice related would drive me into panic attacks. In the first grade, some of the boys at my lunch table had Biker mice lunchboxes. I knew the teachers wouldn't move me to another table without making fun of me and I didn't want anymore stigma. I had to desentiste myself somehow so I tricked myself into liking it and Biker Mice from Mars was a special intrest for a while. Luckily Biker Mice became a special intrest before kids found out it scared me. Even today, Biker Mice from Mars has "creepy" vibe to it.

Another thing that really freaked me out was from the video game for the movie Toys where this elephant head shaped thing would pop up. It was actually a set of binolars and on the other end was a spy and you were supposed to cover up veiwing area on the binoculars so the spy could spy on you. I overheard my brother explaining the game to a friend and his words were that you were supposed to "poke its eyes out". Ever since he said that, whenever the elephant would come in I had a panic attack so bad my mom thought she was going to have to call 911 because I was having a heart attack. It eventualy got so bad we had to give the game away.

Cartoons like Dexter's Lab and Courage the Cowardly Dog were bad as well. Anything with animals expirmented on bothered me no matter how fake or "funny" it was supposed to be. Most of the time the reasons cartoons scared me was because of a reason a regular little kid would be too little to comprehend or something everyone else over looked.

Countess and PunkyKat you make very good points. Perhaps this is due to EF differentials but my daughter can become quite fearful of "normal" things that most NT children can filter the possibilities of something scary actually happening-and therefore she cannot distinguish between what CAN happen and what is LIKELY to happen. So perhaps (like a previous poster) she had a thought of something bad happening regarding the toilet and now she focuses on the thought that it will happen, instead of thinking about the likelihood that it won't happen. And she is very black and white in her thinking so while she doesn't believe in magic or Santa or the Tooth Fairy (I had to explain those realities due to her fear that some creature was coming into her house/room at night which really creeped her out) she does have problems understanding what might be a real danger vs what is highly unlikely to ever happen.

I made an appt for her to see the Dr tomorrow. I will ask them to check her urine to make sure all bodily functions are normal. She has been complaining about a stomach ache a lot (which is not abnormal for her) so I do think it's best to check it out.

I had this fear too, and I believe my mother did as well.

The most bizarre irrational fear I ever had was of using the toilet after seeing the movie "Jaws." That movie petrified me. I was afraid of everything for months.

YES!! Oh my - I was afraid Jaws was going to come through my shower head and eat me! I can relate!

Me too on the Jaws thing. I was afraid to swim in a pool because I was SURE Jaws could come up through the drain.

But the one that really scared me to death was the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I am still freaked by the idea of a headless horseman and I'm 40!

On the subject of sharks and obsessive fears of obscure things I just remembered something. I loved sharks and was never afraid of them...well I was never afraid of live sharks. I felt bad for Jaws and wanted to save him. But at the zoo's aquarium, there was a sculpture of a shark above the tank with the live shark in it that scared the crap out of me. The real shark never bothered me but when they put that sculpture up I would have a meltdown when we came to the area of the aquarium where the sharks were. My mom got mad at me when I had fear induced meltdowns or at least that's how I remember it. My mom told me it was just a sculpture that an artist had made. It wasn't real and couldn't hurt me. I knew it wasn't real when I first saw it but it still scared me. I loved the aquarium in the zoo but they eventualy tore it down to build their stupid Flordia ecology exhbit and manatee house. I think this was what caused the death of my special intrest in manatees and why, why did they need to bulid an exhbit about flordia ecology in the middle of Cincinatti Ohio? But anyway, even though I knew a certain thing couldn't hurt me, it did not stop me from being afraid of it. I was never afraid of real animals and really had no sence of danger but certian innamate and obscure objects made me have panic attacks.

I'm still afraid of swimming when other people aren't close by. The only times I haven't been bothered by it have been when I was on anti-anxiety medication. So I suspect that my generalized anxiety just picks something to latch onto and it sticks. Would be great if I could figure out a way to make it latch onto something I never see.

I was a parent chaperone on a school field trip and a boy couldn't go to the bathroom without his mom because he was afraid of Mulgarath from the Spiderwick Chronicles. He was carrying a plastic baggie full of salt but somehow felt that would not provide sufficient protection.

My daughter took secret pride in never using the school toilet. She wouldn't drink anything with breakfast or lunch because she didn't want to go.

My daughter was terrified of squirrels and pigeons for couple years. In the countryside animals run away from people. In the city, some people feed them so these animals approach eagerly. She hated that.