Childhood Fear Flashbacks

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For the past month or so, I've been having flashbacks about my childhood fear: a chandelier in hall of my family's condo at the time. The post is kind of long, but it's very important to me. So bear with me, and if you can, offer some advice.

That chandelier was the bane of my existence. I was terrified of it. It looked like a glass barrel with light bulbs inside and steel decorations around it. What made it even worse is that I had to walk past it to get from one room to another. When the hall was dark, I'd run through it, looking down at the floor, just so I wouldn't have to see that thing. During the day, it was more bearable, although I still averted my eyes. About once a week, I had nightmares about it. I remember these: that it became huge and threatening, that it was spinning around and howling, or that it was in every room. Now, imagine living like that for almost ten (long nasty) years.

At age 10, my family moved out of that condo, and into a house, where there were no chandeliers whatsoever. The closest things were ball-shaped light fixtures in the kitchen and the bathroom. The hall had recessed square ceiling lights. None of them had any effect on me whatsoever. I lived there for a long time, until I moved into my own apartment about a year ago. During that time, I remembered what the chandelier looked like, but didn't think about it very much.

For the last month or so, I've been having flashbacks about the chandelier from time to time. I'd be sitting in my apartment watching TV, reading a book, or browsing WP, when all of a sudden, I'd have gripping fear come over me, just like it did when I saw the chandelier as a child. I'd start feeling afraid of noises inside the apartment building, which normally don't bother me. During more severe flashbacks, I'd be even scared to enter a dark room, so I'd run and turn on lights everywhere in the apartment. One time, I even grabbed my keys and ran outside to the parking lot. When the flashback goes away, so do all the feelings of fear, like they never happened.

Luckily, most flashbacks haven't been very severe and went away quickly, so I was able to deal with them by having a cigarette, playing music on my stereo, or watching porn; basically, stuff I couldn't do as a kid. But I cringe when I look back and think about how I lived like that for ten years. So has anyone else here had flashbacks about a childhood fear that took place more than a decade earlier? (I'm sure my chandelier story isn't unique here on WP.) How did you deal with them? Could it be PTSD? And if you don't mind sharing, what was the object you feared?

sounds like PTSD/Panic attacks Aspie1, I had the same problem, it wasn't on a specific object I feared but I gone though hell in my life, i have nightmares/flashbacks of killing (ripping peoples head off) those who made my life miserable and for some odd one of sex related dreams (that aren't bad but there hardcore... and wake me up in sweat, probably i have them cause i never had a girl friend or had sex. I also have nightmares of my old job (grocery industry) which i hated...

Fear of a chandelier? I've never heard that one before.

Anyway, I had a severe phobia of vomiting as a child. For most of the time I've been on medication (three years), I haven't thought about it much at all. But earlier this spring, my family members came down with the stomach flu and vomited a few times, and ever since then the fear has returned. For example, every time my niece or nephew wake up in the middle of the night, I become afraid that they're crying because they vomited. Also, I have really bad PMS and I'm prone to stomach cramps, so every time I get a stomach cramp I become afraid of vomiting even though I don't feel nauseated when it happens.

Argh, sorry for the long post.

Maggots and vomit and humans. The only object that I had fear of is a flushing toilet(I still forget to flush and have to force myself to do it and leave quickly. None of them have given me PTSD except human angery faces.

/shrug. I don't know what to tell you about chandelier ophobia, except
NEVER SEE THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.

My two phobias are pretty strong and debilitating: fear of spoiled food and fear of spiders in the bathroom. I have to clean the rims around the toilet and adjacent fixtures to check for spiders before I can actually do anything. And my mom poured me a glass of bad milk once when I was little... and I drank it... and so now I'm frightened of any food that seems remotely odd. Between my only two paranoias, I've often gone hungry and/or backed up. But on the plus side, I've given the ninjas a lot less opportunities to get me. I checkz for traps.

Just avoid opera houses, presidential dining locations, and that light fixture shop. You know the one.

Bold part: This sounds like something my uncle has. Except he has to check if the lights are off several times and whether the door is locked several times over. I don't know what he is afraid of exactly, but it is something odd that we noticed when we last visited him in '89.

Right now, to answer your question, I don't know if I have any of that. I know I have these terrors of being struck (baseball, baseball bat, door, fist, anything really), where I will flinch usually in my sleep. These occured in my childhood, though they don't happen like they did when I was 4-10 years old.

Your description of the chandelier makes me think of being abducted by aliens. or coming awake during a surgery.laying paralyzed on the table with the over head lights shinning in your eyes. Could either of those things happened to you when you were younger and then chadelier maybe triggers that memory???( I know that sounds weird but....just poppped into my head while visualizing your description of the object.

Elegant crystal chandeliers weren't a problem for me. My elementary school had numerous field trips to see live theater performances, there were chandeliers, and I was fine. It's the one in my home, with metal decorations around a glass barrel that scared the bejeezus out of me. So it's probably not all chandeliers, just something about the shape of some of them.

You might be on to something. When I was really little, I once had a nightmare about lying on a table, and there was something huge made of metal on the ceiling. So maybe that's what's triggered a decade-long fear/phobia. For most of my childhood, any metal ceiling fixtures made me uneasy. Interestingly, ceiling fans never bothered me, not even slightly.

Have you ever watched any of those old abduction movies from the 80's? I can't remember the names of them, but the item you described sounded so much like the lighting over the exam tables in the space ships. They have also recently found out that some people come a little bit out of the anathesia...like a form of sleep paralysis...they can hear,see,feel but are unable to move and block out the memory(store it in the unconcious)...One hypotheis of alien abduction is people having a bleed through memory of this.(I don't think it explains all abduction memories but might account for some)

I found this posting while searching for answers for my phobia which I've had since I was 5 years old -- my phobia is of chandeliers. I've been trying to research this for so long, but nothing ever comes up. I've mentioned it my my therapist, as well as my psychology professors, and they find my phobia very odd. I've considered even being hypnotized (though it can be expensive) to rid of this phobia. It really effects my life. Certain buildings, restaurants that I can't go into. Some movies that I cannot see. Most recently I saw the latest Harry Potter movie. Dobby unravels a chandelier in it to kill someone. I ran out of the theater, and couldn't sleep the whole night when I got home. I know this is weird, but I can't help it. I've tried so hard to overcome it by myself, by forcing myself to go into buildings with chandeliers, but I just can't do it. I always chicken out. My phobia is not as severe as it was when I was a child, though. I couldn't go into the light fixture isle at hardware stores, such as Lowe's, but now I can. Small chandeliers do not frighten me as much, but I still don't want to be near them. It's the large ones now, and glass chandeliers, and especially antler chandeliers. If anyone who is reading this suffers from this phobia/fear, I'd love to hear from you.

As far as chandeliers and ceiling fans are concerned, my biggest fear was that they would eventually drop from the ceiling and crash and kill me. I was visiting my grandma for a weekend and you can bet it wasnt easy for me to sleep in her guest room with a ceiling fan going right above me!

Even today living at my parents I still have a fear of someone breaking into my house (less my room) in the middle of the night. Embarrassing as it was, the first week I spent in my very first single apartment in college was spent with my recliner leaning against the door at night.

And when I was much younger my earliest fears were house fire and toy soldiers coming to life and attacking me. Yeah...

But I think the worse was maybe when I was twelve and my dad showed me that silent film Metropolis. For the next few years I would become terrified of silent films to such a degree that I had to sleep with my portable TV on silent by my side.

And of course, there's also the general fear of rape and getting killed that I have to this day...and my fear of killing someone while driving.

Man I understand what u went through.I'm freaked out by chandeliers and sometimes ceiling fans.I always think that one is gonna fall on me if i walk underneath it.Whenever I have to pass one I move out of the way so I don't pass under the chandelier.And I think I may have seen a chandelier much like the one your describing.It's in my friend's house.And honestly, I'm kinda afraid to go underneath it.And that sucks cause I can't get to my friend's room.And it's a pretty narrow hallway.And the ceiling fans,well,I sometimes have dreams of them breaking and falling off the ceiling and almost landing on me.Same goes for chandeliers.A few days ago I dreamt that I was in an abandoned house with chandeliers in every room and hallway.That was probably the worst night I experienced.sorry if I went off topic.

Wow, looks like my thread from 2008 resurfaced all the way in 2011. But I started it for a reason, and the fear did affect my whole childhood, so might as well revive it. The flashbacks were gone years ago, after I found a way of nipping them in the bud. As soon as I felt one coming on, I'd break the childhood connection by doing something I couldn't do back then: having a beer or a shot of vodka, smoking a cigarette, or looking at porn.

And yet, even though all traces of the fear of chandeliers, or ceiling light fixtures in general, are long gone, the memories still remain. (Come to think of it, when I was a kid, I referred to any ceiling-mounted light source except a ceiling fan, from a small, featureless ball to a massive brass or crystal fixture, as a "chandelier". This usage still persists in my family to this day.) My fear had absolutely nothing to do with chandeliers falling (when I saw in on TV, I'd laugh); I was afraid of how some of them looked, and the fear or lack thereof was pretty arbitrary. Ironically, I had absolutely no fear of ceiling fans, liked to look at them, and even thought they were cool. What makes my fear even more bizarre is that I was only minimally afraid of the lighting section in a hardware store and other public places, but very much afraid of a chandelier in my own home.

KevinLevin14, your nightmare sounds very similar to mine, so it's not off-topic at all. I had one just like yours, except it was set in my own home, with the details matching down to the upholstery pattern on the sofa. It was very early morning, the same scary chandelier was in every room, and none of the light switches were working. Other nightmares had something like the chandelier being ten times larger, with spikes coming out of it, and spinning around and making howling noises. The detailed vividness of those dreams made them very hard to cope with, as opposed to something outlandish, like a monster chasing me (I never had monster dreams, for some reason). During the rare occasions there were other people in my present, they were no help; they either told me there was nothing wrong or taunted "look at it!".

Well Aspie1 usually those gigantic chandeliers that look like domes don't scare me at all since they don't swing around.The chandeliers that hang from a chain are the ones I'm scared of.Last week I went to a meeting with my school to a hospital and when I entered the meeting room I froze with fear.There were chandeliers all over the ceiling.Everyone else walked in but I just stood by the door.My teacher asked why I wouldn't come in and sit down.I replied "I just have a problem with chandeliers,don't worry about it".He said that's no excuse to come in and be part of the meeting.So I was forced to sit in a room full of chandeliers for 3 nightmarish hours.