Does anyone else have irrational fears?

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I have an irrational fear of bugs. All bugs. I'm literally paralyzed if one comes near me. Anyone else experience this? Is it an aspie thing to have irrational fears?

I have an irrational fear of traveling far distances from wherever my current location is and traveling in unfamiliar places by myself. In these situations I start to have racing thoughts of never finding my way home.

I have an irrational fear of thunderstorms; they absolutely terrify me.

Thanatophobia, arachnophobia and carcinophobia. Though I feel they are perfectly rational, others think I'm far too concerned about the phobias.

Vomiting - I am terrified by the thought of myself vomiting. The last time that someone at my house vomited, I became so overwhelmed that I collapsed on the ground and couldn't move. I think that the moment this phobia began was when I was 11 years old and had a bad case of the stomach flu, and I vomited so often that I wound up dry-heaving. Dry-heaving was one of the most painful things I have ever experienced. This fear was once the driving force behind a severe bout of OCD. Medication has eliminated the OCD, but the fear still lingers.

Heights - According to my mom, I've always been afraid of heights, which usually manifests itself as a fear of falling down flights of stairs. Whenever we've lived in houses with staircases, I always go up the stairs on all fours and "butt-scoot" down the stairs. When I can't do this because I'm in public, I cling to the railing and navigate the stairs sideways. My fear of heights also manifests itself as an inability to approach railings and anywhere else where you can see the ground from an elevated place. See-through elevators would be a nightmare for me.

Choking - Ever since I was a baby, I have had a lot of choking incidents throughout my life, possibly more than most people. It's difficult for me to chew my food properly, which I partially blame on having my wisdom teeth removed since I don't have as much feeling in the back of my mouth as I used to. This leads to me swallowing chunks of unchewed food at every meal, which really disturbs me.

To make eating easier, there are certain foods that I refuse to eat after having deemed them too high of a risk of swallowing whole chunks, such as steak, snap peas, pretzels, and chips (crisps - UK), among other things depending on how they're prepared - for example, fresh bell peppers are much chunkier than steamed ones. I also spit out mouthfuls of food into napkins if I accidentally take too big of a bite or part of it feels "unchewable".

I also constantly worry about my prescription pills getting stuck in my throat, particularly at night, so I down two glasses of water whenever I take my nightly medication. I used to drink more than that, but I started bedwetting so I've had to cut down.

While my vomiting and heights fears aren't that hard to cope with, my fear of choking is obviously having a negative impact on my life. My brother thinks that I should go to therapy for it, but I am absolutely terrified of doing exposure therapy.

witches

I'm terrified of doing something illegal by accident. I will check and check and check to make sure nothing I have ever done in life is illegal.

I'm also scared f fire and will unplug everything before leaving the house.

I'm irrationally afraid of someone breaking and entering in and stealing stuff too. I compulsively hide things for this reason.

I have a fear of decaying animal matter, including meat and dead insects. That is to say, I don't have a problem with leather... only the guts and flesh... the parts that can rot.

I'm seriously considering getting some professional help because it's ruining my life.

Seeing teeth in smiles, and smiles in general, creep me out, and can make me feel fear.

In some situations I feel no fear when I should be feeling it - such as when walking around my house the other day, turning the corner, and being about 15 feet from a large grizzly bear. No spike in heartbeat or anything, no feeling of "OH **** A BEAR". It was as if I had turned the corner and seen a neighborhood dog or cat. I didn't immediately think to get away and inside - I saw it, then I was looking at it for a little bit, and it didn't really click "bear = danger". I just saw it and thought (nonverbally) "oh, a bear, cool". It was eating my neighbor's trash. Then a few moments later I thought to go back inside for my own safety.

I also have no fear of spiders - although there are no poisonous ones up here. I will often pick them up, and let them walk around my hand and such - usually with daddy longlegs type spiders. I will do this with other bugs, too, depending on what it is. Some bugs just completely creep me out, though.

Do it. A phobia is one of the easiest things to un-learn. You just gradually expose yourself to what you fear, never going beyond "mildly anxious", and before you know it you can deal with it. It's not like you're ever going to be comfortable, but you won't be paralyzed with fear when you encounter it.

Anyway, yeah, I used to be ridiculously scared of dead bodies, into my early twenties. I ended up being able to solve this myself because I knew what a weakness it would be if I ever had to help out during a major disaster. I used the same sort of gradual exposure that psychologists use when they help people with phobias, and eventually I successfully completed an anatomy class required for my major, wherein we had the opportunity to study anatomy from cadavers. At this point, I can deal with it if I have to, and won't be frozen or panicked if I encounter a dead body... at least no more than anybody else would be. I hope I never do, but there's no guarantee, especially since I'm a red cross volunteer and might one day have to deal with that sort of thing (though, Lord willing, there will never be a disaster big enough that non-professionals like me would be in any environment worse than the kitchen of a chaotic but reasonably run shelter...).

I really want to see the top of a tall skyscraper but I have a minor fear of heights. Well, not a fear of heights but a fear of falling from heights.

That reminds me - I also have a fear of heights. Nothing too overboard about it, though.

I wonder if most people have a fear of falling/ fear of heights? When we are faced with the possibility of falling from a tremendous height, it's only natural to feel a bit queasy/ scared, since that's our survival instincts keeping us from falling/ jumping off. If someone wasn't scared of jumping off the roof of a 10 story building, they would probably do exactly that.
It definitely is not an irrational fear, it's a necessary fear.

My only irrational fear is worms, I am petrified of them for no apparent reason.
I like all other bugs, and absolutely love slugs, but worms are just euuck!
Because of that fear I can't walk across large fields, or even going out when it's raining/ after a rainfall.

''Is it an Aspie thing to have irrational fears?'' People who ask that stupid question can't have met an NT before because everybody on this planet has irrational fears, even the toughest of people do.

I have severe Claustrophobia.

I don't know how long I've had it or how I first got it, but it means:

No crowded elevators or cars.
No small areas, especially an environment where I would have to crawl through or squeeze myself to enter.
I don't know if this is related, but I also won't put my head underwater. (The shower is acceptable)

Most of my fears are based on social anxiety. Like I don't have Agoraphobia as such, I just sometimes get reluctant to go out of the house because I don't want to face people and I become more self-conscious than usual and so I find I just close the front door again and hide away. I sometimes feel I can't even go and sit in my garden because people might walk by and look in at me (which people do), and so I feel like that invades my privacy, since my garden is part of my home. When I've read up about Agoraphobia, I didn't quite fit the description, since I'm not afraid of open places.
Also I find I get claustrophobic with people more, not just in general. That is why I avoid getting buses in late-morning, because hoards of people tend to pile on and there is no room to sit, and I feel worse if I have to stand with loads of other people standing around me, and people are getting on and off so you got to keep moving out of their way to let them squeeze pass.

But my fears are the following (not sure if they are irrational or not):

Fire
Snow
Being sick
Humiliation
Spiders
Death (of myself or other people/animals/even insects)