I keep dreaming about bells

Post Reply New Topic

Since I was about 5 or 6 I've had this really strange fear of bells. Not church bells or those bells you shake or bells on bikes or anything. I mean electric bells that are usually found on the wall in places like schools. Knowing that they are loud and sudden is a factor of this fear, but I fear other loud sounds too but don't have the same intense feelings as I do with bells. Smoke alarms can go off randomly at work, and they are loud and sudden, but when I look at them I don't have this horrible fear like I do with bells. When I see a bell, I literally get a dry mouth, and have the urge to have to get away from it. I felt this way all through school, and was glad when I left school.

But I often have vivid dreams about being somewhere where there are bells that could ring at any moment, and I'm trying to avoid being anywhere near a bell and feeling afraid just by looking at one, but at the same time I'm trying to hide this fear from other people because I want to be socially accepted. This really used to happen at school, and even though I left school 8 or 9 years ago, I still have this awful weird phobia of bells, and I often have dreams about them.

Why is this? I don't like dogs barking either, but I don't get this same phobic feeling when I see a dog as I do when I see a bell, and I don't dream about dogs either. So why am I so frightened of bells? Just looking at them makes me want to be sick with fear, and the thought of having to work somewhere like at a school where they rely on bells just panics me. But I've learnt that nobody understands me when I tell them how I feel about this. They just laugh at me and say it's something I should have grown out of before I reached secondary school. It is a bit of an embarrassing phobia, and thankfully I don't need to be anywhere where there are bells, but one day in the future I might have to be.

Why you would have that fear- I have no idea.

Maybe you can do some immersion therapy on yourself.

Download a picture of a school alarm bell.
And download an audio file of a school fire alarm.

Then spend an ten minutes a day staring at the picture, and hearing the sound.

Eventually the fear and obsession would go away- I would think.

When a bell rings or a nearby dog barks, we are hardwired to suddenly respond to this information. If you don't have anywhere to go with this information then you will feel trapped. It presses in on you from all sides. When there is intense need to act without an obvious direction to take the intensity grows to a higher level and can become very uncomfortable.

Recently I have been learning it is okay to not respond right away to these things. It takes me a moment to allow the intensity to run its course. What I feel is the intense energy surging through my body. As I learn to just allow this to happen and not interfere and most importantly not feel rushed to hurry up and do something I don't know how to do, the energy became magical to me, like fireworks going off inside of me. I could feel the energy shooting around quickly and within less than a second it was gone. The intense physical effect was not the problem for me, it was the need to do something about it without anywhere to go. As I learn to be still and let the physical response just happen, it isn't at all painful to experience.

Recently I've been learning to calmly experience more intense things. The intensity seems more physical than mental. I cannot control the response, but I can learn to enjoy it.

Some say irrational fears have to do with the circumstances of your passing in a previous life - if you believe in that sort of thing.