Yes, you do have a valid point. Facing your fears is the only way to conquer a fear. Thanks for the positive feedback it helps out a lot.

I have the exact same fear. I was telling my husband about it and he rhought i was odd, so i googled it and found this. The idea of swimming in a lake and touching something like a part of a building from a flooded city, a tree branch, a buoy, and anchor, bottom side of a boat, propeller. What started the conversation was him saying someone may need to get into our cistern to do something...i shivered and said how that would freak me out...the idea of where the intake and outgoing lines come in, touching the walls of it and not knowing what is under there, panic mode. But no fear of the living things in water like fish or anything like that. And yes, the water in the back of a toilet, scary as well. In swimming pools, where the water jets are and where the water goes into the filter, the drain (and not a fear of it. opening and me drowing, but fear of the actual metal drain), the sweeper for a pool when we were kids and would be in the pool running the brush sweeper thing over the bottom. All of these things send me into a panic mode, severe fear i can't explain. Man-made objects. Creepy feeling. Glad i'm not alone!

You certainly arent alone and no matter how odd or uncommon a phobia is, there are probably thousands of people world wide that face the same issue......they simply havent admitted it or posted in a community such as ours.

The general public just dont appreciate how scary and debilitating these issues can be

I am very happy reading this and realising important not the only one who has these fears i was teased as a child for this couldn't go swimming because of filters and as for resting dummies etc big no no. i also have a few irrational fears like parachutes i can't touch them or hot air balloons i can't look inside them they make me feel sick .

Welcome to my life! i have the same exact fear i cannot even bare to think about something in the sea while i'm swimming or even looking at it, it just freaks me out and i end up having a panic attack. However i do believe that fear is resulted from a past experience. In my case when i was younger i was scuba diving with my cousin and as we were looking at shells and such he pointed at me to turn around and as soon as i turned i found a huge anchor submerged in my face it scared the hell out of me and i just dived up and stayed away from the water. I'm pretty sure that's what did it for me!

The unexpected can be very un-nerving and its a shame, now you have issues and you also have lost a sport that you loved.

Have you tried anything by way of treatment, gradual introduction into the problem? Would you like to cure the phobia and continue with your sport?

I have this fear as well! Pool drains, water treatment plants, oil rigs in the ocean, Hoover dam. I shuddered from reading all these posts. Even the toilet tank as someone said! The giant wind energy mills scare me as well. But has anyone with this fear googled the NASA training pool? It took a long time to bring myself to even look at it. My boyfriend understands my fear thankfully. My sister has the exact same fear. We have no idea why. Also google the worlds deepest swimming pool. I could never bring myself to go anywhere near that. Is there a name for this phobia? Maybe a combination of water and machine phobias to make hydromechanaphobia?

Hi

Some of the descriptions in this thread really nailed it. Though I'm not sure, I think it all started back in my childhood when my dad took me to this gravel pit. There was a large fresh water (green) lake with old rusty conveyor belts partially in the lake, kinda sticking out if you know what I mean. I don't know why, but it always got to me and I never went near the lake. My dad thought I was being silly.

Few years later, I had my first swimming class in school. Let me tell you, that swimming pool was freaking scary. It was old, dirty and had rusty drains/vents in the deep end (1.5m -> 7m, iirc). Of all the lanes, my teacher told me to stay in lane 1. You guessed it, all the drains/vents were directly beneath me.. I didn't want anyone to know of my phobia so I made it through. I was so freaked out and actually cried later.

Later that year, also in my swimming class, we went to another pool. It had waves and we had to train in them. I considered telling the teacher but being a "tough guy", I went along. Bad idea.

The pool had one exit.. same way you entered. The other sides were obstructed by walls of glass. So yeah, I went in and had to make my way to the end of the pool and back again. It all went pretty alright until I got to the other end which was deeper than I realized and had huge black metal drains. The thing making the waves was on the other side. Realizing that, I completely freaked and forgot to actually swim for a short moment. Just enough to get my head under and swallow some water, making it even worse. Luckily, I managed to collect myself and hurried back to the other end. Terrible experience!

Anyways, I came across this thread while looking for other people scared of submarines. They scare the living s... out of me. It doesn't matter if they're submerged or not, docked, whatever. They TERRIFY me.

But reading the posts here, I realize pretty much any underwater mechanical objects would scare me. Propellers and turbines really get to me too. But for some odd reasons, I'm not scared of them if they're on aircrafts. Any other place and they'll scare me to death. Same with dams and turbine windmills.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm glad I'm not the only one scared of stuff like this. I haven't told anyone because people will think I'm a weirdo

I TOTALLY AGREE!
gahhh im glad to find sombody who gets it... i posted this eralier today thinking id look like and idiot...
Hi there i need advice!

I have a terrible phobia of any man made items being in the water if i can see them. A really good example of this is when i went sailing for my first time in a very clear lake and i happend to sail over a large concrete block submerged just two and a half meters from the surface, immediatly i cannot help but have a panic attack and hyperventalte simply because i knew if i reached into the water i could touch it.it sounds stupid but even the mines from finding nemo that are under the water absolutly stick in my brain. there is nothing thats scares me more than oil rigs.... i cant help but imagine being sucked into them and ground up, id rather be burnt alive then be Even close to on one of them!.. this has become a huuuuuge issue for me now as i cant stand the thought of swimming in public pools because of the wave generators ,filters ect....or the beach as i may come into contact with an old bicycle or something submerged. strangely enough its only large bodies of water that effect me when i have these panic attacks.and ONLY MAN MADE objects scare me.you could put me in a pool of piranhas but ill be mostly scared of the pool filter!

i couldn't tell you when this phobia has started because my mum said i've had it since i an infant...... its pretty embarrassing when i cant even swim where all others can without freaking the heck out and freezing completly...

So if anybody can relate or know how they may have dealt with this before im open to opinion! i need advice asap!

The phobia of underwater objects is very terrible importantly the resident of sea side.
The best way to deal with such phobia is to ignore the fear and take everything in a
quite normal way.




Marina Safety Equipment

Hey, I'm new, read this post and wanted to reply.
I have tremendous fear of rope in water, it doesn't have to be attached to anything to creep me out, but a rope attached to a buoy is terrifying. Objects sticking up out of water or partially submerged are also nerve racking, this includes dockposts and channel markers. Dark areas of water are scary. Imaging sunken ships and structures gives me the willies. Robot pool cleaners are my archenemy, both the floating and submergable kinds. Howard was the name of the pool cleaner we had when I was a kid and he had to be taken out of the water so I could swim.
I can't really think of any childhood related trauma that would cause these fears, I grew up on the beach and the water has always been my favorite place to be. Of course I would start to panic if I got too close to a buoy when I was tubing or water skiing, the thought of wiping out by one was too much to bear! It's interesting to know I share this fear with other people, I have always been told it was a strange fear. Does it have a name?
Peace.

No matter how strange a phobia is, you can rest assured there will no doubt be many other people sufferring with it. The fact it is uncommon makes it no less debilitating.

I will try and find out a specific name for you and post it here if i can do so.

The thing with phobias, and this is a little off-topic generalisation - altho there is a huge and varied number of things people have irrational fear over, they all commonly share the same process.

It all starts somewhere - a seed is planted [1] - a thought that evokes a fear. Sometimes that can be a passing fear, it may even be a rational fear to start with. But what happens next is the gradual development of fixed irrational beliefs - consciously or unconciously - we start to 'believe' certain things that aren't in fact as true or as real as we imagine; that the true likelihood of something happening isn't as high or as bad as we fear [2].

After that, we start to change the way we behave to avoid these imagined fears and to feel emotions about things that, altho the fear feels real, the reality is much less risky [3].

I've numbered them 'cos these are the points at which 'therapy' (or ourselves) can challenge the process to bring about change.

[1] The seed - psychoanalysis - exploring the origins of the emotion/experience to try and make sense of everything after it. The idea is that if you can undermine the foundation of the irrational belief, then everything after it has to change.

[2] The developing thoughts - how we think or feel about the phobia - it's possible to unravel these and understand how phobias develop from irrational thinking patterns. There are many therapies/theories of how to adjust thoughts and feelings - cognitive emotional therapies such as Rational Emotive Therapy (which is, in brief terms, "So what if it does?" - useful in phobias where there is little real risk of harm such as 'bugs' but less so in others such as fear of plane crashing); Cognitive Therapy (challenging the belief with the reality - more useful for things that are of greater harm - but unlikely to happen - plane crashing is a real risk, but is far safer than driving a car!)

[3] For those who have adapted their behaviour to avoid or 'manage' their life around their phobia, there's (the infamous!) CBT - Cognitive Behaviour Therapy - changing the way you think AND behave around a phobia. Behaviour reinforces thoughts and feelings - what we think effects how we feel and drives what we do...which, depending on the outcome, makes us think more or less on something - thus changing or not our feelings and then our behaviour...etc etc..... And that's not just for phobias - that's how the mind works for the good things too - if we get a positive reward for what we do, we feel good, think good - and we do it again! Interrupting the negative decline of the phobia process will bring about change - hopefully for the better!

So why post this in this thread?
Well, having read a few posts on this topic it seems that altho there are a lot of common themes - ie underwater manmade objects for definite! - there are still going to be differences (and similarities) in each one as to the origins, the development and the outcome or behaviour - and that's going to make a difference to how each person understands or overcomes their fears.

If I were to 'generalise' on this fear - as many phobias do carry common themes, my 'instinct' would be to suggest that fear of underwater manmade objects holds it's 'power' in the fear of drowning or becoming entangled in something that "shouldn't be there". In fact, when I read some posts I get the distinct feeling of (I was gonna say 'Titanic Syndrome' but that's already taken and means something completely diferent!) - a feeling that just like in the movie as the Titanic crashed into the iceberg and slowly sank there was a complete loss of control over events and sinking was inevitable. Altho the iceberg is not manmade - the Titanic is , and was designed to keep people afloat, not drag them down. Now this may be right for some - but not for others - it may also be a fear of injury or just the icky feeling of the slimy mossy substances that often grows on them which is nothing to do with drowning.

I'm not sure if this helps anyone - but it seemed relevant in my head! lol

As for the 'name' of this phobia - no idea - lets make one! My starter suggestion is - aquastructurephobia

Ian