Dismissiveness

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I am 15 and I have a fear of darkness. Even though I constantly try to convince myself that ghost don't exist or whatever, the darkness still scares me. Every time my brother goes to sleep over at his friend's, I always gotta sleep alone in a room. The family room is the room I can rely on because I can always turn the TV on to get my mind off thinking whatever I'm thinking.

Irrational fears are one of the things that really frustrate me. And it frustrates me even more when people just get dismissive with them. My parents know that I am afraid of sleeping alone in a room, and they always ask me where I'm gonna sleep when my brother is sleeping over at his friend's.

They're always telling me to empty my mind or some bulls*** like that, but even when I try to explain to them that forcing my thoughts out will only reinforce them, they just get dismissive. I could just ignore my thoughts instead of forcing them out, but these thoughts won't leave me the f*** alone until 5 in the morning.

How can I get my parents to listen to me and take me seriously without resorting to something really serious? I've already explained to them many time that forcing thoughts out or ignoring them is not easy, but they don't seem to f***ing listen to me.

PS: If this post is too long for you to read, please tell me. I know how people feel about long posts and I can't stand to read long posts which are 200+ lines long, so I tried to make it as short as possible while including detail.

I had those crazy fears of the dark. I remember thinking late at night each time
the train came by that it blocked or killed another bigfoot trying to come from the
woods to my house.

I feared the store room beside my bedroom that the deep frezer had a body in it. I
could not face that wall at night for fear a body might be facing me from that frezer.

I had a nightlite. Funny my brother and dad allways slept with the tv on I seem to
do it to.

Myself now I'm an atheist I know there are no ghost. I know the odds of being attack
by a human is astronomical.

What about nightmares later as an adult I have the same nightmare over where my
firearms will not function when I am attacked. Though I know when awake there
is a 99.9% chance they will work.

I am tough enough not to be scared of the dark.

I slept with a night light until I was 13 years old because I was so scared of the dark. Even as a small child, I would often wake my parents up to come and sleep in my room with me because I didn't want to sleep alone. I freaked out if there was a severe thunderstorm at night. I know that I got on my parents last nerve.

I believed that there were boogie men in the closets. And there were monsters under the beds. I didn't even want to sit on the side of the bed. I was afraid that the monsters under the bed would reach out and grab my ankles and snatch me under the bed and devour me. I would never be seen or heard from again.

Yeah, having your feelings,thoughts,fears, dissmissed as illogical is many parents favorite way to deal with things they cant change.I am sure your parents want to help you...but I think its ironic that most people say aspies have no "empathy"....my experience is few people have real empathy, they can only believe things they have experienced themselves and everything else is illogical.Sounds like they want you to be "normal", maybe are afraid you will be teased by your peers if you are still "afraid of the dark".

Instead of trying to get them to understand that you know your fears may be "illogical" ask then what the problem is with you sleeping in the livingroom with the TV on for light and "company"....Does this hurt them in some way...if not...then the logical thing is to let you do it and stop making a fuss about it...after all, alot of adults fall to sleep with the TV on,have a drink to relax befor bed or take drugs to sleep....some of these methods are to avoid their fears at night...not ghosts but "how will I pay the bills this month, does my husband still love me,etc...fears are fears....we all fear things we cant control that may not be "real".As a women living alone ,I use to have the TV on all the time as a comfort...it kept me from being preoccupied with thoughts of rapist and murders breaking in...what ever works and doesnt hurt others is OK in my opinion.

I used to be fine with the dark until recently, when I started really spooking myself I hate it - I don't mean to spook myself, but somehow I just keep doing it, and it's horrible.

Regarding being dismissive, I know the feeling. And it's very annoying!

If I know my surroundings, I don't mind the dark. I don't care too much for thunderstorms at night. I have to go outside to watch them. For some reason watching the storm from the garage dosen't spook me so much as it does inside the house.

I was a very big, if not full grown, teenager when I finally lost my fear of darkness. I always had an irrational fear of large BAD things waiting for me. There's not really much difference inside my head whether I can see with my eyes or not since I also see "sound pictures" inside my mind. The imagination can carry a sound picture much farther than a light picture, so I was easily scared 'in the dark'.

I slept with a small 7watt bulb in a regular lamp next to my bed.

Sorry, I didn't address your question, but I can't really help. It seems that somewhere along the way you have become a completed project to your parents instead of a lifelong career, which even adult children are supposed to be to their parents. Try asking them why that is. Why are they 'finished' with you?

This may sound weird, as you're talking about being afraid of the dark. But I really believe that people who "dismiss" are much more afraid than you are. The people with the "bravest" attitude are the ones who blindly believe all sorts of nonsense to keep them from going nuts. My parents did the same to me and I stopped trusting them at age 7. I told them I had nightmares but I really had scary, philosophical questions about life, I was totally awake and totally insomniac. But that kind of stuff freaked them out.
I have seen people hide behind booze, drugs, depression and religion to escape the things that kept me awake at night. But we're the weirdo's.
"empyting your mind" DOES NOT help alleviate worries, just makes them louder. Keeping the light on, reading an easy book or thinking about a monotonous object (trains) or pleasant travel.

I used to be very scared of the dark - my parents installed a dimmer light and slowly decreased the amount of light each week - it helped! Now all I need is the light of the streetlamp outside. Although its taken years.

I'm yet another who is afraid of the dark...I used to lie in bed, completely rigid, afraid that if I closed my eyes and slept, something terrible will happen to my entire family. Sometimes I would fall asleep anyways, out of exhaustion, while other times I would dash into my parent's room and sleep with them.

I'm still afraid of the dark, but the fear has lessened with time. I'm not sure why. I guess that as time passed, I gradually realised that nothing is going to attack me the moment I closed my eyes, or that no catastrophe is going to befall my family just because I decided to sleep.

I think people are unintentionally dismissive because:

a) Unless they experience similar fears, they don't understand;
b) They may believe that by acting dismissive of your fears, you will eventually realise that your fear is unfounded. By appearing nonchalant, they might be trying to give you the impression that there really isn't anything to fear about the dark.

Perhaps you can try slowly desensitising yourself to the dark. Maybe you can try sleeping in your own room, with a nightlight [a light with an adjustable dimmer sounds like a great idea] and a stereo playing...then with the light off, and finally with the stereo off.

i don't like the dark either. thats why i sleep with my t.v. on volume muted

I did that on holiday a while back! And I still sometimes do it with my radio. Although I don't like bright artificial lights. I use (for everyday use) natural light for as long as possible, then its my dimmer light on low. I know its not great for my eyes, but I'm already badly shortsighted, so oh well. It's better than squinting in pain.

I was always afraid of the dark. Even now it makes me uncomfortable. When I was a child I thought something would get me, now it just feels suffocating.
Also, my hearing is poor so I need to be able to use my eyes.

Light is good in reasonable doses. When it is pitch black I start reaching out with my hands as if there is something in front of me.

I honestly do not understand people who shut the doors and pull the thick wooden blinds down at night. I don't understand those people who sleep in the pitch blackness. Don't they start seeing the brightly-coloured flying things?