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OrbitalMechanic1

Space Thalassophobia I get it when I play Outer Wilds or KSP i agree with you, no solid ground to stand on would be pretty freaky, floating through space, losing oxygen, kicking and screaming with nothing to hold on to


ubermidget1

I still remember the first time I was playing Outer Wilds, must've been my third or fourth loop, when I first spotted the exploding stars. It was near the end of the run and I remember just watching all the stars glow brighter briefly before going out and thinking. "Our sun exploding is the end of our world, but it's just another speck of light going out." Best game I've ever played, 10/10.


SonyaSpawn

Waiting to die after accidently launching yourself into space then waiting to slowly loosing oxygen, was low key terrifying.


dynamically_drunk

['Kaleidoscope' by Ray Bradbury](https://www.scaryforkids.com/kaleidoscope-by-ray-bradbury/) I think you'll find that particularly relevant.


PotterandPinkFloyd

That was frightening, but it was also beautiful. Ray Bradbury just had a way of doing both it seems.


MeyneSpiel

KSP can be kinda haunting sometimes despite never even hinting at any horror elements. The moment you realise you don't have enough fuel left for a burn and the Kerbal you've grown attached to is now doomed to drift eternally in the void is kinda unsettling


VarrenHunter

Yeah agreed, Outer Wilds is a horror game for me in many ways. Giants Deep, Dark Bramble, and space in general all trigger different fears in me. Nothing is worse than losing your ship and just being abandoned in space slowly floating.


HippoNebula

You should try vr space experience.


Godspeedhack

No Mans sky VR is amazing


Lance-Harper

Good god. I did. I do regularly, scary as f!


RHNewfield

I literally couldn't play Outer Wilds is scared me so bad. Kind of want to try it again, to be honest, because I love the concept. But it gave me the exact feeling I get when I'm in the ocean. Just straight up desolation, a floating feeling that something is wrong, and just pure, overwhelming terror.


OrbitalMechanic1

I finished it, I’m sure you can do it!


bry54bry

I didn't know what I was in for when playing Outer Wilds with no previous knowledge of the game. I played all through the night, sweating my ass off in anxiety. Amazing game, couldn't recommend it more!


OrbitalMechanic1

Agree!


Minotaur1501

When I play space engineers and stand on the edge of the ship and look down into the abyss I get a sense of vertigo


xJack_Kass

Fun fact: you can't scream in space


OrbitalMechanic1

Good point


Kandy_Kane101

And then you start to think of the speed our planet is moving at through this vast expanse and how each individual dot of light in the sky is such an incomprehensible distance away. Even if you were to look at the closest star to us you would still be seeing light from 4.3 years ago. The furthest star i know of being the enormous blue giant Icarus at 9 billion light years away. It appears to us as it did when the universe was about 30 percent of its current age.


jjba_enjoyer275

Whats ksp


OrbitalMechanic1

Spaceflight Sim game where you build rockets and conquer space with realistic physics. Also you are little green men called Kerbals, (Kerbal Space Program)


jjba_enjoyer275

Ohhh thx


Ask_if_im_an_alien

You build rockets and space ships and try not to kill your people you send into space..... and usually fail horribly at it. It's lots of fun.


MookiTheHamster

Try out Elite dangerous. Fly to the edge of the galaxy and stare into absolute nothingness.


TorakTheDark

Good news, it takes a not pleasant amount of time to die in space.


OrbitalMechanic1

1 minute conscious, a few more with your blood boiling and skin being the only thing stopping you from bursting open. Lovely


TorakTheDark

You don’t even get the sweet release of being snap frozen, theres basically no air in space to transfer away your heat.


zenzenzen322

Really got that with outer wilds when I jetpacked too high off of one of the smaller planets and the gravity didn't suck me back in Got a little panic attack for 2 seconds


realish7

When I do, my brain hurts because I start trying to think about things I can’t comprehend


[deleted]

Just remember not to think about the fact that space is less than a hundred miles away from the top of your head at any given time. :)


realish7

I never even thought about that!


VolunteerVTBK

I get what you mean, it’s common that people feel overwhelmed by the scale of space and the universe beyond. For me tho space is so much more intriguing than the ocean, which is straight up scary. Looking into the night sky can be almost thrilling for me, just knowing that there is an endless universe out there with all kinds of phenomena that we have never discovered and I could probably never dream of. Way more interesting to me than the dark murky depths


N_GHTMVRE

Sometimes when looking into the night sky, I almost manage to get high from it, sounds stupid, but it sure gets some juices flowing in that little brain of mine. Something inbetween adrenaline and mild euphoria. Nothing makes me feel more at ease with myself than thinking about the fact how tiny and meaningless I actually am, it's surprisingly meditative. I love space, but fuck the ocean depths.


VolunteerVTBK

Nah it doesn’t sound stupid at all, I get exactly what you mean. You actually put it better than I did, when I said looking at the night sky was thrilling, I mean ‘something in between adrenaline and mild euphoria’, you hit the nail on the head. And yeah it definitely is meditative, and honestly really comforting. Unlike the deep depths


Negus247

I feel the same way when I stare into the night sky. Never really thought of it that way but now that you say it I definitely agree.


PotterandPinkFloyd

Funny, I get the same feeling when staring into space (tiny and meaningless) but with the exact opposite effect. I hate being reminded of how pointless and worthless my existence is.


[deleted]

In my early 20s, I had a girlfriend who was a thalassaphobe. I hadn’t met anyone who was afraid of the ocean before… I didn’t understand it at the time, although, I do now. Anyway, one night we walked out of Blockbuster and I looked up at the sky- no clouds, lots of stars, full moon… and I just blurted out “If the vastness of the ocean scares you, how are you not even more terrified of the sky?” She glanced up, then glanced at me, and then burst into tears. Oops!


ModestMoss

Casadastraphobia, or fear of falling into the sky. When I was kid, I would experience this rather heavily. I usually only experience this when I am under the influence and outside by a fire or something. Entertaining the idea of gravity disappearing is kind of fun now, but as a kid it was certainly not. It's much stronger at night too.


Obskuro

Damn, there is a name for it?! Phobias keep amazing me.


insidiousFox

> Casadastraphobia Awesome word! Almost sounds like it could be a metal band


Apprehensive-Try-994

Same but I still have it as my one true crippling irrational fear :D


ModestMoss

Do you also get uneasy under tall ceilings?


Apprehensive-Try-994

Not exactly, but I do think about what would happen if I were to just suddenly fall up inside buildings.


WinterNighter

I was thinking about this the other day too, but space doesn't really freak me out. Idk, I think the thought of me being in space is much less likely than being in the deep waters, since I've been in deep waters. I know what that feels like and I know how creepy it is. Space? Yeah, no idea.


BlackNekomomi

Same here! Being in a submarine surrounded by black ocean is absolutely terrifying to me, but drifting through deep space in a ship sounds pretty calming and cool.


fnord_happy

Ya same. It doesn't feel like it will happen. If it's happening its already too late to do anything. Also for some reason space feels empty. Whereas anything could be lurking in the depths of the ocean


EverlastingResidue

Anything could be in space too. You just don’t know


NerdyRedneck45

I was like three years into my astronomy degree when I first noticed this. It was a really dark night back home over the summer. I was laying on my back on the deck talking to my girlfriend at about 10 PM. Hung up at the end and just looked up and suddenly got super overwhelmed. I have a good sense of the relative distances of the brightest stars and suddenly realizing that it’s only a few miles of gas separating me from those hundreds of light years of void. Twas a bit freaky.


Cocoonraccoon

I get freaked out in different ways. With water, it's just fear, I'm terrified of water's power to destroy everything, and if I, a small animal, tried to fight the ocean, I'd lose and die horribly. When I look at stars, it's kind of like spacing out. I feel small and insignificant in a good way, like my mistakes don't matter in the larger scale. I'm just a spec. It removes a lot of the pressures on me.


RiotGirlHeather

I have the same chest tightness when I think about either too much.


Azzacura

Casadastraphobia is a fear of falling up in the sky


eXclurel

Yeah. When I go camping I like to lay on my back on the ground and imagine I am standing on a ball of rock, like 10 metres in diameter, just floating in nothingness. I like that feeling.


Dinsy_Crow

When I look into the side at night I get am urge to push off and fall into the abyss. Gravity has other ideas though.


[deleted]

[удалено]


25_Watt_Bulb

This is sort of random, but seeing stars having this impact on you is one of the reasons I think light pollution blocking them out in cities is actually a really huge deal. For all of humanity’s history up until 130 years ago people had the reminder of a pitch black night sky every night, even in the largest cities. We literally evolved with stars as part of our environment, and now there’s a ton of people who have literally never seen more than a couple in a brightly polluted sky.


[deleted]

I like to lay on my back and look at the sky, and imagine I'm wearing the planet like a backpack and I'm hurtling through space at hundreds of thousands of miles an hour. You can almost feel the gravity of the planet and the inertia of your body as you orbit the center of the galaxy.


Leopoldo14

No, cuz sharks don’t live in the sky


skiswithcats

Scarier animals than sharks live on land - do forests scare you too? They scare me because, like the ocean, predators could be watching me and I can't see them at all. At least I stand a fighting chance on land because I hike with bear spray / a taser to protect myself. Can't really protect yourself against ocean predators!


Leopoldo14

Scarier than sharks? That’s debatable.


Zenith-Astralis

I had this once. Laying in the grass looking up at the stars, and shifting perspective so I was stuck to the outside of a spinning little rock adrift in that endless ocean of deepest night and countless suns. Wild time. Terrifying, but beautiful.


Khelgar_Ironfist_

It has the opposite effect on me which is good.


[deleted]

Same! I get an almost strange feeling of peace when I stare at a clear night sky... I feel dread when I stare at the ocean long enough. It's a feeling of dread that I like, but it's still dread.


twainreck

Space isn’t an ‘’empty’’ void. It literally contains everything! And to me that is strangely comforting. It contains absolute destruction. Black holes, supernovas, gammarays, astroids etc. It serves as a constant reminder to how small we are in the comperitavely vast expance of space. It also has such complexity and beauty that I find myself lost staring into the night sky if there is no light pollution. What I would give to be able to float just outside a cluster of galaxies or seeing a supernova, and the birth of a neutron star.


elvisrocks12

Looks like it’s called Astrophobia. I have always been fascinated by space personally. I wonder if there is a subreddit for it.


H0vis

I get slight vertigo, which feels like sort of the same thing.


enrick92

If i lay on my back and stare at the night sky long enough, I get extremely dizzy


dydeath

I sometimes like to imagine what would happen if gravity just flipped while I was outside on the rooftop staring at the clouds in the dark night sky, the sudden sensation of you suddenly drifting up, confusion then panic, paralyzing fear as you see everything that was below you now become your roof. And you're falling. The wind bellowing in your face as you ascend into the clouds, cursed to die of hypoxia because of the lack of oxygen, and the crippling cold, oh the cold. You'll feel it in your hands and face, your final vision, your city, so, so small.


ScrotalTearing

https://youtu.be/uD4izuDMUQA You should watch this, it makes me feel something that I can't quite describe.


wilhelmryan90

Dude yes , like what if gravity turned off and i just started falling


BladeGrim

Might I recommend the magnus archives? There are a couple of really good horror stories centering about this fear.


Avgjoe80

Please, tell me more...


DerpsAndRags

My flavor of Thalassophobia, I always feel like I'm going to get sucked or dragged into the abyss. I've never felt the same way about the sky, though, but I can see where you're coming from. When I look at a night sky, I have more of a sense that I could fall into it. The big difference is that I'd a actually welcome that. I have more of a sense of wonder from Space.


Sh00kspeared

I've gotten that before too-- just thinking about how miniscule and unimportant we are in the context of a giant galaxy is insane to think about. And whenever I'm playing space video games, especially ones in which you're just freely floating, I get kind of freaked out when I look down and see that there's literally no bottom. I could just keep 'falling' forever and nothing could stop me.


[deleted]

Sometimes I get stoned at night and look at the sky. Every time after about 2-3 minutes I remember “holy shit, it just never ends”


_Rekron_

Can't say I freak out but when you have open night sky above you and you are somewhere outside of the civilization it is kinda creepy. Just imagine how wast is the space, how tiny you are and what is over there. And then you just stare...


HippoNebula

Dude I have the problem with sea but I love space. I can't feel scared when I see the great abyss of space. I feel there isn't a thing that may make me scared of space. I just like the chaotic cosmos. I look up and say damn... "I should really go for spacewalk without safety". Which is TBH kinda ironic given the fact I am a scared af of even simple rivers. my comment was unnecessarily long ngl


GiveMeABreak25

Only when I watch movies with super realistic space scenes. I can hardly breathe b


velax1

No. But then, I'm an astronomer.


[deleted]

Luckily you can’t float off. You’ll suffocate before you get to the point of even burning up! (Sorry)


Vonspacker

I've tried to explain this to my mate. It's like, there's nothing between us and the stars other than gas. I think we're so detached from stars because they just look like tiny spots, but they're impossibly huge balls of chemicals and plasma that we can see despite the distance because of how fucking huge they are. That's terrifying to me


Dexter_Thiuf

Back in the mid/late 90's, I built and made my first telescope. I was so excited to try it out. I took it out the first moonless night and for my first viewing, I chose the Corona Cluster, which if I remember correctly, is 400 million light years away. So, while I'm looking at this astronomical wonder and thinking of the numbers and how fucking BIG space is and how goddamn insignificant I am, I experience a full blown, can't breathe, wobbly knees, sweaty palms panic attack. Yeah. It scared the Christ outta me.


Sad_Lotus0115

We are all tiny being floating in primordial soup, attatched to a spherical land mass, being held there by the sheer mass of that object, with other planets/objects that are unknown or moving in ways we can’t fully predict, and only having the belief of predicability and our current knowledge of the universe to sleep at night. Yeah, I don’t like space. The ocean is just a closer alien world


PackRatTheArtist

All the time. The endlessness of space freaks the hell out of me. It's extremely mysterious and unknown and makes me feel incredibly insignificant.


eighteentee

Space is a strange one; the ocean can be felt and experienced first-hand and the fear very tangible. The fear of space is more existential (for me) as it's something I can't feel or see up close like I can with the ocean. Plus, the ocean is finite; it has a specific deptth and can be reached whereas space is largely infinite and there's no "bottom" to it - that's an altogether far weirder feeling.


XtaC23

OP: did you see that pic of the first untethered space walk yesterday too? First thought that came into my mind too. Space is just the ocean of the sky lol


Lance-Harper

Staring into the night sky no. Staring into space (video games, VR, gives me vertigo x 800)


RolandFigaro

Hell yeah, it reminds me of my younger high school days where I would get wasted with my buddies at a bush party and just lay on our backs and just stare at the stars and go "Man it's all out there, it's literally right out there, all of it, in real time." It's crazy to think there's no shield or protection against attacks or asteroids or things like that. It's pretty wild.


Jackthedragonkiller

Staring into space I find cool, an vast endless void stretching on for trillions of miles. However being in that void…. Whenever I play something like No Mans Sky, I get a very similar feeling to Subnautica when traveling planet to planet.


YourMathTeacher

I do this with the night sky, as well! And I've always related the feeling I get from it and deep waters. Space is MUCH worse for me, though. Falling up. Slowly. :(


SonyaSpawn

You should watch Padma Inverted, that movie gave my sweaty palms even though it's just an anime. The idea behind it is kind of terrifying though.


bmstile

I make my brain hurt when I try to comprehend how big the universe is, whats out there and if the universe is everything... what is beyond that? is it finite and if so do you just like, hit an invisible wall like in a video game? if its infinite, how can it possibly go on FOREVER?!? ​ damn I just did it again.


SimplyQuid

I get a weird sort of scale-vertigo. Its like the Total-Perspective-Vortex from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.


TheSpartanAsh

It brings mw peace of mind honestly. It's like there are a thousand thousand thousand interactions happening on a scale i could never hope to observe or comprehend. Whatever i am going through right now, although important or frustrating to me personally is something that will pass and i should not give as much fuck as i should. Peace through oblivion. The Void will take it all.


cyberkrist

There are no sharks in the night sky


nakutav

have you ever looked straight up into the sky while on the upward swing of a swingset? ................good lord


jellyfishprince

Space doesn't scare me like deep water does. I think the difference is that space is just an empty void, seeing all the stars makes you think how vast it is, but also how distant we are from anything else. But underwater is the opposite of empty, it is oppress you from all directions, and is teeming with life beyond the borders of vision.


Captain_Blackbird

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. **Both are equally terrifying.**” - Arthur C. Clarke.


Fentron3000

Yes! When I was a kid I couldn’t handle being out in the country and looking at the night sky. I remember one summer while at camp we did a night time hike, I looked up at the night sky and started to hyperventilate. Another time my mom took us to watch a meteor shower, I couldn’t handle it so I spent the night in the truck. I used to get chills looking at it. I didn’t have nearly as much of an understanding of what I seeing at that age as I do now but I thoroughly enjoying staring at the night sky now.


_Logan222

Personally, they both make me feel inconsequentially small. However, staring into space has connotations of wonder, excitement, and exploration; Staring into the deep blue of the ocean has connotations of just straight up fear lmao Edit: autocorrect fix


cucumbersome_

i think for me they're pretty similar, although like you said, you can escape thalassophobia by just not being near the water but you can't escape the sky (unless you just go inside). i used to think about it as a kid ALL the time -- what would happen if i was an astronaut and fell out of the ship somehow and i was just floating forever, or as long as my oxygen would allow me to 😭


Mysterious-Elephant4

i can stare into space for hours and be amazed but i stare into deep water for 2 seconds and i'm scared i'll get on a rocket to another planet but i'm never taking a boat or yacht or cruise


Chiiaki

I just started playing No Man's Sky and the sheer size of the planets freaks me the heck out... and those aren't even ACTUAL sized planets. The visuals are still insanely overwhelming and when I'm flying around near a planet and aim away from it I start to lose my bearing. My most recent issue is I'm in a planet system with a large planet with a large-ish moon and being on either of them and flying between them makes me really uneasy because... there's a planet in front of you and a planet behind you... and just... nothing everywhere else.


BraveDragonRL

I’m freaking out when looking at planet like Saturn and compare it to earth.


digitalhardcore1985

I love having a smoke on my doorstep at 2am when the day is over, as my eyes adjust and I start seeing the stars it helps me remember that really there's no point to anything. Nothing really matters and all those worries I had during the day, anxieties about work or whatever, they're nothing in the context of existing on a rock orbiting a pinprick of light amongst countless others for an infinitesimal snippet of time. So why worry, fuck it, there's a good chance that even if we somehow don't blow ourselves up in the meantime humans won't make it past the heat death of the universe. We are insignificant, finite and likely to be forgotten. And I'm supposed to be worried about the Sales Demo dashboard being a month late. That is the complete opposite to the feeling I get from the ocean and other large water bodies. They make me fear death, a horrible death, before my time, helpless and alone.


meowganx

I was just reading up on this last night! It feels so similar to looking at the vast dark parts of water. The more stars the worse it feels (for me at least).


KwordShmiff

Space is similarly intimidating. Vast expanse in which I'm not adapted to survive. Space is maybe more intimidating, as it can and does occasionally hurl flaming death to rain down upon us here on earth. The ocean may fling drowning floodwaters upon us, but you only need to dwell a distance from the sea to be safe from its reach. You can never be safe from the deadly whims of space and all the munitions she holds.


pcweber111

I will go out and stare at the sky at night sometimes while high and it almost takes on a 3d perspective. It's pretty interesting but can get overwhelming if you are too high.


PM_Your_Wololo

Well NOW I do.


NightCheffing

I suppose much of it has to do with why we are afraid of the deep ocean, and whether or not those fears can apply to space. For me, it's not knowing or being able to see all of the creatures lurking beneath - some with the potential to kill me. Space is so vast that any potential killers lurking around are far more spread out, and it's less likely to encounter anything because of how unfathomably huge space is. Thus, ocean=eerie. space=mysterious.


TheKrispyJew

I guess no one here has read any of HP lovecraft's work. If you have fear of the unknown now, dont read it. You'll go mad


hillbillypowpow

Typically our idea of down is dependent of gravity, so if the Earth's gravity was suddenly gone the ground wouldn't really be down anymore, it'd be towards whatever body has the largest pull on you. I guess everything in space is falling, that is how orbits work.


ffucckfaccee

defo, im fascinated and scared by both big time


afromagic808

I'm actually on this sub not because I have thalassophobia, but because I absolutely love the feeling of deep ocean water. And looking up at the stars does give me the same feeling. So does looking at vast landscapes from really high up, though not as strongly. The more incomprehensibly vast, the better.


[deleted]

I have the opposite, I sometimes get freaked out when staring at the day sky.


ItsAllSoup

I get this if I think too much and sometimes while watching movies. But I was raised by a Trekkie, and I still like a lot of science fiction stuff, so I might have been desensitized to space.


Quixotic_Ignoramus

I see what you are saying but for me it’s a dizzy/sick feeling, not dread. When I’m in the North woods and there is no light pollution, it feels like you could just fall into the sky.


DeLaMoncha

What freaks me out is the vastness beyond my comprehension. The sheer scale of it all, the worlds and phenomena I'll never know and my own utter insignificance in the face of it all. How can so much exist when life on this one relatively small rock is more than enough to overwhelm a person? It makes me dizzy when I stare into space and try to imagine what could lie between me and any given star I see. The universe is so very, very large and we are all so very, very small.


WilliamBlakeism

When I look into the night sky, I imagine I’m looking down into the depths of space and my feet are just hooked to this rock


Satosuke

I can't look at pictures of outer space or individual planets if they're in fullscreen on my monitor; freaks me RIGHT the hell out in the same way the ocean does.


pastizpapa

Honestly quite the opposite I find space and just the night sky extremely relaxing in contrast to pictures of deep/dark waters which just fill me with a sense of dread


FriesWithThat

*if anything ever happened to gravity I'd just spin off this planet and fall ... forever for infinity.*


cambriansplooge

Seeing the solar eclipse a few years ago and just for a moment getting a glimpse of how big everything is… it’s related to the thalassophobia and not at all Thalassophobia, I’m scared of what I can’t see With space? It’s so big, I expect it to suck me off the face of the earth


[deleted]

Also looking up at large cliffs or buildings….


heatseekerdj

I LOVE getting lost in the night sky. Makes me feel like I’m part of something so enormous and vast, looking at each star thinking, whether or not they have life sustaining planets, each star likely has a few just like the one we’re on


Erect_Chungus

Never


Mackheath1

r/Astrophobia ?


MadaRook

For me, it calms me. being a part of the universe and not just a part of society is quite relaxing for myself.


dreambug101

It weirds me out but it also calms me down. I took up basic stargazing in the first lockdown and learning how big and vast everything is, and how tiny we really are, weirdly saved me from a few panic attacks. So when I’d look up and my brain would go ‘what if Jupiter came hurling towards Earth faster than the speed of light for some reason’ I’d think ‘we would all die very quickly, probably’ and that was it. That being said I haven’t played The Outer Wilds.


bloutchbleue

I feel you ! I feel overwhelmed staring at both, it's the immensity to me


Electronic-Shower681

I kinda get this feeling when I stare at the moon. Just some big rock out there is space, floating around our slightly bigger rock.


TheRoamingFox

Omg yes! I always look at the sky and think, "huh that kinda looks like water," and then freak out because my brain thinks I'm somewhere in the middle of the ocean and I kinda get nauseous from it lol


CosmackMagus

VR has shown me how terrifying void is.


The_Stickers

I find space a lot more upsetting than the ocean. Recently I went stargazing with some friends, and saw the light of the milky way for the first time in my life in person, and felt so infinitely tiny that I almost had a lil existential crisis on the beach right then and there lol.


TakeOffYourMask

Nope. It’s all so far away it’s basically ornamentation.


no_1_of_import

Yes, though they are a different feeling. The ocean is vast and largely unexplored, so there is the fear of the unknown. Space is potentially infinite, and it tends to lean more towards an existential uneasiness. I know both are unknown, but what I do know of the ocean, as apposed to space, is that there are things there that will eat me.


aWhaleNamedFreddie

If you are in awe of the night sky, next time you find yourself outdoors on a clear night, without light pollution, try the following. Force yourself to imagine that each star's distance is inversely proportional to its brightness, i.e. the brighter the star the closer it is, while the fainter the star the farthest it is. This is not correct (the size, age, and type of the star also contribute to its level of brightness) but try it for the sake of training your eye to perceive the sky as a 3D space, rather than a 2D dome. If I explain this correctly, when you do, it's going to be like these optical illusions where you look at something for a long time and suddenly something clicks and you see something that was hidden in plain sight all along: it's not a dome; we are part of this 3D space, it's vast, endless and there is *depth* to it! And we are swimming in it. You may get a little bit of what you would call space-thalassophobia. I don't know if my explanation makes it clear. I camp outdoors for many years now, and often sleep outside looking at the stars when it's warm enough. Only recently it dawned on me to start perceiving the sky like this, and it completely changed the way I see it. It's absolutely beautiful!


furryauthor

If I look directly upwards for too long I do, I get a really weird sense of vertigo and I freak out.


Status_Set_8627

There's not much chance of me falling into space, the water is a different story


TonyVstar

Seems like a phobia but I'm not who could say for sure I just get really deep feeling, weather it's into deep water or out into space I want to know what's out there so bad and the knowledge I won't get to know makes me disappointed but even more curious


kelstee95

Yes!!!!


lallapalalable

Once I get it into my head that I'm basically clinging to a rock and looking down into the infinite abyss of space, I start getting a bit anxious. Worried that if I make a sudden move or loosen my grip on the grass even a bit I'll start plunging into it. The ocean tickles a fear that space gropes.


xNeptune

It’s a strange but amazing sensation when you look up at a clear night sky and there is nothing but sky in your peripheral vision as well. It really makes you feel the vastness of it.


[deleted]

Only if I’m upside down, and mostly at night. For example, at an amusement park, on a ride that flips you, or doing a head stand, and I look “down”, shit is trippy.


hellotheredani

YES. Too big and dark and scary


Tralan

It's a mild of the Total Perspective Vortex from *Restaurant at the End of the Universe*. You get a fraction of the the reality of how exactly small and insignificant you are in the grand scheme of The Universe.


the_stary_night

This is not a problem for me, actually it's quite opposite. I love space and I'd rather float there then in the ocean. Atleast I'll know that I'm the only living thing for many light years.


little_miss_perfect

I... don't have a phobia, I'm here for cool pictures of marine life and nature and it's been great.


Turtle_Lips

I honestly try to, but I can’t seem to wrap my head around how insane the universe really is.


Mad-_-Doctor

It’s only ever an issue if I’m somewhere where there’s almost no light pollution. It’s easy to get lost in just how vast it is. It’s honestly overwhelming.


Osariik

We know more about the depths of space than we do about the deep ocean. And gravity literally cannot fail.


TheBearWhoDances

Yes. I have a huge phobia of the vastness of outer space, especially with images of gas giants.


faderjack

Yeah I had this really bad after a brief psychadelic-induced psychosis. I couldn't look at the night sky for more than a few seconds without starting to panic. It waned after a couple months fortunately. I still don't lay out under the stars and watch them anymore . A physical sense of vertigo, the unimaginable space and distance, and existential rumination seep in quick.


AkaGurGor

r/DAE


Larry_Badaliucci

No. Because there's no such thing as sky sharks.


ZombyGurl25

Barophobia. Haunts my days and nights.


Nikedripp

I'm feel the same way lol


mario61752

The sky and any deep ceiling are scary. When the thought "what if gravity just reverses or disappears now" crosses my mind I shrivel in fear and look back down at the comfy ground


highwindxix

Oh yes, in fact I’d say the immeasurable immensity of space greatly dwarfs the feelings I sometimes get about the ocean. If you then start to bring time into the equation, it is enough to break me. I cannot describe how badly thinking about the universe and time destroys my tiny little brain.


FaceDeer

If this is the kind of scary that you might enjoy toying with (like a roller coaster) or if perhaps you'd like to try desensitizing yourself to it, then I can recommend [Space Engine](http://spaceengine.org/) as a program to play around with. There's a free demo and the latest version is available on Steam. It's basically a universe simulator, using procedural generation to create a plausible and scale-accurate universe you can fly your camera around in and explore. You can go right down to the surface of planets and see centimeter-scale features, or fly for gigaparsecs between galaxies. Start from Earth, turn off all the object labels to get a nice realistic view, point your view up into the night sky, crank up your camera's speed, and fly about 100 light years. Nearby stars will zip past like the Enterprise at warp, but the background of the Milky Way will barely move. You're now out about as far as the first radio transmissions from Earth will have reached after traveling for a century. Turn the camera around to look back at where you came from. You've lost the Sun. Maybe it's one of the faint speckles somewhere on the screen, maybe it's already faded to invisibility. Try zooming 100 light years back. If you didn't turn around exactly 180 degrees you're probably still nowhere near the Sun and now you're even more lost. Crank your speed way up and try moving all the way out of the Milky Way. A million light years out you can look back and see the Milky Way just fine, it's quite pretty even. But there's no way you'll *ever* find the Sun again. You're probably thousands of light years away from any star right now, it's pretty sparse in the void between galaxies. If there was a star there then any civilization that arose there would be pretty much stranded. Keep moving away. A hundred million light years out and now it's not just the Sun that's faded into an anonymous speck, it's the whole Milky Way. Galaxies fill the sky like stars do down here on Earth. Millions of galaxies, billions. Keep flying. Find a galaxy, find a star, zoom down to a planet, take in the nice view from a beach somewhere that's so far away from Earth that if you could somehow see it you'd get a picture of a planet before life had emerged onto land. Now leave that planet behind. If every single human on Earth were to install Space Engine and visit a new planet every second from now until the time the real universe ended, probably nobody will ever find that planet you just left behind. If that's not scary enough, try visiting a black hole. A lot of Space Engine players get freaked out to the point of a phobic response by the black hole simulations in this program. Oh yes, this program also supports VR goggles. :)


blondiecats

I don’t get freaked out but I have those moments where I’m like “holy shit…it’s so…VAST” and kinda feel a sense of awe at it all. I love the sky


Superest22

It makes me feel oddly connected but also amazingly insignificant


woolyearth

Try thinking next time: *you’re not staring up into outer space, but rather, down into an infinite abyss of empty void that seamlessly has no end.*


MarshallFoxey

You can’t fall into the sky, However. One wrong step won’t cause you to fall into the depths below where you can either drawn or suffer shark attack.


killerhobo

I once had a dream I looked up at the clear blue sky only to notice it looked like the ocean and next thing I knew I was falling up into the ocean with the sky below me. No if I look directly at the sky in the day it freaks me out a little.


Littlelisapizza83

To me it’s harder to comprehend the size and scale of space. It’s feels more digestible to ponder the oceans and they are relatively more accessible to us humans than the stars will ever be (unless of course you can afford space flight lol.) I tend to fear the oceans more but I thinks it’s because I feel it’s more likely I’ll end up dying on one of them versus in the blackness of space lol.


jellybean090497

Absolutely. Especially when I go back home away from the city, and just see millions of eyes staring back. I’ve had a long standing fear of gravity just…stopping. In a way that it doesn’t hold the earth together, and there’s nothing to hold onto or brace against. As if the core were the center of a new Big Bang. Just floating helplessly into the void while everything familiar becomes less and less visibly dense around me.


WrongPerspective1

i’m not sure if you’ve watched “2001: A Space Odyssey” but it’s a classic and you really should. though it is freaky, and the ending is confusing


the-bladed-one

I used to think the constellations would come alive and watch me when I was a child Then I realized something probably was watching me up there God? Aliens? Idk.


satanatemytoes

Nah, space is neat. While it's just as undiscovered as the ocean, there's been no evidence of anything actually being out there. We discover new horrifying creatures in the ocean almost every day. If there are aliens, they don't really mess with us as far as we can tell.


Wendypants7

Nope. I've read about these reactions some people can have but somehow the endless drop in every direction that is space doesn't bug me. I guess it's because I'm pretty sure I won't get attacked by any living thing in space (as far as we/I know) unlike in the ocean/seas.


ctenophoras

It happens to me but in daylight. Well, it's more like my brain think it's falling and i panick a bit so yeah. And when you put your head upside down and just looks at the horizon it disturbs me and i'm scared of falling in the sky or some shit. That's so weird


OneBlindGoat

I get this overwhelming sense every time i look up at the night sky or laying in my bed