Conquering an Irrational, Ridiculous, Terrifying Fear

I am going to talk about the most ridiculous, irrational fear I had: the fear of glowing green lights. If this sounds somewhat ridiculous of a fear to have, you would be right. It started when I was around six years old.

One morning, when I was around that age, I woke up and saw two glowing green lights that looked like eyes about half way up my wall. To a six year old, the lights did not look like lights: they looked like eyes. My room was pitch black and I was terrified. Thankfully, the “eyes” did go away when the lights were turned on, but that scared me and formed a lasting fear of glowing green lights in the dark. I later learned that the light was reflected from another source; however, I was still terrified of glowing green lights in the dark ever since.

Inside of my room, I have a white noise machine that I play while I sleep. While it was not the origin of the “glowing green eyes on the wall” it does have a glowing green light that it emits while it is on. I started covering the green light on it with various covers like napkins and small bags. While this made it possible for me to sleep at night, there were multiple occasions in which I would see the green light while walking to the bathroom because of a bad angle. This led to me shielding my eyes from the side of the room that my white noise machine was on, whenever I walked in and out of my room at night.

That was ridiculous though. I knew logically just how irrational my fear was, but I couldn’t shake it with logic alone. About a year ago, I decided to confront this somewhat ridiculous fear head on. I did not enjoy my technique and I doubt it would work for every fear, but it worked for this one.

I would purposefully look at my white noise machine’s glowing green light in the dark without allowing myself to look away or turn on a light. I reassured myself everything was fine and that the glowing green light could do literally nothing to me. Slowly, my fear went away and the lights did not bother me as much anymore. While I still may be slightly scared if I see a glowing green light out of only a corner of my eye, if I go back and locate the source of the light head on, even in the dark, I find that my fear goes away. I am much more confident now and I am proud that I got over my fear of glowing green lights no matter how irrational it was.