Phobias: Stories about fears — The Story Collider

If someone tells you they’re not afraid of anything, they’re a liar. As the wise Nelson Mandela once said: "The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." In this week’s episode, both our storytellers face their fears, no matter how irrational.

Part 1: Steve Whyte decides to try exposure therapy to overcome his fear of germs.

Steve Whyte thought he had it all figured out until he left the womb. He was Elf #2 in the Old Greenwich Elementary School production of Twas The Night Before Christmas. Later, lured by the prospect of big money, Steve joined the improv world, and can be seen at the Magnet Theater in Chelsea. For money he edits video, and for fun he plays the drums.

Episode Transcript

Part 1

I joined a gym two weeks ago. Hold your applause because the trainer who had signed me up was showing me around where everything was and, as he's bringing me to the locker room, I remembered why I haven't belonged to a gym in several years. It's because locker rooms terrify me. This particular locker room looked immaculate and spotless but, to me, all locker rooms are a hotbed of germs and disease.

I have obsessive‑compulsive disorder and one of the ways it manifests is with germaphobia. In my case, it's pretty intense. I'm not just worried about getting sick or getting a disease. I also worry that if I get a germ on my hand or something, I might unknowingly pass it along to someone else unwittingly, maybe even a stranger. Maybe I'll shake someone's hand and maybe my immune system can handle that germ but they have a compromised immune system and they go home and get sick and die. And I'm responsible for killing people.

The guilt is just intense so, as a result, I just become very vigilant about not getting contaminated and looking for where germs might be.

As I'm talking now, I'm thinking about this microphone because there will be seven people speaking into this microphone. There's shows seven nights a week at this venue. I checked it out. There's two to seven shows a night. If my math is right, that's a lot of spit in this microphone. I'm trying not to make contact with it. Nothing against… I'm sure you guys’ spit is like perfectly clean and safe, but I'm playing it safe.

So I'm getting the tour through this locker room and now I don't want to… and my feeling about where disease comes from, it's mainly the orifices. The human orifices I think are dispelling a lot of our germs and diseases. The mouth and nose is enough, but you go in a locker room and people take their clothes off and, just like that, you've doubled the number of exposed orifices in the area.

Steve Whyte shares his story at The Tank in New York, NY in December 2019. Photo by Zhen Qin.

And so I'm making my way through the locker room, trying to make myself small so I don't come into physical contact with the bench or a locker, in case someone's butt like touched it. And the rational part of my brain knows it's highly unlikely that a guy's butt touched the locker, and then if I use the locker this unknown butt germ will get on my hand. And then I'll go out into the world and unknowingly pass the butt germ to someone and they go home and die from unknown butt germs. The rational part of me knows that, but the OCD part of me asks like, “Well, what if? Can you guarantee that is not possible?’ And the answer is, no, you cannot. It might be one in a billion, but there's a chance that can happen and I can't handle that guilt.

So I'm walking there. Now, there's two ways to treat OCD and germaphobia if you ask most psychiatrists or psychologists or doctors familiar with OCD. They'll tell you there's only two ways that are known to be reliably effective. One is medication, which I'm on, and the other is behavioral therapy.

Behavioral therapy, the way Dr. Kozak who is a behavioral therapist I worked with for a while, the way he explained it to me, it's very simple the way it works. It's basically habit breaking. In my case, I'm afraid I have a germ on my hand, that's the obsession. The related compulsion is I want to wash my hands and that will relieve the anxiety and the fear that I might be killing somebody soon.

And although I get relief in that moment, Dr. Kozak said what I'm doing is I'm training my brain to link the hand washing with the obsession. I'm teaching my brain that I was correct to have this fear and that makes the fear stronger. So every time I wash my hands, the fear of germs gets that much more intense.

The fix from the behavioral therapist point of view is to not do the compulsion. For an OCD person, if you don't do the compulsion, if you don't wash your hands, that fear, again, in my case, oh, my God, I'm going to start killing people soon, and it just starts building and building and you can't think of anything else. It's like I just got to wash my hands.

And what Dr. Kozak said, if you can make it to like 10, 15, maybe 20 minutes, you will find that that fear will eventually start to subside. It'll build all that time and it'll start to subside. So if you can remember that and just sit through it and don't be scared and embrace the fear whenever you're scared of something, that's the trick.

So I'm in the locker room and I'm imagining Dr. Kozak there in a lab coat. Dr. Kozak never wore lab coat but I like to picture him in a lab coat because it feels more persuasive to me. And I imagine I'm saying like, “Steve, you're scared of this. This is an opportunity. Like touch the bench. Touch the lockers.”

But I don't have 20 minutes to sit in my fear so I'm like, “Fuck that,” and I get out of the locker room.

The bottom line is, since I signed up two weeks ago, I've been back to the gym zero times. But locker rooms aren't the only places where you find nudity. Strip clubs are notorious for having a laissez faire attitude about clothing. And when I lived in San Francisco, I lived a block up from the Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theater, which happened to be the most notorious strip club in San Francisco and considered to be one of the most notorious strip clubs in the world. It's world famous. I could see out my window. I'd see buses pull up every day and tourists would get out, like people had heard of the Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theater.

One of the reasons it was famous is because it's not just topless. It's completely naked. The other reason is, supposedly, they're loose with the rules there and anything goes and crazy shit happens.

I walk by this theater every day and I'm curious. Like what's the big deal? Why are people traveling halfway around the world to go into this place? I'm not opposed to seeing beautiful people undress provocatively. That's also a plus for me if I were to go in, but I'm just terrified that.

The other problem is stripping is sexual. I think we can agree. And because it's sexual, naked people and me thinking about sex, I start thinking about STDs.

Now, there's no reason to believe that a stripper has a higher chance of having an STD than I do, but my OCD it just hooks that up. It's like, oh, my God. That place has got to be covered in like a thin layer of STANDARD. Like everything in there is just STANDARD.

So I was curious but I'd walk by there and I'd refrain from going in. And then one Christmas season, a guy I knew from work who used to have a connection with the theater, for a Christmas present, put me on the guest list to the Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theater's private Christmas party.

Now, I'd heard about this party and my friends had heard about it and everyone was always like, “Oh, my God. Can you imagine what must happen in that party after what goes on in the regular club?”

So I was on the guest list and I thought, “Well, there's no way I can handle that. That is beyond…”

But I tell my friends because this is a good bragging opportunity. It's like, “Guys, I got an in.”

And they're like, “Oh, my God, you got to tell us everything.”

I was like, “Well, I'm not going, though.”

And they're like, “What? You have like the Golden Ticket to the Willy Wonka Factory. You have to go. You owe it to us as a friend.”

And I'm like, “Guys, I'm sorry. I'm not feeling it.”

And then my buddy Mel says, “What are you? Scared?’

Then I picture Dr. Kozak in his lab coat standing there and he's like, “You know, Steve, this is a great opportunity to address your fears. So go to the private strip club party.”

So I go to the private strip club party. And as I walk in the door, I'm freaking out. I'm afraid what I'm going to see. And I'm surprised to see everyone is very well dressed. People are in beautiful gowns and dresses. The guys are in suits. A couple of them are in tuxes. This is their special Christmas party. It's their big going‑out night of the year. There's no nudity. There's nothing. It's like a regular Christmas party.

So I'm relieved and a little disappointed, but mostly relieved. But I have this other problem in that I'm very introverted when it comes to cocktail parties. And all these people know each other very well and I don't know anybody.

So I make a beeline for the bar and I get two triple vodkas sodas. I just down one of them and I take the other for regular drinking speed. I'm working my way through… so this this party was at a swanky suite in a penthouse of a hotel downtown San Francisco. I'm finding my way through the crowd. I'm looking for some space where I can like be alone with my drink.

I go into the master bedroom, which is just as big as the living room and just as crowded with people, and I see in the corner there is a hot tub jacuzzi that's not being used. And no one's over there so it's like there's my spot.

So I go over there and I stand with my back to the jacuzzi hot tub and I just start people‑watching and drinking my drink. After a while, the buzz starts setting in and I start thinking, “You know what? What am I so freaked out about? These are just people like me and this is just a Christmas party. It's very nice.”

As I'm starting to relax, I feel this warmth behind me. I turn around and the jacuzzi tub has been filled. It is now filled with water and steam is coming off the surface. And there are these two beautiful, naked women in the tub and they're just kind of like splashing each other and being playful.

And now the booze is really hitting. I'm like hammered and I'm just trying to figure out how did this tub get filled so quickly. I'm staring at them. And because I'm drunk and I'm not realizing I'm being rude by staring, but I'm just looking confused, and so one of them kind of paddles over to me and says like, “So, are you going to get in or what?”

I was like, “Oh, there's no way.” By my account, there's at least six orifices under that water and water is going in and out of them like it goes in and out of the Gowanus Canal. That is not a place for me to go.

I say, “Thank you for the invitation, but I'm more of a dry person. I'm going to stay out here.”

And then she says to me, “What? Are you scared?”

So Dr. Kozak appears in my mind in his lab coat and he said, “You know, Steve, this is a good opportunity…”

And before I know it, I'm kind of like having an out‑of‑body experience. I just see myself disrobing. I get naked and I get into the tub with the two women.

I'm not in there for more than a minute that they get out. Apparently, having a drunken, introverted guy in the tub with them was not their idea of a fantasy, so they leave and they disappear. They're just gone. I don't even know what happened to them. All of a sudden, I'm just floating naked at this Christmas party surrounded by wonderfully dressed people.

And I'm thinking, “Wow.” I realize in my head, tomorrow, I'm probably going to spend a lot of my day on the phone trying to see if I can get some lab work done at the doctor's office, but at this moment, right now, I actually don't feel scared.

Thank you.