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I'm not a mother yet but want to get married with kids one day. My older brother apparently got rid of his fear of the ocean two weeks ago. That was his biggest phobia ever; the fear of not touching the ocean floor and of drowning, the fear of being in deep waters. Long ago when he was my age (I'm nearly 19 now), he went to the beach with his friends, swam deeper and nearly couldn't make it back to shore. Someone had to pull him out and he vowed never to swim above waist-length on beaches. He's now 31, married and has an 8 year-old daughter; my niece.
Their daughter got curious, didn't listen to their instructions of not going too deep, they got distracted for some minutes and it happened so fast. My niece went deeper, was further and was struggling. Without thinking my brother went after her (even though he wasn't touching the ocean floor by then), caught up and got her out. He risked it all, his own fear, his own life, safety.
It was astonishing how he got rid of his fear. I've asked him about it but his only reply was he just didn't care at that moment and the fear of losing their daughter surpassed everything that can ever happen to him, overriding even his own trauma. Would you be able to face your own fear too if your child was in danger by your very own phobia or is scared of the very same thing you are but you have to be strong for them? How strong is parental instinct? My phobias are large spiders, heights are getting stuck on very tight, closed space. What my brother just did would be the equivalent of having my child myself and her/him gets covered with a couple tarantulas, screaming for help, there is no one availabe but me and I have to get rid of them myself with my bare hands.
When I was 9, my first sibling was born and I was quickly tasked to take over care responsibilities for him, and when I was 13, my Mom had my second little brother and I had to care for him when he was a baby, too. I remember that after they were born, I started having intense nightmares where my baby brother was in some kind of horrible danger and I had to save them. I actually died in some of those dreams. I had them about my own kids when they were little, too. Occasionally I STILL have those kinds of dreams about one of my sons, and he is 22 now.
I did not think that I wanted children at all ever. Yet I knew the very next morning, hours after conception had occurred. I knew. I had some mild physical symptoms and sensations and I just knew what they meant, somehow, right away. And despite my very strong belief that having a child was not part of my plan for my life, and despite being in a troubled relationship and extremely poor and it being arguably a bad decision for my life...I felt a ferocious protectiveness. Nothing and no one would harm my child or take it from me. It was sheer animal fierceness. There was no arguing with it. No logic could compete with it.
It does not ONLY make your phobias like, nothing. Not ONLY would you instantly set aside your own life and safety for the safety and care of your child. I used to say that if I had a choice between the lives of my two sons and the lives of every other human on the earth including myself, I would save my kids. It is not rational. It is not logical. My ex husband told me that if the house was on fire, he was saving me first because we could always make more kids. I told him that if he did not save our kids first, he would not LIVE long enough to make another kid, let alone with my cooperation.
Nature just does this to you. Your kids become not only more important than you, or more important than anything, they become more important than everything else put together. Over time, nature does start to loosen those hormonal shackles, though. As the kids get into adolescence and they want less snuggles and they become small people rather than your precious little creatures...gradually you do get a bit less intense and gain some perspective. It's not that you love them less, but your brain HAS to start stepping back because you have to reach a place where you can survive your kids making mistakes and experiencing life's consequences. You have to let them go, so that they can be adults. It is not easy. As a mother of two young adults, I often say that I never imagined in a million years that this would be the hardest part, but it really has been. I guess one can be lucky and have kids who grow into very strong and self sufficient teens and young adults. Society and many pressures and messages will tell you that if only you do everything right, they will turn out right. But that isn't true. It takes a lot of luck. I've known kids who had the most perfect family environments but who still went the wrong way, and I've seen kids who grew up in hell but hit the ground running as young adults. You won't know if there is some hidden predisposition to mental illness lurking, ready to blow up in everybody's face sometime in the high school years. There is so much that can go wrong and whatever anyone tells you, no parent has absolute control over these outcomes. You just don't. You can only do what just about every parent does, which is the best you can with what you've got. You can't save and protect them from everything, especially as they get older, but damned if your brain and nature won't push you to try.
But yeah...phobias...when you have a child, your greatest phobia of all becomes the notion of any harm coming to them. Nothing else comes close.
I'm not a mother yet but want to get married with kids one day. My older brother apparently got rid of his fear of the ocean two weeks ago. That was his biggest phobia ever; the fear of not touching the ocean floor and of drowning, the fear of being in deep waters. Long ago when he was my age (I'm nearly 19 now), he went to the beach with his friends, swam deeper and nearly couldn't make it back to shore. Someone had to pull him out and he vowed never to swim above waist-length on beaches. He's now 31, married and has an 8 year-old daughter; my niece.
Their daughter got curious, didn't listen to their instructions of not going too deep, they got distracted for some minutes and it happened so fast. My niece went deeper, was further and was struggling. Without thinking my brother went after her (even though he wasn't touching the ocean floor by then), caught up and got her out. He risked it all, his own fear, his own life, safety.
It was astonishing how he got rid of his fear. I've asked him about it but his only reply was he just didn't care at that moment and the fear of losing their daughter surpassed everything that can ever happen to him, overriding even his own trauma. Would you be able to face your own fear too if your child was in danger by your very own phobia or is scared of the very same thing you are but you have to be strong for them? How strong is parental instinct? My phobias are large spiders, heights are getting stuck on very tight, closed space. What my brother just did would be the equivalent of having my child myself and her/him gets covered with a couple tarantulas, screaming for help, there is no one availabe but me and I have to get rid of them myself with my bare hands.
Very strong, enough to sacrifice one's own life or limb to save the child. If it happens You will be able to do just as you describe. While there are some sad stories of parents murdering their own children, there is overwhelming number of instances of mother/father shielding their children from bullets with their own bodies.
It's not limited to parents.
You do what you need to do when the situation presents itself.
BTW, your brother may not have gotten rid of his fear, as you think; he pushed it aside in an adrenaline rush.
Exactly! I don't think it has anything to do with parental instincts, just human being instincts to protect in the face of danger.
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