I have been deathly afraid of fire and being burned/burning to death, since I was about 7 years old. I don’t know how it started. I never had bad experiences with fire, never got burned, and didn’t know anyone who was burned or killed in a fire. I do remember around the time the phobia started, my older brother told me how bad being burned hurt, and said something along the lines of, it hurts extremely bad and you just wouldn’t believe how much it hurt, and that it’s the worst pain you can possibly feel. So that might be what initially made me so scared. But I’m now 20 and haven’t gotten over it. It’s definitely affected my life in some ways:

I have great difficulty driving because I am absolutely terrified of getting into a car accident where the car catches on fire, and being trapped inside and burning alive. A few years ago, that happened to a teenage girl where I live, somebody pulled out in front of her and when she hit them, the car burst into flames and she was pinned inside and burned to death. We also watched something at school about drunk driving and they showed us this clip of a woman who was hit by a drunk driver, pinned in the car, and the car caught fire. She didn’t die but she was burned so badly and left horribly disfigured. These things have made my phobia even worse. I avoid driving at all costs. I have my license and everything, but I will only really drive in familiar places, and on smaller roads where people aren’t going that fast. I refuse to drive on highways and interstates where the speed limit is much faster and accidents can be a lot worse. I always pay attention and drive safely, but that doesn’t help because I know there are so many idiots on the road who still make it dangerous, no matter how careful YOU are. I never stay out anywhere past 10:00 because I'm worried the later it is, the more likely there are to be drunks on the road and I am so scared of some stupid drunk causing me to be barbecued in my car.

I am also terrified of flying in airplanes because when they crash, there’s always a huge explosion and fireball. I am also afraid of heights and falling, so that makes it worse because I’m already scared of the plane falling out of the sky, but then you eventually die in the fireball. I know you’d probably die on impact but you’d still feel the fire for a few seconds probably. I hardly ever have to fly, but when I do, it’s a total nightmare. I HATE it.

And I have never been able to light matches. The only time I did was when I was in Girl Scouts when I was a kid, and we went camping, and one of our troop leaders wanted me to help start the fire to cook, and of course I was terrified and didn’t want to do it and almost started crying, so the lady helped me and put the match in my hand, and put her hand over mine and guided it over the box to help me light the match, I just remember feeling sick to my stomach and my heart racing so fast when the match lit up, and I could feel the heat, and I thought the fire was going to burn my hand. Since then I have refused to ever light a match. I also never took chemistry in high school, and ended up taking science classes for “dumb” people, all so I wouldn’t have to use a Bunsen burner or do anything with fire. Because of this I graduated with a regular diploma instead of advanced, all because I didn’t take “advanced” sciences. I’m pretty embarrassed about that, but at least I’ve still gotten into college just fine.

When I was younger, around the time the phobia started, I also remember having trouble sleeping because I was scared of my house catching on fire, but now I at least understand fires often happen due to something careless like leaving a candle burning, which I never do, so I don’t think it’s likely. But in the back of my head I still sometimes think about a situation where I’d have no control, like an arsonist setting the house on fire. I try not to think about that so much so my main issues are driving, flying, and freaking out when I’m near a match or fire of any sort. I even get nervous on my birthdays when I have to sit in front of the lit candles on the cake. I basically just can’t go anywhere near the smallest flame, and I am absolutely petrified of being burned to death. Whenever I hear a news story about someone being burned to death (like the girl in the car accident) I am just horrified and can’t get it out of my head for weeks, and can’t stop thinking about how much that person suffered and worrying about the same thing happening to me.

Is there any way I can ever get over this??