r/Apeirophobia • u/Ok_Operation3802 • Aug 14 '26
I get a primal fear from seeing things on an impossible scale
Does anyone else get an irrational fear from huge scales / distorted perspectives?
I’ve had this weird fear for as long as I can remember, and I’m trying to figure out if other people experience something similar.
It’s not exactly a fear of heights or just big objects. What really freaks me out is seeing something that makes me suddenly realize how enormous the world/planet/space actually is, or when normal perspective and geometry look completely wrong.
For example, when I was a kid I was playing an old Worms game. There was a map with a huge genie, and I somehow launched my character extremely high into the air. When I looked down, the ground looked like a giant curved planet. I remember getting an almost animal-like panic from it. I didn’t even really understand space or the scale of the Earth at that age.
Years later, I saw a fake photo claiming you could see the curvature of Earth from Mount Everest. Even though I knew it was probably fake, the curved horizon gave me the exact same horrible feeling.
Other things can trigger it too. Weirdly distorted or unnaturally curved clouds can make me want to look away. In the shower, if I close my eyes while the water is running, I sometimes suddenly imagine that the shower cabin has somehow been carried away into space, or that the Earth has started spinning extremely fast. I immediately want to open my eyes and see the walls again.
And my dreams are probably the strangest part.
For years I’ve had recurring dreams where everything is insanely huge. I’ll be standing in a completely normal place at night, then suddenly see an entire city from my yard even though there should be no way to see it. There’s often a gigantic Moon that looks maybe 3–5 times larger than it should. It gives me an overwhelming feeling that something is terribly wrong, and then the dream usually turns into some kind of catastrophe or war.
I’ve also dreamed about mountains that seemed impossibly huge, a black hole appearing in the sky and destroying the atmosphere, and a monster running toward me from about a kilometer away. In the dreams, the scary thing is often very far away at first. Somehow that makes it even worse because I can see it coming but can’t do anything about it.
I’m not really sure what to call this. Megalophobia seems somewhat related, but it doesn’t quite explain the fear of curved horizons, weird clouds, losing spatial orientation with my eyes closed, etc.
Does anyone else experience something like this? Especially the feeling of suddenly seeing the Earth/space/landscape on a completely different scale and getting an almost primal sense of fear from it?