Someone wrote to a AS forum asking whether anyone else had had any "weird" fears or phobias in childhood. I responded:

Your fears don't sound weird to me. I went through a several year period where I was afraid of encountering a bear (a live, wild bear) in my house. It took me years of conscious "cognitive reprogramming" to eliminate the fear from my reflexes. I was in my late 30s or early 40s at the time.

I'm not sure whether my phobia about vomiting is a "fear." It feels more like loathing. I don't vomit if it's physically possible to resist. Even when people say, "You'll feel better if you do," I don't.

Sometimes I experience a panic about falling. This is not the same as the fear I sometimes have when walking in a high place (e.g. a bridge) that I might throw myself over. The panic I'm talking about is when I'm walking along the sidewalk or a hallway or going up or down stairs and suddenly lose track of physical relationships so I'm unsure what comes next, where my foot is or should be going, whether the floor/stair/ground will be where my foot expects it to be, and so on.

When I was a child I went through the germ phobia that I understand quite a few AS kids experience. I washed the skin off my hands for a while.

I suspect I'd have a lot more phobias if I didn't have ritualized ways of doing things. For example, now that I live alone (since my mother died), I have to go through the pre-bedtime ritual with my bears. It takes the place of the smaller-scale ritual of saying goodnight to my mother. If I didn't have the ritual, I am sure I would be afraid of being alone in the dark.

My companion animals ward off scary thoughts, too -- not only the two cats but also the bears and the smaller animals who go around with me during my out-of-house activities. Every day when I go to work I have with me either my first "fetish" bear (in a little bag worn on a string around my neck), a small manatee (that is made to be worn as a pendant), or a silver lizard (a pin). For me this is like having a second soul, not someone separate with whom I have to relate in a tiring way, but part of me that is just separate enough to help support me through interactions with others (if that makes any sense).