# Phobias - the real and the wtf? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 19, 2005, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phobias-the-real-and-the-wtf/317804 "2005-08-19T21:13:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2005, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phobias-the-real-and-the-wtf/317804/21 "2005-08-20T11:48:56Z")
> [@OtakuLoki](#): > > Trying to explain that the idea of anyone or any thing touching my belly button makes me want to curl up into a foetal ball… that makes no sense to most people. Even prefacing it with the words: “This is an irrational fear, no reason for it, but,” doesn’t stop jokers from wanting to poke my belly. I understand. For me it’s my whole abdomen. I have no idea how it popped up (the fear, not the abdomen), but I know it was in the last 5 years. I can’t even stand to let my husband touch my abdomen, which has led to some awful fights as he’s a belly stroker. Learning abdominal massage in massage class was torture because I had to let my practice partner touch my belly. I seriously zonked myself out on Kava Kava and herbal muscle relaxants to get through it. Not a good thing. Yet I don’t tell many people about it, not because I’m ashamed of it, but because telling people immediately leads to someone trying to touch my belly! WTF? Gerroff! :mad: ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2005, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phobias-the-real-and-the-wtf/317804/22 "2005-08-20T23:45:23Z")
> [@rexnervous](#): > > While perusing said list, a small voice in the back of my head starts to go “hey, these can’t all be real, can they?” > > So I ask the dopers, are [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_phobias]all of these real > > These just can’t be real, diagnosed phobias, can they? There’s no telling what a traumatic incident, brain wiring, or simple chemical imbalance will cause a fear of. In my case, I suffer periods of somniphobia (fear of sleep) where I will go \*days \* without sleeping, literally pass out from exhaustion, sleep an hour only to repeat the cycle. The worst incident lasted a few weeks. ---
**Author:** ![seosamh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@seosamh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/seosamh)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2005, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phobias-the-real-and-the-wtf/317804/23 "2005-08-20T23:48:08Z")
Find a Greek word, add “phobia” and bob’s your uncle. So, I claim to suffer from aphuiaphobia, an irrational fear of anchovies. ---
**Author:** ![bluecanary](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bluecanary/32/3614_2.png) [@bluecanary](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bluecanary)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2005, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phobias-the-real-and-the-wtf/317804/24 "2005-08-21T00:02:40Z")
It would be really interesting to see a list of phobias together with case histories, or some statistics as to how frequent they are in the population. Because most of the ‘phobia’ terms seem like they were coined in just the way **seosamh** suggests, without anyone actually having been diagnosed with them. ---
**Author:** ![Sierra\_Indigo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f0a364/32.png) [@Sierra\_Indigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sierra_Indigo)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2005, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phobias-the-real-and-the-wtf/317804/25 "2005-08-21T00:18:12Z")
I brought it up in the other thread about phobias, but my fear of lightbulbs has gotten to the point where it does affect my life. I can’t handle them, someone else has to change them for me, which leads to blown lights being left blown until I can get Hubby to change them for me, even though I’m physically capable of doing so myself. If I lived alone, I think I’d be in the dark by now. ---
**Author:** ![sunstone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunstone/32/3372_2.png) [@sunstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sunstone)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2005, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phobias-the-real-and-the-wtf/317804/26 "2005-08-21T01:23:22Z")
Not to make “light” of any phobias (pun…must resist reference to lumenophobia), but if you take the Latin or Greek meaning of a word…example: lumen = light, + phobia = fear)…you can make up your own word for a phobia. (Hmmm, guess I didn’t do so well in resisting the pun…) This does not indicate that the phobia is common (or rare). I personally have a phobia about dogs because of a childhood experience. So I have to use a lot of self control in the presence of strange dogs. Totally irrational, but there it is. ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2005, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phobias-the-real-and-the-wtf/317804/27 "2005-08-21T01:35:13Z")
> [@](#): > > I brought it up in the other thread about phobias, but my fear of lightbulbs has gotten to the point where it does affect my life. I can’t handle them, someone else has to change them for me, which leads to blown lights being left blown until I can get Hubby to change them for me, even though I’m physically capable of doing so myself. If I lived alone, I think I’d be in the dark by now. Have you considered replacing them with fluorescents, which can last for years? At least then, you wouldn’t have to go through the hassle of finding someone to change them for you. –yBeayf, raging spheksophobic ---
**Author:** ![Barely\_Adequate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/58956e/32.png) [@Barely\_Adequate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barely_Adequate)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2005, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phobias-the-real-and-the-wtf/317804/28 "2005-08-21T01:38:51Z")
> [@rexnervous](#): > > _“Zemmiphobia - This, I just don’t know. How many people actually encounter a great mole rat in their lives? But, in honor of this word, I have just named my Fantasy Football team the Bend Zemmiphobiacs.”_ HA! I just named my Fantasy Football team the Great Mole Rats! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Sierra\_Indigo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f0a364/32.png) [@Sierra\_Indigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sierra_Indigo)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2005, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phobias-the-real-and-the-wtf/317804/29 "2005-08-21T01:43:14Z")
> [@yBeayf](#): > > Have you considered replacing them with fluorescents, which can last for years? At least then, you wouldn’t have to go through the hassle of finding someone to change them for you. > > –yBeayf, raging spheksophobic Blew out a fluro bulb in our bedroom within four months of putting it in. The wiring in our house is crap ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Amaranta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Amaranta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amaranta)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2005, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phobias-the-real-and-the-wtf/317804/30 "2005-08-21T06:16:20Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > I think they probably are real. I have partial personal experience with a couple of them. I had an anxiety disorder a few years ago. It made me have extreme energy all the time and I couldn’t sit still at all. I ran 8 miles a day and lifted weights for 2 hours a day just to calm myself down. > > My biggest fear at the time - sitting still - and it was at the level of a phobia. I was terrified of being forced to sit still in work or social situations. I was convinced that the raging muscle and brain impulses would cause me to go insane. > > This ties into two phobias on the list: I was scared of haircuts. Not that I was scared of the actual haircut but just the fact that I would have to sit still while someone held sharp objects to my head. I would work out extra hard just before a haircut just so I would be exhausted. > > The other was fear of balancing - because I couldn’t stay still, I couldn’t stand nicely and calmly in one place. This embarrassed me once at work when I got called on stage to receive an award and I couldn’t stay still long enough so I told them I had to sit down. > > All of this has been fixed now but I can see how people can end up with fears that sound awfully strange from the outside. > > My mother’s best friend had a phobia of frogs. She would make her dates carry her from the car to the door so that she didn’t get attacked by frogs. She ripped her room apart regularly looking for them. How this got started, nobody knows. That’s very interesting - thanks for sharing that story. I’ve always read these lists and looked at things like “fear of haircuts” and just scoffed, because who on earth could be afraid of just sitting there, having a haircut? I never thought about the fact that it could be the sitting there, and NOT the actual cutting of hair, that could be the problem. Fascinating. ---
**Author:** ![davenportavenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f8ce5/32.png) [@davenportavenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davenportavenger)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2005, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phobias-the-real-and-the-wtf/317804/31 "2005-08-21T07:02:42Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > My biggest fear at the time - sitting still - and it was at the level of a phobia. I was terrified of being forced to sit still in work or social situations. I was convinced that the raging muscle and brain impulses would cause me to go insane. > > This ties into two phobias on the list: I was scared of haircuts. Not that I was scared of the actual haircut but just the fact that I would have to sit still while someone held sharp objects to my head. I would work out extra hard just before a haircut just so I would be exhausted. > > The other was fear of balancing - because I couldn’t stay still, I couldn’t stand nicely and calmly in one place. This embarrassed me once at work when I got called on stage to receive an award and I couldn’t stay still long enough so I told them I had to sit down. Not to be an armchair diagnostician, but this sounds more like hyperactivity or mania to me, not a specific phobia. If anything, the phobia here would not be of the haircuts or the standing up, but of the damage caused by the raging impulses. There really are people who are scared of haircuts (Howard Hughes was one), and they are afraid of the cut itself, not something tangential. I don’t doubt that most of those phobias could exist on a theoretical level, since after all, it’s possible to brainwash someone to be averse to any sort of stimulus, and a phobia is nothing more than a brainwashing that’s taken place over an entire lifetime (possibly helped along by brain chemistry). However, I doubt that some of them have actually existed “in nature;” I think in many cases the word precedes an actual case study. There was a lady on one of those Maury Povich “phobia” shows who claimed to be scared of olives because they look like dead people’s eyes. People are strange all over. ---
**Author:** ![Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e56c9b/32.png) [@Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harriet_the_Spry)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2005, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phobias-the-real-and-the-wtf/317804/32 "2005-08-21T18:50:51Z")
olifactophobe checking in. Especially any type of chemical odor, I panic as if I’m in a gas chamber or something. They don’t seem to have one of my other phobias, so I’ll coin anaphylactophobia: fear of developing a severe allergic reaction. Seems to be irrational in my case, since it’s never happened and I tested negative for all food allergies. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/phobias-the-real-and-the-wtf/317804.md?page=1)