Phobias and Fear Factors

[Aislin Ni MorRhiaghan]

Phobias and Fear Factors

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What is there to fear? Well, whattya got?
by Rich Maloof for MSN Health & Fitness

What is there to be afraid of? Paraskevidekatriaphobia, the fear of Friday the 13th, perhaps? If you were to consult a complete list of phobias, apparently everything. There are nearly as many phobias as there are nouns; just attach a Greek prefix to -phobia and you’re off to the fear factory.

Fear is in our DNA

Psychologists believe that evolution has woven fear into our collective unconscious. This is a good thing, in and of itself, since fear serves the vital function of alerting us to dangerous situations. It’s a defense mechanism. But a phobia is an extreme and disabling fear accompanied by an intense need to avoid the object or situation. As the thinking goes, phobic people may be exaggerating fears programmed into the human mind way back when we lived in caves and clubbed our dinner over the head with a stick.

Evolution is still catching up


The typical evolved brain knows, for instance, that snakes are more afraid of us than we are of them. But the primal brain says, “Shoot that thing.” It helps to see it through the caveman’s eyes. Fear developed to keep him alive.

But now consider the phobic mindset, in which fear becomes irrational. Say a young woman living in the hills of Los Angeles has a phobia about elephants. They are not indigenous to her hemisphere and she doesn’t go to the circus, but she freaks out when one appears on the nature channel. She can’t even read “Babar.” While most contemporary Westerners think of elephants as gentle giants in a zoo, her caveman self is sure the beast would want her for lunch. The primal fear has a lock on her.

Another example is aviophobia, the fear of flying. It’s possible people fear flying not because of the crashes reported (which, statistically, are very rare) but because there is something unnatural—to the caveman—about being shot through the air at 600 miles per hour, 32,000 feet above the ground, eating salty foods.

You are not alone (does that scare you?)

The most common phobias are zoophobias, which are anxieties about animals. Bats, rats, dogs and cats all make the list. The general fear of insects is very common, as is fear of mice. The two animals most likely to give the willies, though, are spiders and snakes. Seven percent of the population has a zoophobia, and women are three times more likely to be afflicted.

The five most common phobias are:

1. Fear of snakes (ophidiophobia)

2. Fear of giving a speech (glossophobia)

3. Fear of heights (acrophobia)

4. Fear of rodents (musophobia)

5. Fear of flying (aviophobia)

Following closely are phobias about confined spaces, thunder, nighttime and dogs.

You're afraid of what?

There is an exceedingly long list of “specific phobias,” covering everything from body hair to buttered biscuits. Many of them sound pretty funny so long as you’re not the one with the anxiety attack. Sure, it’s amusing to think someone can be afraid of colors (chromophobia), but how do these people buy fruit?

Papaphobia—fear of the pope.

Scorodophobia—fear of garlic.

Pteronophobia—fear of being tickled with feathers.

Ranidaphobia—fear of frogs.

Philematophobia—fear of kissing.

Aulophobia—fear of flutes.

Ostraconophobia—fear of shellfish.

Graphophobia—fear of handwriting.

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia—fear of long words (seriously).

Blennophobia—fear of slime.

Gerontophobia—fear of old people.

Peladophobia—fear of bald people.

Geropeladophobia—fear of old, bald people.

Phobophobia—fear of developing a fear.

There is also didaskaleinophobia, the fear of going to school—though you’d have to go if you want to pronounce it. Barophobia is the fear of gravity, which can be very inconvenient if you live on a planet.

Phobia film fest

There is no shortage of movies made for the sole purpose of scaring the pants off of viewers (gymnophobia: fear of being caught naked), but no doubt a few flicks have actually instilled phobias. Jaws and Airport ’77 come readily to mind. On occasion, feature films have pointed the camera eye at the phobias of lead characters.

Copycat: Sigourney Weaver plays a criminal psychologist who has a crippling fear of open spaces and is confined to her apartment, where she is terrorized by a serial killer.
Vertigo: A fear of heights preys on Jimmy Stewart after he sees a friend fall to his death. Hitchcock has a sadistically good time setting the climax in an old tower.
High Anxiety: Mel Brooks parodies Hitchcock in this “psycho-comedy,” set at the Psychoneurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous.
Arachnophobia: A small California town gets the creepy-crawlies when killer spiders make themselves at home.
Phobia: Patients of a psychiatrist are knocked off according to their phobias. This 1980 horror show begs the question, what do you call a fear of bad movies?
Famously phobic

Those of us who do suffer from such maladies can usually be left to bite our nails in private. Celebrities, of whom we must know everything, are not as lucky. In some cases, the phobia seems squarely at odds with a famous person’s identity:

Alfred Hitchcock psyched out the world with a knife-wielding, oedipal cross-dresser, but he was afraid of eggs.
Author Anne Rice has created generations of blood-sucking vampires who feast in the night, but she’s afraid of the dark.
Lyle Lovett is the living image of a songwriting Texas cowboy, but he’s afraid of cows. It’s not a stretch—he was trampled by a bull in 2002.
Donald Trump is celebrated as a world-class deal maker, but he has a fear of shaking hands.
Maybe there’s some comfort in knowing that phobias didn’t prevent these people from achieving success. We hope fear doesn’t stand in your way, either. Keep your inner caveman in the cave.

http://health.msn.com/centers/mentalhea ... =100111126

[GOTHIKA]