The concept of phobia is quite an interesting psychological concept. A phobia is a condition of extreme fear where people experience significant emotional distress and a general sense of being over the edge. Certain objects, situations or even types of people can trigger a phobia anxiety attack. People with phobias often exhibit physical symptoms when the panic attack strikes, such as rapid, pounding heartbeats, dry mouth, dizziness, fingers turning cold and a strong sensation of wanting to flee and avoid the trigger, etc.
These symptoms are elicited by either exposure to the trigger or just the mere thought of it. Some of these symptoms, if persistent, can cause the person’s heart to arrest from fear, although not common, it is a serious issue. Some people are born with the phobias they experience while many acquire it throughout their lives, usually following a traumatic experience. Some people could have more than one phobia; however, not all people have phobias. Some people have genetic tendencies to develop certain phobias and are just waiting for an external factor to push the button and express this phobia.
That often explains why people spontaneously develop phobias towards things that they previously were fine with or without experiencing any emotional trauma that could explain its onset. Some phobias can be cured with therapy while others are much harder to cure. Some phobias seem more rational than others, such as the fear of snakes or spiders while there are weird and rather irrational phobias. Here is a list of 11 bizarre, irrational phobias that exist.
Surprisingly, some people find the sight of holes, no matter how small they are, to be very distressing and unpleasant. People with Trypophobia can go to extreme measures to avoid small and harmless objects such as sponges or honeycombs just because they have holes in them. Scientists claim that the reason behind this phobia dates back to our ancestors where their biological sense told them to avoid holes and traps that were set by cannibals or enemies from nearby tribes back in the dark ages. It is fascinating how such biological information can be carried in our genes for so many decades and transferred to us from our ancestors through many successive generations.
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Generally, people refer to feathers as a metaphor for softness. It is also common knowledge that objects stuffed with feathers such as pillows, usually signify a lavish life. However, there seems to be a number of people who experience extreme fear when they are tickled with feathers. Although this act is entirely harmless, psychologists explain that this condition has been reported by people who have been extensively tickled with feathers quite often during younger ages to the point where their skin associated the feather touch with an unpleasant sensory sensation. In retaliation, sometimes the skin might exhibit an inflammatory reaction due to its association with this unpleasant sensation as a threat.
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This is a quite new phobia, first reported around the 80s. Palindromes are words that are spelled the same way backward as they are forward. For example,“eve.” Despite how harmless and irrational this is, some people have developed an extreme intolerance to such words which eventually developed into a phobia. This condition can also apply to numbers or dates that are the same when reading from either direction like 1001. Ironically, the name of the phobia itself is a palindrome. Another ironic naming for a phobia is the phobia of long words where the name itself is abnormally long. Fear of long words: hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia!
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People with descendophobia find it very difficult to walk down the stairs or to generally physically decline. They start to experience some physical symptoms such as nausea and dizziness when descending the stairs. Some extreme cases might throw up or even blackout. There is also a similar phobia, but it is quite the opposite. It is the fear of going up the stairs. Ascendophobia. In most cases this phobia is associated with a traumatic experience, however, sometimes it is linked to balance and stability issues where the sufferers feel they will not be able to descend or ascend without losing their balance.
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Phago means to eat in Greek. People who have this phobia often complain of discomfort and irritation when eating. This experience, while eating often causes them to link eating with unpleasant sensations, therefore, many cases develop a phobia of eating, which is quite a serious condition that leads to weight loss, anemia, severe weakness, vitamin deficiency and other consequent conditions due to inadequate food intake. People with phagophobia might find comfort in eating soft food. Upon clinical investigations, the clinicians found no apparent physical reason to associate with this discomfort. It is quite unfortunate and tough to live with this phobia.
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Somniphobia is one of the weird phobias and toughest phobias to live with, considering the catastrophic and fatal effects of sleep deprivation. However, some rationale could be tracked down to why this phenomenon occurs. The most common reasons are nightmares and/or terrifying experiences that happen during sleep. Examples include a neurological disorder where the mind is active and awake while the body is still physically asleep.
The patients start to experience sleep hallucinations as well as sleep paralysis, often associated with terrifying images and perception of evil presence in the room, all of which gives them a generally negative experience associated with sleeping. Many sufferers start to feel dread as the night approaches and the fearful anticipation of late night hours usually worsens their condition. If they do not seek treatment, many of them start to experience terrible symptoms due to sleep deprivation such as fatigue, panic attacks, transient memory loss, poor focus, as well as frequent mood swings and deterioration of social relationships.
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People with barophobia are split into two types. Those who fear the absence of gravity, which might have developed as a result of a wild imagination on the loose after reading a fictional story or perhaps a negative experience in space (If they were astronauts or participated in some sort of anti-gravity experiment). The other type is the fear of being crushed by gravity.
This phenomenon could be due to a traumatic experience where the sufferer has fallen from a great height and got injured due to the gravitational pull. Although the reason for the fall might not be directly linked with gravity, however, their minds make this connection instantly and blame gravity for their pain. Symptoms include the generalized symptoms of fear such as dry mouth, shivering, etc.
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This phobia should not be confused with the rational intimidation of women or fear of rejection. In this condition, sufferers experience extreme fear and panic attacks along with total inability to socialize with or be near a beautiful woman. The reasons are mostly psychological and are due to negative association. For example, a man who has been brutally hurt and/or rejected by numerous beautiful women or a man who has a weak self-esteem is one who is more likely to develop this phobia with time. As hard as it can be, this phobia is treatable using self-confidence programs and exposure to beautiful women while trying to fight the fear symptoms.
While some people were rushing to California during the gold rush, some people must have been fleeing away. This is another weird and irrational phobia of a precious metal, known as aurum in Latin. Gold has long been cherished by wealthy men, women, and merchants. However, this is no laughing matter; patients with aurophobia really do experience severe symptoms at the sight of gold and follow a strict, no-contact policy. Most clinicians link this phobia, like almost any other phobia, with traumatic experience where gold seems to remind the sufferer of a painful situation or a long lost loved one.
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Again, this phobia can be split into two types, those who fear the nightmares itself, and those who fear the meaning of dreams, especially if they were recurring, believing that they are signs or prophecies which are destined to happen. The treatment of the first type of oneirophobia is to treat the root cause of the nightmares itself, whether by limiting exposure to spooky stories or horror movies especially at night or by treating anxieties and bottled emotions that can cause nightmares. To treat the other subtype, the patient should have a strong will and willingly stop himself/herself from falling into the trap of believing everything that happens in their dreams.
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To me, this is the weirdest and most interesting phobia. It sounds like inception. Psychology describes this condition as the fear of fear itself, being afraid of experiencing fear. Its psychology is quite complicated, but in simple words, this is by far the only phobia that does not require stimuli to trigger the panic symptoms. It exists most of the time if not all the time. Some sufferers can manage this phobia by trying not to think or dig deep about what they fear or whether or not they have something to fear.
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