PHOBIAS AND THEIR CAUSES

There is thousands of phobias people face everyday. A phobia is an irrational, persistent fear of a situation, individual, activity or item that this person feels compelled to resist and avoid at all costs. Psychiatrists and others in the mental health community believe that phobias are a mixture of environmental, social and a predisposition of genetic makeup that ‘programs’ these phobias from birth. 

Agoraphobia is the fear of being in a situation and not having any help or not being able to escape it. This causes an overwhelming feeling of anxiety and panic and is the most debilitating of all the phobias.

There are three classes of phobias, agoraphobia as discussed above, specific and social round them out. Specific phobias contain four separate categories such as blood-injection phobia, fear of the natural environment, situational phobia and animal phobias. All together the four specific phobias contain over 350 varieties of phobias. The social phobia is by far one of the most debilitating in a sense that the person has a fear of social contact with the outside world. They are fearful of relationships, contact with other people, social situations such as meetings, parties, and the grocery store and so on. They are afraid of someone invading their personal space.

A phobia is a very real fear of something that may seem to be irrational to others, such as Rupophobia which is the fear of dirt. Something in the person’s environment, when they were a child or some traumatic incident made this person fear whatever it is they have a phobia of. It may take years to overcome these phobias; some never recover because it’s comfortable to hang onto a phobia and never have to face the fear.

The list of phobias are long and many seem to be without reason, but the people who suffer from the phobias have many reasons to fear these items, or sometimes it’s only one reason. Whatever the reason, it’s a persistent fear that will not allow them to go near, participate or otherwise engage with this item or person.

Ambulophobia is the fear of walking; Bibliphobia is the fear of books; Cacophobia is the fear of ugliness; Ergophobia is the fear of work; Graphophobia is the fear of handwriting or writing; Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is the fear of long words; Lachanophobia is the fear of vegetables; Linonophobia is the fear of string; Metrophobia is the fear of poetry; Motorphobia is the fear of automobiles; Nelophobia is the fear of glass; Onomatophobia is the fear of hearing certain words or names; Papyrophobia is the fear of paper; Phobophobia is the fear of phobias; Phronemophobia is the fear of thinking; Somniphobia is the fear of sleep; Syngenesophobia is the fear of relatives; Theatrophobia is the fear of theatres; Verbophobia is the fear of words;  Xanthophobia is the fear of yellow; Zelophobia is the fear of jealousy and Zoophobia is the fear of animals. This is only a partial list for there are hundreds of phobias and new ones are added daily. They are real to the people who experience them and can cause debilitating pain and discomfort to those who suffer from them.