Posted on 01/10/2008 12:52:29 PM PST by blam
Phobia catalogue reveals bizarre list of fears
By Ben Farmer
Last Updated: 6:22pm GMT 10/01/2008
It is enough to give someone an irrational fear of long and faintly improbable-sounding words.
In fact according to an exhaustive list of unusual phobias the fear of long words already exists and has a name.
A phobia of being tickled with feathers could be rooted in childhood
A catalogue of fears unearthed by New Scientist magazine, claims sufferers have hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, or sesquippedaliophobia for short, which describes “a persistent, abnormal, and unwarranted fear of long words”.
The list of hundreds of unlikely irrational fears, which can leave their sufferers with shortness of breath, rapid breathing, an irregular heartbeat, sweating, nausea, and overall feelings of dread was taken from a US counselling website.
Among the bizarre crippling dreads listed on changethatsrightnow.com are the ridiculous sounding zemmiphobia, or fear of the great mole rat, and alektorophobia, or a fear of chickens.
Those with lutraphobia fear otters, those with globophobia fear balloons and those with pteronophobia fear of being tickled by feathers.
advertisement Generations of comedians would have struggled for jokes without pentheraphobia - fear of the mother-in-law, while fear of France and French culture is termed Genuphobia.
Doctors define a phobia as “a constant, extreme or irrational fear of an animal, object, place or situation” that would not normally worry most people.
The fears often develop in late childhood, adolescence or early adulthood, sometimes in response to a frightening event.
While some people who have phobias of objects or situations they rarely encounter, for example snakes, can frequently live their lives normally, other sufferers of complex phobias like agoraphobia - a fear of being away from home, can find it very difficult to lead a normal life.
The mental health charity Mind estimates there are more than 10 million people who suffer from phobias, though fear of admitting a problem makes it difficult to judge true figures.
Simple phobias involve a fear of specific, particular objects, situations or activities, with some of the most common instances being insects, rats, germs, enclosed spaces, heights or flying.
Complex phobias such as agoraphobia, can involve several linked fears.
Professor Robert Edelmann, patron of the National Phobics Society, said: “It would be unusual to find someone who doesn’t have some fears about something, but it is a smaller number of people who have disabling clinical phobias.”
He said while a phobia of being tickled by feather may sound unusual he could enviasge someone having a phobia if for example as a child they were tickeld when they did not want to be and did not like it.
He said he himself had treated people who were anxious of clowns, which was not too distant from a fear of balloons.
He said: “The list for potential phobias is actually quite long.”
One thoery of how phobias develop is that people are biologically programmed to be afraid of certain things.
Prof Edelmann said: “It might have been useful for our prehistoric ancestors to fear the dark, when they might be attacked or to fear little animals that dash about which could harm them.”
A spokesman for the website said it had not treated people for all the phobias listed and fear of public speaking was among the most common with clients.
He said: “On a regular basis we tend to deal with perhaps 15 of the phobias.”
Wonder what the term is for the fear of Democrats?
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Ah, I believe they call that, "normal".
Perhaps of Moose Bites, Cheese and/or Sisters??
LOL!
phobiphobia
Others may work very hard and pay lots of money to attain this
cankleanklephobia: fear you’re beginning to look like Hillary Clinton.
I’ve never heard of such. I wrote her off as a kook because that’s what she is, a kook.
bubbapuppaphobia: fear that Bill Clinton is going to allow your dog to get run over by a car.
agoraphobia: fear of the “market place.” IOW, she doesn’t want to appear in public. It’s a real condition.
No offense, but maybe she just didn’t want to go out to lunch with you. ;-)
I fear any type of rodent. Other than that, I’m OK.
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