The fear of kissing is philemaphobia.
The fear of being stared at, whether it’s with amorous intentions or not, is scopophobia.
Hi, I’m Erin McCarthy, I suffer from arachnophobia (the fear of
spiders) and acrophobia (the fear of heights), and this is the List Show.
Today, I’m sharing a bunch of common (and some not so common) phobias,
from thalassophobia to agoraphobia—the latter of which is not, as I once thought,
simply the fear of leaving one’s own home. Let’s get started.
The
DSM-5 doesn’t attempt to comprehensively list every single phobia that’s out there,
so it’s a bit difficult to say exactly what is and isn’t a widely recognized phobia. (And if
you’ve never heard of the DSM-5, it’s just the fifth edition of The Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders, a standard resource in defining and categorizing mental health issues.)
You won’t find gelotophobia, or the fear of being laughed at, on Merriam-Webster.com or the Oxford
English Dictionary, for example. But it certainly seems to be a recognizable fear, and you can read
about it on BBC.com and in a piece for McGill University written by the Director of their
Office for Science and Society, Joe Schwarcz. In this video we’re sticking to phobias we could find
in multiple sources, but it’s fair to assume that some are much more common than others.
The DSM-V lists five categories of what it calls specific phobias. One category is animal types,
including arachnophobia, which I’ve already mentioned, and the fear of insects, known as
entomophobia. It also alludes to the fear of dogs, often called cynophobia. The DSM doesn’t
specifically mention equinophobia—the fear of horses—or ailurophobia, the fear of cats, though
they would also fall under the “animal types” category. On a related note, we have doraphobia,
what Merriam-Webster.com describes as “a dread of touching the skin or fur of an animal.”
The second type of fear the DSM-5 lists is “natural environment type.”
That’s basically what it sounds like, and would include something like the fear of
water—aquaphobia. Hydrophobia sounds like the same thing, and it sort of is,
though the word is generally used today in regards to a symptom of the rabies virus.
If you’re afraid of very deep water, in particular, you suffer from thalassophobia,
which can also be defined as the fear of the ocean. And if you or your four-legged
friend hates thunderstorms, one of you may suffer from astraphobia,
which is associated with the fear of thunder and lightning.
Your pup might also have a case of zuigerphobia—the fear of vacuum cleaners.
Ergophobia is the fear of work, or maybe just an
aversion to someone telling you you’ve got a case of the Mondays.
The DSM-V’s next category of phobia,
Blood-Injection-Injury Type, is pretty self-explanatory. The fear of blood is
hemophobia. The fear of needles or injections is trypanophobia.
A survey conducted in the UK indicated that people with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy were
roughly twice as likely to suffer from a fear of needles as non-hesitant individuals.
The situational type of phobia includes fears that can pop up in specific parts of life,
like flying in an airplane (aerophobia) or elevators (which the DSM-V does allude to,
though the only word we could find to describe that condition is elevatophobia,
which seems pretty unofficial). Claustrophobia,
which may include the fear of elevators as a subset, would be a situational type of phobia.
I thought of agoraphobia as claustrophobia’s opposite—basically the fear of leaving one’s
house—but that might not be quite right. The UK’s National Health Service website defines
it as “ … a fear of being in situations where escape might be difficult or that
help wouldn’t be available if things go wrong.” That can include open spaces,
public transportation, and even, according to the Mayo Clinic’s website, enclosed spaces.
The DSM’s last category of phobias is the rather broad “Other Type.” Under that umbrella, it
mentions the fear of choking, which is apparently a rare phobia. It’s been called pseudodysphagia.
Emetophobia is the fear of vomiting.
The DSM-5 also mentions the fear of costumed characters in its “other” section. One word
for that—masklophobia—does not appear in most standard reference texts, as far as we could see,
but it does seem to describe a very real fear, often experienced by children. An article on
LiveScience.com claims that about 1 percent of children suffer from a fear of costumed
characters. The New York Times published a piece in April 2020 about maskaphobia—often used as a
synonym—specifically in the context of the less fanciful masks worn during the covid-19 pandemic.
Another fear that’s fairly common amongst kids is globophobia—the fear of balloons or,
more specifically, the fear of those balloons popping.
Blennophobia also doesn’t appear in most dictionaries,
but a number of less authoritative sources have described it as “ … the irrational fear
of slime.” Apparently anything from mucus to fish can set off a person’s blennophobia.
Some fears are truly difficult to avoid. Anemophobia is the fear
of air. That can manifest itself as a fear of the wind or drafts.
Barophobia is the fear of gravity, perhaps because sufferers believe it
will cause them to fall or because they believe something will fall on them.
Peter Pan may have had a case of gerascophobia, the fear of growing up or aging. Aging may be
tough, but as a wise person once told me, it definitely beats the alternative.
The fear of Greek terms or complex scientific terminology is hellenologophobia.
I’m not sure what the fear of irony is called.
Logophobia is the fear of words. On a possibly related note, we have glossophobia,
the fear of public speaking. That’s often referred to as the most common fear. That’s hard to say
definitively, but glossophobia certainly does seem to afflict a large portion of the populace.
The OED has two very different definitions for Scotophobia—one with a capital S and the
other lowercase. Big-S Scotophobia is defined as “Intense aversion or hostility toward Scotland,
its people, or its culture.” Sounds a lot like specific brand of xenophobia… The other type
of scotophobia is less objectionable: it’s a fear or dislike of the dark.
Are you afraid of the dark? (Shout-out to SNICK.) If so, you could say you
have nyctophobia or achluophobia, two words that have been used for that fear.
On the flip side is photophobia, which the OED defines as “aversion to or avoidance of (bright)
light … “ That might not be a fear, per se, as we typically think of it. It’s associated with
neurological diseases and eye issues that can make light painful or uncomfortable.
Ablutophobia is the fear of bathing or washing.
Nosophobia is the fear of disease.
If you suffer from trypophobia, you’ll want to skip the next ten seconds of this video. That word
refers to a fear of things that look like this, featuring holes in some kind of repeating pattern.
There doesn’t seem to be a single conclusion in the scientific community as to why people
have such a strong aversion to these types of images. Two researchers at the Centre for Brain
Science at the University of Essex speculated that it could be related to a similarity
between the hole-filled images and the appearance of certain dangerous animals. The thinking goes
that people are basically transposing a rational fear onto an irrational situation.
When you hear that people are afraid of gravity or slime, you might be tempted to chuckle. I mean,
the prospect of being mortified of the bath practically calls out for jokes about
ex-boyfriends with questionable grooming habits. But even the more unusual phobias on this list
presumably cause real harm to the people who suffer from them. Many people who have phobias
know perfectly well that their fear is irrational, but that doesn’t mean they can just flip a switch
to put an end to them. The human brain can be fascinating, but that doesn’t mean it should
be a source of ridicule. Except for people with Scotophobia, I guess. Take it easy on the Scots!
Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next time!