Fear is a universal feeling and we all experience it from time to time. That's a good thing, because it's fear that makes us run away from dangerous situations — potentially preventing us from being injured, or even saving our lives. But if this fear starts taking over your normal life and you find yourself unable to rationalize it, it becomes a phobia. Phobias normally arise from a past experience of harm or pain from an activity or object. A phobia can also be triggered by just the anticipation of harm.
The list of phobias is too long to compile here, but let us discuss 10 of the most commonly found phobias among adults around the world.
1. Acrophobia
Acrophobia is a phobia of heights. People who suffer from this fear are scared of altitude. Its symptoms include breathlessness, palpitations, weakness in limbs and nausea. According to the experts, a traumatic experience involving heights can cause acrophobia.
2. Bathmophobia
Many people experience some fear while walking down the stairs, especially if the stairs are tall or have no railing. In its extreme form, this fear is called bathmophobia. This fear makes a person extremely cautious of climbing and coming down the stairs. This phobia often occurs after a major accident on stairs that had left the sufferer seriously injured. People who suffer from bathmophobia experience anxiety, high heart-rate and an inability to think clearly.
3. Claustrophobia
This is the fear of enclosed and small places. A person suffering from Claustrophobia feels anxious in smaller places with walls and no windows, like changing rooms, elevators and crowded places. A person fears that he is being trapped in a small and confined space. Most people with this phobia feel like they are not getting enough air to breathe in small spaces and start to panic. This might even result in unconsciousness and panic attacks. This phobia is treated with cognitive behavior therapy and is quite similar in symptoms to other anxiety disorders.
4. Nyctophobia
Nyctophobia is a fear of darkness. This fear is quite common in children, but it’s also found in adults. The person becomes extremely wary of dark spaces and might experience panic attacks, palpitations and become disoriented, if exposed to complete darkness for a considerable amount of time.
5. Emetophobia
This is a little known but very common phobia. If you have this phobia, you are frightened of vomiting and being with somebody who is vomiting. This phobia also originates from a traumatic experience in the past, commonly during childhood. People with this phobia avoid any place where there is a sick person or there’s a high possibility of someone vomiting. Such people even avoid vomiting themselves and would rather endure nausea than vomit. Symptoms of emetopobia are belching, extreme nausea and anxiety when exposed to vomiting.
6. Arachnophobia
Arachnophobia means a fear of spiders. Even though most of us are scared of large, poisonous spiders, people who suffer from arachnophobia are extremely scared of even the smallest and most harmless spiders. As a result, they avoid any situation that might bring them closer to a spider like playing outdoors or camping. This phobia affects women more and can cause extreme discomfort, panic and anxiety at the sight of a spider.
7. Mysophobia
This phobia is often called germophobia as it causes extreme fear of contamination with germs. It is closely related to OCD or Obsessive Compulsive disorder which is a phobia that forces people to have extremely rigorous hygiene routine and they are obsessed with keeping their hands and surroundings clean, however, you can have germophobia without having OCD, which involves a more complex set of symptoms.
8. Sociaphobia
Most of us dislike getting judged in a social setting. But sociaphobia is the extreme fear of being negatively judged or scrutinized in public. This phobia is often misunderstood as shyness. People suffering from this phobia often have trouble in explaining their nature and personality to others. The person may show anxiety in public settings and may over-eat, stammer and start to sweat excessively. Patients with sociaphobia are given Hypnotheraphy and NLP to help him face his fears.
9. Carcinophobia
Many people have the phobia of getting cancer. Carcinophobia can be a result of an overprotective mental set up of a person towards his own health. This phobia is often found in cancer survivors or people who’ve had a cancer patient in close relation. A sequence from a movie or a program on TV can also trigger this phobia in people. The patient my experience rapid heartbeat, imaginary pain and breathlessness at the thought of cancer.
Read More: Phobias: How to Overcome Fears
10. Aviophobia
The literal translation of Aviophobia is “fear of flying.” It is the fear of traveling by air. A large number of people experience severe anxiety while traveling by air, despite the fact that flying on an airplane is extremely safe and much more so than driving or riding in a car. This phobia might be interlinked with a number of fears; for instance fear of being unable to control the circumstances, fear of being hijacked or getting stuck in a closed space for long hours.
Most people with phobias see normal people around them and start feeling like they are the only ones who feel like this in the whole world. But there are millions of people who have one or more phobias. So, the best way to handle a phobia is to accept your situation and get professional help. Therapy helps countless people live a life without phobias, and the best thing is that the therapy doesn't even have to take very long.
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