Many people experience various fears during childhood, such as the dark. However, sometimes fear turns into something more that can interfere with a person's full life. In this case, we can talk about a phobia.
What is a phobia?
Phobia, or phobic anxiety disorder, is an irrational, uncontrollable fear, persistent manifestations of any kind of fear. In psychiatry, phobias are called pathologically increased manifestations of the fear reaction to any stimulus.
In other words, a phobia is a pronounced, strongly manifested obsessive fear, which is irreversibly exacerbated in certain situations and does not lend itself to logical explanation. Phobias can also manifest themselves as an irrational attitude of hostility towards something, in a deliberately hostile attitude. In this case, fear as an emotion is veiled and is present in the background.
In the presence of a phobia, the person diligently avoids the object that inspires him with fear. In many cases, the phobia is aggravated to the point that a person, for example, experiencing panic at the sight of elevators, prefers to walk up to the office, provided that the meeting is on the thirty-sixth floor and started ten minutes ago.
Variety of phobias
Most phobias have long been given their own name. In addition, there is even an alphabetical catalog of phobias. Among them there are quite explainable ones, for example, agrisophobia - fear of wild animals. The name of aviaphobia speaks for itself - the fear of flying in an airplane.
Agirophobia will prevent a person from going outside, and arachnophobia is typical for those who fall into panic fear and experience uncontrollable horror at the sight of spiders.
Perhaps one of the most unusual phobias is afobophobia. It consists in the fear of the absence of phobias. Apliumophobia is no less surprising - the fear of garlic. It is not recommended to give festive bouquets to people suffering from a fear of flowers - antophobia. A person suffering from apiphobia - a fear of bees and wasps - is unlikely to agree to a tour of the apiary, and a person suffering from ahluophobia - fear of darkness and night - will not sleep with the lights off.
Probably one of the most common phobias is blattophobia - fear of cockroaches. Botanophobia is a fear of plants, blennophobia is a fear of mucus, buttophobia is a fear of deep water bodies.
Many people are also familiar with claustrophobia - the fear of confined spaces. In contrast, agoraphobia is the fear of open spaces.
There are also interesting phobias characterized by a fear of national things. For example, anglophobia is a fear of everything English, and haliphobia (or francophobia) is a fear of everything French.
Sometimes things that most people find cute and cuddly are perceived by some people as scary. This opinion is shared by people suffering from galeophobia - a fear of ferrets and weasels, gatophobia - a fear of domestic cats and cats, hippophobia - a fear of horses.
Some of the most common are demophobia (or ochlophobia) - fear of crowds and crowds, dentophobia - fear of dentists, dentists and dental treatment, zemmiphobia - fear of rats, acrophobia - fear of heights.
