A phobia is an excessive, unrelenting, and often irrational fear. The most common phobias include fears of spiders, snakes, heights, flying, dogs, thunder, injections, and social situations, which can significantly impair daily life. There are three main types of phobias:
- Specific phobias: Focus on specific things or situations
- Social phobias: Involve anxiety around social situations
- Agoraphobia: Involves fear of situations where escape would be difficult
Treatment options exist for phobias.
Rare and Unusual Phobias
Some rare phobias include fear of bathing, mirrors, and the color yellow. These phobias cause extreme anxiety and to be classified as a phobia, the fear must persist for at least 6 months. These types of anxiety disorders might seem irrational to people who don’t suffer from them.
Phobia Facts and Therapy
- Heliophobia is the irrational fear of the sun, often due to fear of skin cancer or sensitivity to sunlight.
- Eisoptrophobia’s cause may be genetic and environmental factors, including past negative experiences with mirrors or reflections.
If you don’t sleep, drowsiness will continue to worsen until rest is achieved. Fears of disease or contamination may contribute to these conditions, especially if the fear is focused on the sensation or sight of loose hair on the skin.
A Variety of Fears
Some of the most unusual phobias include:
- Fear of relatives
- Fear of the Pope
- Fear of yellow
- Fear of becoming fat
- Fear of string
- Fear of the great mole rat
- Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of one’s mouth
Another peculiar condition is phobophobia — fear of phobias itself, which is considered one of the strangest phobias.