Saturday, June 4, 2011

Weird phobias

Thought you had an irrational fear? Think again! There are people in the world who are trying to cope with weirder stuff than you do.

Nomophobia – If you are one of those crazy people who can’t live without their mobile phone, you might have nomophobia. Well…according to a study 53% of us have this (actually not us, the whole world, more like British people because the study was done on them) and it seems that you feel really anxious whenever you are out of network.   
Yeah, it’s time to use that cyanide capsule 
you've been keeping for such emergencies.  
I don’t know how much of a phobia this is and maybe they confuse phobia with a bit of anxiety, but hey when you start hyperventilating because your phone screen says “Out of network” I guess you might have some issues. And while we’re on the subject should I tell you about telephone phobia? People who have telephone phobia are afraid of making and receiving calls.

Pedidophobia - this is a fear of dolls; I know porcelain dolls can be really creepy and sometimes seeing your girlfriend’s collection of 40 000 dolls will freak you out.  Actually pedidophobia also refers to mannequins, dummies and…well, children.
Nope, children are not scary.
Source

It seems to be caused by a traumatizing experience in our past, usually our childhood (of course) and it can be solved with therapy. There’s even a group on Facebook  and exposing the members to dolls will give them palpitations, trembling, shortness of breath, etc.


Come and play with us, Danny
 Source
Papyrophobia – this is fear of paper. While I admit that I have mild papyrophobia every month when I get my bills, I can’t stop wondering how does one develop such a phobia, implying that there was a trauma related to paper (?!). It seems to come in different forms: while some are just scared of blank paper, others get panic attacks when they see crumpled paper.
He will eat your soul. Forever.
Source

Dextrophobia – having this phobia means that you are afraid of having objects situated at your right and that will probably imply some awkward moments in social situations.

Optophobia  – the origin of its name comes from the greek word opt which means eyes; nope, it’s not the fear of eyes, is the fear of opening your eyes.  

Sesquipedalophobia is the fear of long words and I do hope they stay away from German language.

Phobophobia – this is pretty logical, is the phobia of having a phobia. It’s like typing Google into google.com, it splits the internet in two(yes, yes I like IT Crowd) 

4 comments:

  1. Wow, people are really f***ed up as a species. Imagine this, to a papyrophobic (is this the word?), an accountant it's like a lion tamer for a normal person :).

    And i think i may be an optophobic, but only on workdays.

    ReplyDelete
  2. :))) that's funny;i actually get anxious around big statues and I'm afraid of frogs. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Another interesting post! Have you ever heard of a phobia with people? Example: a phobia when a person becomes irritated when a another person uses their hand a particular way or walks near an object?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Perhaps it is an anthropophobia (a fear of people in general) or a sociofobia (a fear of society and people). It could be a particularity or related to one of these although I don't think there's a name for it.

    ReplyDelete