Everyone has some level of fear that protects them from danger. These rational fears are “built in” to our brains and were passed down from our ancestors, who had good reasons to be wary of anything that posed a threat to life. A fear of clowns or paper is not rational and may be linked to an early experience or being raised by someone with similar fear. When fears seem out of proportion to the potential dangers, they are known as phobias. All fears are stored in the memory section of the brain.
Familiar fears – some phobias are so weird that they are difficult to understand, while others are quite common. One is claustrophobia—when a person feels terrified by being trapped in an enclosed space as an elevator or a tunnel. Another is agoraphobia—a fear of being in an open place where the person does not feel safe and is desperate to escape—in most cases, to their home.
Fighting the fear – fears and phobias can trigger physical reactions such as shaking, rapid heartbeat, and nausea. Most people can live with their phobias by avoiding what scares them. If you suffer from lutraphobia, steer clear of otters.
Famous phobics – even the famous have their fears. Napoleon Bonaparte, the emperor of France, suffered from a fear of cats (ailurophobia). Movie director Alfred Hitchcock was afraid of eggs (ovophobia), and psychiatrist Sigmund Freud was scared of traveling by train (siderodromophobia).
Can you guess these phobias?
- Amathophobia
- Arachibutyrophobia
- Cathisophobia
- Chiroptophobia
- Dentophobia
- Heliophobia
- Lachanophobia
- Ophidiophobia
- Pogonophobia
(Answers are below.)
Teach your children everything they ever wanted to know about the human body. Share some interesting stories about fears and phobias and you could win a copy of DK’s Open Me Up. Comments must be posted by Sunday, November 1st. Gather will draw one respondent to win.
Answers:
1. Fear of dust 2. Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth 3. Fear of sitting 4. Fear of bats 5. Fear of dentists 6. Fear of the sun 7. Fear of vegetables 8. Fear of snakes 9. Fear of beards
One entry per person who comments on this post. No purchase necessary. See official rules.
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Comments: 35
The only thing that Elliott is really afraid of is the dark. He gets up and turns his light on in the middle of the night, and sleeps with a flashlight on his bed, just in case we turn off the light again or the electricity goes out.
He won't come around me when my hair is wet, either, I guess because it's not normal to him.
When I was little, I had my dad kill any tiny bug I saw in my room before bedtime.
Treatment can be accomplished with information for both child and parent. I just called Children's Health Care in Minneapolis to find out if the book they used to published was still available. It's not, but the woman on the phone referred me to an excellent site here.
my fear is being involved in a head on collision.
I am afraid of going over big bridges. Or any bridge if it's shaky. We visit family that lives just over the Annapolis Bay Bridge in MD and I get so scared when we approach it. I just try to occupy myself and stay busy so I can't look at how high we are. If I do look I just keep wondering whether we'd die, get hurt or be alright if the bridge collapses at this point, and this one...I'm also afraid of accidents on the bridge because I would totally lose it if we were to get stuck for hours! As for the walking bridges, there is one very wobbly one that I have to cross a few times a year when we go to some street fair events in a nearby city and I just force myself to go. I have to hold on to someone though!
I'm also afraid of certain bugs. If I see one I'm up on a chair or table. It's not every bug- really only a few that will freak me out. I have no interest in overcoming this fear because that would mean having to face that fear and I will NOT face those bugs!
* I told him about 'dream catchers', and we made a dream catcher for his room together.
* I took an empty can of vegetable spray and we went into his room and we sprayed "anti-dinosaur spray" all over his window. It was sheer luck that the can of Pam emptied at about this time...
* We made a stuffed animal barrier of "protectors" around his bed, so if the dinosaur did fly in, his stuffed animals would fight them off.
It took a couple of weeks before he shed the stuffed animal barrier, and we bought a big Rex stuffed dinosaur at the Disney store (the T-Rex toy in Toy Story), but he finally forgot about the scary stuff in the dream and now tells it like it was a silly dream.
If only all fears could be so easily quenched!
we went somewhere last week an hour away from home. As soon as I got into the car a bee landed on my car window. It stuck to the window all the way to our destination. I was practically sitting in my husbands lap (he was driving) all the way there. He thought it was funny and kept opening the window to try to get the bee off of the window. I was screaming and almost in tears and shaking like a leaf. When we got to our destination he got out of the car and got it off of my window so I could get out of the car. He made the comment that it was gone but it was pissed. I refused to get out on that side of the car. I climbed over the seat to the drivers side and got out.
He's almost as bad when it comes to my daughter who is three. He's always afraid of things hurting her and he's always hovering.