Saturday, January 17, 2009

Phobias


Phobias are amazingly personal things. Not so much that we are reluctant to tell people about ours, I mean that they vary so wildly from person to person, even within a given family. I stumbled across a phobia web site that listed hundreds upon hundreds of defined phobias. In fact, pretty much anything that you could possibly think of, if you add the suffix -phobia to the end, can now become a medically recognized ailment (and potential government-funded study). For example, how about "garroteophobia", the fear of being hit over the head by a garrote, or "burgoophobia", the fear of being made to eat thick, spicy soups or stews? Of course I made both of these examples up, but why should my personal phobias not make the list? Some of those that were listed were just plain wacky.

However, I decided to work my way through the list to see what possible afflictions I might suffer from (hard as that may be for my loyal readers to believe). Without further ado, here is my top 10 list of personal phobias:
  1. Dystychiphobia - fear of accidents;
  2. Rhabdophobia - fear of being beaten by a rod or instrument of punishment, or of being severely criticized;
  3. Carcinophobia - fear of cancer;
  4. Herpetophobia - fear of creepy, crawly things;
  5. Agoraphobia - fear of crowded public places;
  6. Athazagoraphobia - fear of being forgotten;
  7. Gerascophobia - fear of growing old;
  8. Eremophobia - fear of being alone;
  9. Atychiphobia - fear of failure;
  10. Apiphobia - fear of bees.
O.K., so there you have it. What fears do you suffer from? How about dancarman.blogspot.com.ophobia (fear of missing one of my pithy blog entries)? What about bluescreenofdeathophobia (fear of your Windows machine dying leading to dancarman.blogspot.com.ophobia)? I'll stop now before I develop sickofmyownschtickophobia.