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:
- Dystychiphobia - fear of accidents;
- Rhabdophobia - fear of being beaten by a rod or instrument of punishment, or of being severely criticized;
- Carcinophobia - fear of cancer;
- Herpetophobia - fear of creepy, crawly things;
- Agoraphobia - fear of crowded public places;
- Athazagoraphobia - fear of being forgotten;
- Gerascophobia - fear of growing old;
- Eremophobia - fear of being alone;
- Atychiphobia - fear of failure;
- Apiphobia - fear of bees.
