Weirdest Phobias: What are the Rarest Phobias?
So you are wondering what the weirdest phobias are. Maybe you’re thinking what are the rarest phobias? We’re going to tackle those questions, and even more here in this article.
The word, phobia translates to a Greek word that means irrational fear, “Phobos”. There are reported to be around 20 million individuals over the age of 18 in the United States of America that have a phobia. Most of these phobias are pretty common and average. Some of them, on the other hand, are unique to say the least. Some of the more average phobias consist of fear of water, snakes, spiders, flying, and more. on the other hand, just to give you an idea of where we’re headed, a more unique phobia is the fear of cheese. So, let’s get into some of the weirder phobias that there are in the world.
List of phobias:
Turophobia
Omphalophobia
Papaphobia
Triskaidekaphobia
Ablutophobia
Dextrophobia
Phobophobia
Ephebiphobia
Turophobia
Just like in the intro, this is the fear of cheese. Some of the individuals suffering from this phobia report, having worse experiences and fear for other types of cheese than some of the other certain types of cheese. It seems as if a phobia, such as this is most often caused by a traumatic experience in adolescent years. If, perhaps, you were a young child and ate a dish that contained cheese, and it had ill affect on your health; this could very well be the source of the trauma for you from then on. The sheer force of the mental and physical stress of throwing up and shaking due to the reaction from the food dish is what would make this happen. It just so happens that this dish contained cheese.
Omphalophobia
Whoops, we may have found one that I personally suffer from. This phobia is the fear of belly buttons in general. From there, it may get a little bit more specific between each individual case. It may be that the individual suffering from this phobia has a fear of people touching their bellybutton or touching other belly buttons. It may also be that the person just generally fears belly buttons, and the images of them over all. There is a report of a surgeon that suffered from this phobia. This surgeon actually had full anxiety and panic attacks due to the site of patient’s belly buttons. not only this, but if her belly button was to be touched by someone else, it would throw her into anxiety immediately.
You know what? I don’t blame anyone that has this phobia, because I am teetering on the edge of being right there with you. I simply cannot stand any time that my belly button is touched. It just feels so gross, weird, and wrong. It feels like your finger is in my stomach. No thank you please.
Papaphobia
This phobia is the fear of the pope. Call the pope is supposed to represent good and kind ideals, this fear place is the individual suffering from it firmly within the grasp of terror due to this religious figure. In the research of this topic, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of information on it. At least we can say for one thing we are glad we aren’t covering the topic of papaphilia. Medication, psychotherapy, and cognitive behavioral therapy are some of the options in order to combat this issue.
Triskaidekaphobia
Well, we found another one. Maybe I need to go to therapy. Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number 13. Clearly, this phobia is parallel with superstition and superstitious beliefs. There are many tellings within religion and myths that account for most of the fear for the number 13. Chances are, if you are an incredibly superstitious person, you may have this fear. Often times the entire 13th floor of a building will be skipped on the elevator buttons and the numbers will go directly from 12 to 14. Not only this, but the number of chairs around a table, or the number of tables in a dining room of a restaurant will be specifically avoided to land on the number 13. If you have this phobia, you are more than likely to avoid the number if you are able to at any cost.
Ablutophobia
This fear is that of bathing, or being cleaned in general. This is a particularly unique and specific sub genre of phobia. It easily causes anxiety in the individual that suffers from it. In the same way that many of these other phobias are started, it is thought to have direct correlation to some sort of traumatic experience during the years of adolescence. Though this is often the case, it may also be partially attributed to any traumatic brain injury in a physical sense. Last, but not least, genetic coding absolutely can play a major role in this phobia. In a hereditary sense, if your parent suffered from this specific phobia, you are more likely to have it as well. Just make sure you carry some Lysol in your utility belt.
Dextrophobia
This irrational fear is defined as the fear of having things on the right side of your body. That must get incredibly tiring because there are always a lot of things to the right side of your body at all times. If you have dextrophobia and you are reading this, sorry for saying that. The opposite of this phobia is called levophobia, and you guessed it. It’s the fear of having things on the left side of you. These two phobias include objects, people, and animals alike. Often it is a comorbidity with extreme cases of OCD. You have to wonder if there’s someone out there that has both of these phobias at the same exact time.
Phobophobia
There isn’t too much to say about this one. It is exactly what it sounds like. This phobia is the fear of having irrational fears. What kind of cruel joke is that?
Ephebiphobia
This phobia is seemingly a little bit more widespread than some of the other ones in this article. It is the fear of young people. In pop, culture and across society, as a whole, we see, and hear many accounts of older people being afraid of younger individuals. These age gaps directly, lend them selves to the root cause of this particular phobia. It seems as if every major generational gap has their own form of this irrational fear. Get off my lawn, you young whippersnapper!
Recap
When visiting these phobias, we find that most of them have direct root causes by traumatic experiences during the adolescent years of life. Most or all of these phobia’s cause, severe anxiety and panic attacks in the individual suffering from them. While it may seem amusing to those that do not live their everyday life with these phobias, it is important to understand that these are real issues that real people have to deal with on a daily basis.
There are mini tools out there if you are suffering from one of these phobias in order to help you. There are things such as group, therapy, cognitive, behavioral therapy, psycho, therapy, medications, and self-help informational sources. Please, do what you can, and look out for yourself in order to better suit your daily activities.
This is an incredibly interesting topic to write about, and we will for sure be revisiting more phobias in the future on this blog. Who knew that there could be so many very specific phobias is out there that people live with every day in their life? Think about what surrounds you. Do you know anybody that has a phobia such as these ones? Maybe you do know someone that suffers from a very particular and unique irrational fear, and it just hasn’t been made abundantly clear to you yet. Keep your eyes open.