Managing Editor
No matter who you are, everybody is afraid of something.
It’s part of being human and persistent, excessive, or unrealistic fears of an object, person, animal, activity, or situation are called a phobia.
When I first met my wife Nancy, she invited me to her apartment for dinner and I laughed at a note some of her students had written describing her phobias, including her fear of traveling over a train trestle bridge or of cockroaches.
Just the other day she mentioned to me that dealing with anything blood-related happens to be one of my phobias and I added roller coasters and unusual foods to that list.
Over the years, I’ve known individuals with phobias ranging from shaking hands to climbing ladders to a fear of otters.
Traumatic experiences or negative events in one’s past can often lead to developing a phobia. Being bitten by a dog as a child could make an adult fearful about dogs or not able to keep a dog as a pet.
When I was in the Air Force, I knew someone who had a phobia about listening to music by Phil Collins and would break out in a rash when hearing a Phil Collins song on the radio.
Celebrities are not immune to phobias and some of the weirdest ones I’ve heard of are those of famous people.
British actor Martin Freeman, who portrayed young Bilbo Baggins in “The Hobbit” film trilogy, says he is terrified by avocados and is afraid that he might accidentally swallow an avocado pit. Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey has an aversion to revolving doors and avoids them when possible.
Former U.S President Benjamin Harrison told staff members in 1891 that he was afraid to turn on newly installed light switches at the White House in Washington D.C. because he was afraid of electricity.
Television personality Oprah Winfrey has described a phobia she has about chewing gum and banned its use in her TV studio while filming. British singer Adele is fearful of seagulls and avoids going to the beach so not to encounter any. Singer Madonna has given interviews in which she says that she has an intense fear of thunder and lightning and will not go anywhere outside during a storm. Actress Christina Ricci is supposedly afraid of indoor houseplants. Former U.S. President Calvin Coolidge would have the Secret Service search every foot of the pathway he would walk when fishing to ensure there were no snakes as he feared them.
The late Steve Jobs is said to have had koumpounophobia, the fear of buttons, stemming from a negative childhood experience. Because of that Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Inc., disliked buttons on computer hardware and chose to wear turtleneck shirts instead of shirts containing buttons. Following his death from pancreatic cancer in 2011, members of his family speculated that this fear influenced him to prefer touchscreens when designing Apple devices such as the iMac and iPhone.
Mental health professionals report that the most common phobias are those of people who are afraid of heights or animals, but other unusual phobias include a fear of looking at images in a mirror (Eisoptrophobia); a fear of someone dressed as a clown (Coulrophobia); a fear of cheese (Turophobia); a fear of smells (Osmophobia); or the fear of dancing (Chorophobia).
I believe that my stepson Danny has entomophobia, which is a fear of insects. Once when I returned home from work, he told me to avoid going in the garage for the next week because he had set off multiple bug bombs there when he saw a spider in the corner. Another time, I stopped him from poking a wasp’s nest on the back corner of our home’s roof with a sharp pointed stick. He said he didn’t want the wasps to bother our 3-year-old granddaughter when she came to visit us from Connecticut.
In my own family, I believe that my mother had mysophobia, also known as germophobia, as she had an intense and irrational fear of contamination, dirt, and bacteria, leading to excessive cleaning. Well into her 80s, she got up at 5 a.m. every day and scrubbed the tile on her bathroom shower and used a toothbrush to remove grit that she said accumulated on the tile on her bathroom floor. Every weekend she emptied her refrigerator and wiped down the interior with Clorox to kill germs.
She nearly had a heart attack when she visited my apartment in the 1990s and ran her hand across the top of my refrigerator and found dust. The look on her face was priceless, but I never heard the end of it at family dinners and gatherings afterward.
Last summer I was talking with a friend who said that he would never visit a Vietnamese restaurant because he had a phobia about pho, a Vietnamese dish of slow-simmered broth, which is prepared with beef bones, served with rice noodles, a protein such as beef, chicken or plants and other toppings. Pho is the national dish of Vietnam and a beloved comfort food that evokes nostalgia for many Vietnamese people.
I have the tune “Sussidio" by Phil Collins in mind when I suppose that unique phobia could be called “Pho Pho Phobia.” <
No matter who you are, everybody is afraid of something.
It’s part of being human and persistent, excessive, or unrealistic fears of an object, person, animal, activity, or situation are called a phobia.
Just the other day she mentioned to me that dealing with anything blood-related happens to be one of my phobias and I added roller coasters and unusual foods to that list.
Over the years, I’ve known individuals with phobias ranging from shaking hands to climbing ladders to a fear of otters.
Traumatic experiences or negative events in one’s past can often lead to developing a phobia. Being bitten by a dog as a child could make an adult fearful about dogs or not able to keep a dog as a pet.
When I was in the Air Force, I knew someone who had a phobia about listening to music by Phil Collins and would break out in a rash when hearing a Phil Collins song on the radio.
Celebrities are not immune to phobias and some of the weirdest ones I’ve heard of are those of famous people.
British actor Martin Freeman, who portrayed young Bilbo Baggins in “The Hobbit” film trilogy, says he is terrified by avocados and is afraid that he might accidentally swallow an avocado pit. Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey has an aversion to revolving doors and avoids them when possible.
Former U.S President Benjamin Harrison told staff members in 1891 that he was afraid to turn on newly installed light switches at the White House in Washington D.C. because he was afraid of electricity.
Television personality Oprah Winfrey has described a phobia she has about chewing gum and banned its use in her TV studio while filming. British singer Adele is fearful of seagulls and avoids going to the beach so not to encounter any. Singer Madonna has given interviews in which she says that she has an intense fear of thunder and lightning and will not go anywhere outside during a storm. Actress Christina Ricci is supposedly afraid of indoor houseplants. Former U.S. President Calvin Coolidge would have the Secret Service search every foot of the pathway he would walk when fishing to ensure there were no snakes as he feared them.
The late Steve Jobs is said to have had koumpounophobia, the fear of buttons, stemming from a negative childhood experience. Because of that Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Inc., disliked buttons on computer hardware and chose to wear turtleneck shirts instead of shirts containing buttons. Following his death from pancreatic cancer in 2011, members of his family speculated that this fear influenced him to prefer touchscreens when designing Apple devices such as the iMac and iPhone.
Mental health professionals report that the most common phobias are those of people who are afraid of heights or animals, but other unusual phobias include a fear of looking at images in a mirror (Eisoptrophobia); a fear of someone dressed as a clown (Coulrophobia); a fear of cheese (Turophobia); a fear of smells (Osmophobia); or the fear of dancing (Chorophobia).
I believe that my stepson Danny has entomophobia, which is a fear of insects. Once when I returned home from work, he told me to avoid going in the garage for the next week because he had set off multiple bug bombs there when he saw a spider in the corner. Another time, I stopped him from poking a wasp’s nest on the back corner of our home’s roof with a sharp pointed stick. He said he didn’t want the wasps to bother our 3-year-old granddaughter when she came to visit us from Connecticut.
In my own family, I believe that my mother had mysophobia, also known as germophobia, as she had an intense and irrational fear of contamination, dirt, and bacteria, leading to excessive cleaning. Well into her 80s, she got up at 5 a.m. every day and scrubbed the tile on her bathroom shower and used a toothbrush to remove grit that she said accumulated on the tile on her bathroom floor. Every weekend she emptied her refrigerator and wiped down the interior with Clorox to kill germs.
She nearly had a heart attack when she visited my apartment in the 1990s and ran her hand across the top of my refrigerator and found dust. The look on her face was priceless, but I never heard the end of it at family dinners and gatherings afterward.
Last summer I was talking with a friend who said that he would never visit a Vietnamese restaurant because he had a phobia about pho, a Vietnamese dish of slow-simmered broth, which is prepared with beef bones, served with rice noodles, a protein such as beef, chicken or plants and other toppings. Pho is the national dish of Vietnam and a beloved comfort food that evokes nostalgia for many Vietnamese people.
I have the tune “Sussidio" by Phil Collins in mind when I suppose that unique phobia could be called “Pho Pho Phobia.” <
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