PHOBIAS

Phobia is a word that comes from the Greek word Phóbos, which means "fear" or "morbid fear."  When psychologists talk about phobias, they mean a sort of anxiety or fear of an object or situation.  If you have a phobia like this, you do everything you can to avoid whatever you're afraid of.  Sometimes it makes sense to do this, like for instance if you are afraid of falling off the edge of a cliff and so you stay away from the edges of cliffs.  But sometimes you might be afraid of something that most people don't think is scary at all.

People have phobias and so do dogs.  Some of the most common phobias that people have are fear of heights, fear of small spaces, and fear of going out of the house.  Dogs might have a fear of storms, fear of people wearing uniforms, or fear of being in a crate.

When I started looking on the internet for types of phobias, I found this really cool website, and it's called The Phobia List.  The man who put this list together is not a doctor, and he says he does not know how to cure anybody of their phobias.  Instead, he is a person who is interested in words.  Every phobia on his very long list has actually been published somewhere in a reference book or medical paper.  Which means he is not just making these phobias up, even if some of them seem pretty weird.

Anyway, since there are so many interesting phobias on the list, I decided that today I would just to tell you some of the ones that start with "A."  Another day I will do phobias with another letter.  Oh, and the man who made the phobia list said that he thinks since the word phobia comes from Greek, the type of phobia should also be in Greek and not in Latin, like some people have done when they were making names for phobias.  I am not a scholar of language, but this makes sense to me, because if you go around mixing two languages together, you may end up having them fight with each other!


ABLUTOPHOBIA -- fear of washing or bathing*

AGRIZOOPHOBIA -- fear of wild animals


AGYROPHOBIA -- fear of streets or crossing the street


AILUROPHOBIA -- fear of cats

ALBUMINUROPHOBIA -- fear of kidney disease


ALLIUMPHOBIA -- fear of garlic

ALLODOXAPHOBIA -- fear of opinions


ANGLOPHOBIA -- fear of England or English culture

ANTHROPHOBIA -- fear of flowers


APOTEMNOPHOBIA -- fear of persons with amputations


ARACHIBUTYROPHOBIA -- fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth

AULOPHOBIA -- fear of flutes

AURORAPHOBIA -- fear of the Northern Lights

*I will just say that I have this phobia myself, and I don't see anything wrong with it.  In fact, I am proud to say that I both fear and hate getting a bath!