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Phobias are very common and almost everyone is scared of something that will not cause them any harm. There are many common phobias such as claustrophobia, where you are afraid of being locked in closed spaces, and acrophobia which is a fear of heights. Recently in the local news I read about a girl with a phobia of buttons called koumpounophobia. She could not bare to be near them and if anyone wearing clothes with buttons approached her they had to remove the item of clothing with the buttons or she would have suffered a panic attack. Her boyfriend has to replace buttons on his clothing with zips.

What is your phobia? I have to admit I am scared to eat in front of many people, this is a kind of social phobia. It seems you can be scared of anything from fear of crossing the road, which is known as agyrophobia, to fear of expressing opinions, known as doxophobia. I cannot imagine what these fears must be like, I mean if you cannot cross the road, how can you lead a normal existence. You would have to live in a desert or jungle where there are no roads. As for fear of expressing of opinions, this is a crucial aspect of a person's personality and is required for most of third level education and employment. Some people also suffer from onomatophobia, where they hate hearing specific words.

Other strange phobias include the fear of peanut butter sticking to your mouth, a phobia called arachibutyrophobia for those of you who are interested. This is an easy one to get over, just do not eat peanut butter. Some other phobias are not so easy to get over, like chaetphobia, which is a fear of hair. You would have to shave all your hair off and make your partner do the same. How about having clinophobia? I would not fancy it, a fear of sleeping, you would have permanent insomnia and no doubt a reduced lifespan. Then there are those people who have a fear of the sun heliophobia or of clouds nephophobia. I mean how do these people survive on a day to day basis, do they stay indoors to avoid these elements, or perhaps they wear dark tinted glasses and keep their head down at all times.

There are hundreds more strange phobias and no doubt many more to be discovered.

Learn more about this author, Marie Bywater.
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