A phobia is a fear of something that arises out of bad experiences, nightmares, or internal fears1. People have a phobia of things that are a very significant part of their life, and hence such fears are disastrous for mere survival of the people.
It is a fear of hair; it can either be human or animal hair. People with Chaetophobia are afraid of humans and animals with excess hair. They are also afraid of their own body hair. Its major cause is any bad memory or experience with hair or any hairy person or animal.
What actually happens is that when a person with any negative experiences with hair comes near a hairy person or a hairy animal, he is reminded of his experiences and develops internal fear. Another reason for this can be that the person may consider the hair to be dirty, and so are frightened of it. Some fear only loose hair and are normal with the hair on the head.
It is an aversion to the household. The general symptom is panic attacks when they are in the surroundings of their house. The fear may be due to some bad experience, or it may be due to something they’ve watched on TV. The fear of households may also be due to various electronic appliances at home as they can be dangerous.
It is also called interpersonal relation phobia2. It is a case of extreme level of shyness and timidity. The fear can be generally in crowded situations but can sometimes get really serious, due to which the person becomes uncomfortable even when they are around just one person. Mild anthropophobia3 can be handled, but it can lead to complete social withdrawal in serious cases, and written and electronic communication is then used exclusively to talk to its victims. It is probably one of the worst fears on this planet.
This phobia is related to the fear caused by mirrors. The major cause is that the individual believes that he is watched or heard by ghosts. This trauma can be a result of horror movies and nightmares. The fear can also be a result of superstitions. When a person suffering from this phobia looks into the mirror he feels as if a preternatural force4 is pulling him into the mirror or someone is ready to attack them.
This is the fear of sitting. People with this phobia are afraid of being trapped while sitting. Sitting can be painful and uncomfortable as a result of restrictions as in primary schools which also leads to such phobia among teens. Due to this phobia, a person faces many problems as all our major activities like schooling and office work is done in a sitting position. So it becomes a drawback for a healthy career. The person is impacted in all phases of his life.
Dendrophobia is a psychological disorder due to which the person fears woods, forests and trees. The person who suffers from this phobia is a victim of childhood memory or nightmare due to which they start fearing the trees and forests around them. The person faces panic attacks5 when he is near the trees and turns normal once away from trees.
The treatment for all types of phobias is meditation, phobia specific therapies, and sorting out the old fears and negative experiences.
- Taylor, Steven. “The structure of fundamental fears.” Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry 24.4 (1993): 289-299. ↩︎
- Persson, Göran. “Early interpersonal relations: experience of four treatment methods in phobic women.” Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 70.2 (1984): 111-118. ↩︎
- Zhang, Amy Y., et al. “Anthropophobia: Its meaning and concomitant experiences.” International journal of social psychiatry 47.4 (2001): 56-70. ↩︎
- Jeffery, Celina. Preternatural. punctum books, 2011. ↩︎
- Schenberg, Luiz Carlos, et al. “Modeling panic attacks.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 25.7-8 (2001): 647-659. ↩︎
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