BITE ME

PHOBIAS ARE FUNNY

No, don't give me that look - half horror, half "yeah,yeah, here we go again!"  They are funny I tell you. Let me explain.

There is no rationality to them. I mean I am afraid of earwigs. Little bugs who probably look up (can they look up?) and see this giant. Who's more afraid of who right? Common sense says I can just stomp on that little bug with what amounts to a stegosaurus's foot and squish it. Yet I cannot go near one. "Muuuuuuum!" Out comes the slipper/shoe.

There is no logic to fears. The fear of flying for instance? You've never flown. Yet the mere thought of hurtling through the sky in a thin tube terrifies. How do you hold a fear without having experienced a reason for it?

And there are thousands of them! A search on phobias produced this gem of a page : http://phobialist.com/reverse.html

Apparently you can fear the number 8? Octophobia? Yep, a single number. How do you live with this phobia? There are 8s everywhere right? Whoever suffers from this - all I can say is that their life must be... sheer hell? The equivalent of me seeing earwigs everywhere I turn and no way to stomp on them? Sheer hell!

Then this one got me thinking: Aerophobia; otherwise explained as "fear of swallowing air." Okay. Air. The stuff that contains oxygen. The stuff of life. How do you not swallow air? Sure you can breathe through the nose and all. But you have to open your mouth once in a while. To eat, drink... talk? I so want to meet an aerophobe. Just to watch and see how they 'manage' this phobia. Or is this one of those fatal ones, where you end up dead because you got a blocked nose?

Here's another beaut: Consecotaleophobia... if you can wrap your mouth around this one, it's umm... fear of chopsticks? No Chinatown saunter for these phobics, no venturing into the local Yum Cha restaurant, no - hell, chopsticks...really?

Medorthophobia? That be fear of erect penises. Yup. The moment one raises its err...head, I have a mental image now (thanks?) of someone hurtling away from the room or whichever place it appears, screeching "How could you scare me like this? How could you? I thought you loved me!" Umm...

Gravity is the stuff that keeps us 'tethered' to the earth, so we don't float away - like in those space movies where an astronaut drifts off, slowly spinning... (Might check if there's a phobia to deal with that scenario?) but Barophobia is... well it's fear of gravity? The question needs asking here: How does one live life 'untethered'? Can you manage a life perpetually attached to some flotation device - no that makes no sense since you're still 'tethered' see... so how on Earth (pun intended) do you bloody live?

I have another phobia: This one I understand and so might you if you have read my Memoir. You might call it Claustrophobia? Except that it also includes fear of having no air... like being in rooms without opening windows... I tried staying in a hotel once on a high-rise floor and barely made it the single night. I hate crowds and feeling trapped, unable to move. I hate being pinned down, again, unable to move freely. This one I have had to fight often and in my late teenage years I developed panic attacks. Very, very frightening, I felt like I was having a heart attack, unable to draw breath and darkness descending... once I passed out, in the middle of a reception hall...

I was in Jerusalem some years back, and there was a beautiful Orthodox Church in the old town. Apparently there was a most beautiful one below ground as well. I say apparently because to get to it you had to descend a very tight and dark space? I took a peek at the blackness and I ran outside, gasping for breath. Same deal with caves... I don't 'do' caves or anything below ground. With or without bats - though the thought of bats dangling above... escalates it to a whole new level?

We have a place called Coober Pedy here where most of our famous opals are mined. I have longed to visit, but it's very hot and dusty there and most of the accommodation is below ground. Stunning hotel rooms carved out of the earth, but no way I can stay in them see?

So phobias - much as I am making fun of some here - are very real, and something I can attest to personally. So one could say I am more 'open' to their existence and to the symptoms they manifest. As with everything else these days however, I do have to question whether we have taken the term 'phobia' and run off with it, creating a fear for just about everything one encounters (or might encounter or may never encounter) to the point that - looking at this vast list - there's something for each oneof us?

Hair, home, ice, light, loud noise, mother-in-laws (hmm this one might merit some... merit?) music, old people, poetry (perhaps justifiable?) running water, sitting down, 'things' (really?)... the list goes on and on...   

Some are so absurd, they warrant mention because - hell because they are just too absurd: Take Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia - good luck pronouncing this and since it in fact means fear of long words you're screwed as a sufferer because the phobia definition also induces the phobia it describes? How many of you - this is a sudden realisation right? How many of you come across my work and end up having panic attacks? Dylan is always on my case about mouthing off big complicated words. Am I causing mass panic attacks out there?

And what of Cacophobia? That's fear of 'ugliness' by the way. Now we all assume 'beauty is in theeye of the beholder' and so on, so how can this be a universal phobia? Your ugly might be my beautiful and vice versa? Does this phobia 'adapt' to each individual sufferer's personal definition? See my problem here?

By far the one which most intrigues me is Phronemophobia...this is umm... fear of thinking? I have sat here some moments now trying to 'wrap my head' around this notions. It involves thinking of course... and I am clueless. How does one not think? It's a vital process, we cannot properly function without thought, thus the term 'brain dead'? Is it possible to exist without thoughts? And what happens when these people have one - let's just say for argument's sake they have one thought - does this then induce anxiety and panic and how can it, if the only way to produce the symptoms is to actually 'think' about thinking?

I understand phobias about snakes ad sharks and spiders and poisons... there's a measure of rationality there. But who in hell invented Syngenesophobia- fear of relatives? Again, the sheer debilitation of this fear boggles the mind. "Argghhhh, get away from me little nephew,I am scared of you and take your whole family along since I am scared of the lot of you!" Seriously. How many 'real' sufferers might actually exist? We might fear 'Uncle Bob' because he's gruff and menacing and swears a lot? But our entire clan? Not a single person in the lot who doesn't send us into panic mode?

According to this exhaustively long list of phobias, we are all victims of at least one and perhaps several. Which of course begs the question: Is there a fear of fear? Of course there is: Phobophobia. This one word alone... it is the most nonsensical of all. I tried 'thinking' about it till my brain - tired of the circles it was forced to run around in- complained. It basically said "If you fear fear then just... just vacate the planet really."

Because life is fear; because every moment of living brings with it any amount of confrontations with new 'things' and new experiences and fearing fear - like I said - means fearing life itself? So how is it possible you are still 'living'?

Okay, one more: Geniophobia...otherwise known as fear of chins? Seriously? What's there to fear about this, someone please, please explain it to me... Humans have chins (unclear if this fear also extends to beards - hope it doesn't) and if you interact with humans, you're gonna get chins. Lots of them, a chin for all the seven something billion of us populating the planet (not sure if this extends to animal chins also which would then skyrocket into the trillions, chin-wise)... And then the thought: Are sufferers afraid of their own chins as well?

There's lunacy. Phobias are real, but phobias are also very, very funny... Come on, spill it! What sends you into panic mode?