When I came up with the concept for this post, I started up a list of fears, went to see if I could find more, and discovered that someone has done years more work than me, and there are many more fears than I initially imagined. I mean, I know some of them. Trypophobia, for example, the fear of clusters, which, by the way, if you HAVE it, don't Google it."Hey, guys, what kind of pictures should show up in Google Images for people who have a fear of clusters?'
"How about a bunch of clusters?"
"Brilliant!"
Anyway, if you're looking for a fear for your character, take a look at The Phobia List, which is exactly as described on the tin. While it actually doesn't have trypophobia on it for some reason, it does have things like:
- Alliumphobia - Fear of garlic.
- Chronomentrophobia - Fear of clocks.
- Euphobia - Fear of hearing good news.
- Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia - Fear of long words. Yes, the person who named it is an asshole.
- Omphalophobia - Fear of belly buttons.
- Soceraphobia- Fear of parents-in-law.
- Zemmiphobia - Fear of the great mole rat
But those are, at their core, "common" fears, fears that have been written about and named in reference books. It doesn't quite look at irrational fears. Those can get very specific. For example, aichmophobia is the fear of needles or pointed objects, including knives. For a time, on top of a fear of needles, I was outright terrified of being accidentally impaled by someone using a knife in the kitchen. Absolutely irrational, but I spent the better part of a decade excusing myself whenever someone else was cutting anything because I could just SEE the knife slipping out of their hand and flying at my skull like a ninja star.
So, since general fears have been done well beyond my means, let's have some fun with irrational ones, or ones that aren't on the list.
| Irrational Fears |
| Fear of a children's TV show |
| Fear of a specific song |
| Fear of accidental impalement |
| Fear of being late or early |
| Fear of being murdered in a hotel room |
| Fear of being stalked by internet trolls |
| Fear of celebrities |
| Fear of chihuahuas (or any other small dog breed) |
| Fear of closed cupboards |
| Fear of clowns in unlikely places |
| Fear of conspiracy theories |
| Fear of cracked doors |
| Fear of crossing train tracks or standing on platforms |
| Fear of desserts |
| Fear of emergency or construction vehicles |
| Fear of escaped zoo animals |
| Fear of falling in public |
| Fear of finding unnatural things in food |
| Fear of flickering lightbulbs |
| Fear of getting kicked in the face |
| Fear of getting locked out |
| Fear of getting lost in a big city |
| Fear of hotel rooms or any room that's not their own |
| Fear of knitting needles |
| Fear of knowing other peoples' secrets |
| Fear of manual labor |
| Fear of mythical creatures |
| Fear of ocean debris (seashells, seaweed or flotsam) |
| Fear of open windows |
| Fear of other people being paranoid |
| Fear of oversized bags (purses, trash, etc) |
| Fear of rain puddles |
| Fear of rainbows |
| Fear of reflected light spots |
| Fear of shaved or hairless cats |
| Fear of the internet |
| Fear of the naked mole rat |
| Fear of uneven terrian |
| Fear of unpaved roads |
| Fear that everyone is talking about you behind your back |
Thanks to my dear friend Kat for coming up with several of the ideas on this list. Check her out on Twitter: @_Almost_
So, dear readers, tell me, what are YOU afraid of?
