Not rare in how often it’s mentioned, but needles.
Like, an actual needle phobia. Stop telling me it doesn’t hurt that much, I’m well aware, that’s not what a phobia is. When I was 12 I had a perfectly healthy tooth pulled without anaesthetic, and the dentist had to twist. It’s not the pain.
People think I don’t have it because I’ll never put myself in any situation that might induce it.
So I generally ask them who they think they are to think I’d put myself in any position to feel stuck in my phobia, just to lift their doubts. And then I avoid them like the plague.
If people don’t believe it and ask you to prove it, they’re a piece of shit. If you’re someone that doesn’t believe someone has a phobia of something, simply because they’ve never been exposed to it in front of you to see their reaction, stop. You’re an asshole. Find a healthier hobby than making everyone else miserable.
I can’t deal with anything eye related. I can’t use contacts or put in eye drops. I have to look away if others are doing it. Even watching my girlfriend put on make-up gets me.
I can watch gory horror scenes, but the second eyes are involved I’m a total baby.
I have arachnophobia. Not a rare phobia, but for context, it only came about since moving to the midwest and developed a fear of ticks. Now even those harmless house spiders freak me out.
My friends keep telling me I’m being irrational, but I can’t shake it.
When I was a kid, I was so afraid of water that I had to be washed by force until about 7 or 8 years old. I have no clue as to why that was. Now it’s all fine, swimming and everything, as if it never happened.
Dinosaurs. When I was around 5 I had untreated anxiety. One night, while having an anxiety attack, I went crying to my parents to soothe me. When I walked into the tv room, they were watching Jurassic Park, right at the T-Rex in the rain scene. I watched in stunned, anxiety riddled silence as the T-Rex ate the guy in the toilet.
If that hadn’t cemented a life long fear of dinos in me, a very similar thing happened maybe a year later but with Godzilla.
My sister is death scared of lizards. Her heart rate would rise, she would panic, start kicking things and would run away. She wont calm down for hours.
I get extremely uncomfortable and physical shudders from seeing and or discussing tongues. Even during writing this, the thought of them is enough to start the strongest feelings of disgust to form throughout my body and mind.
I fear that at any moment, a space disaster happens without warning. Like the sun exploding out of nowhere, earth stops spinning all of sudden, earth colliding with another planet or an asteroid killing me or something.
I have terrified of bacteriophages. I have nightmares of giant three foot tall ones running after me. I always wake up crying when it happens. I don’t know how to explain this fear to anyone and they people info tell just think I’m crazy.
I don’t know if it’s rare, but bees/wasps/etc. My sister and I broke a hornets nest when I was a year or two old and I got covered in them. Don’t have a memory of it, but my subconscious remembers. It’s not as bad around bees anymore as long as they don’t get too close, but wasps are still public enemy number one. Just the sound of them buzzing triggers a fight-or-flight response. I’ve had full-blown panic attacks when they’ve gotten into the house and no one else was around to kill them for me.
And I guess it’s not so much that people refuse to believe it, more than they get exasperated whenever I react to one being too close. Like, yeah, I know it’s probably not going to sting me, but my brain doesn’t care about facts and logics, it has identified that thing as a threat and acts according 🤷♀️
Fun fact, though: the only time I’ve been stung since that incident is when I stepped on a dead bee while I was walking barefoot in my kitchen in the dark.
Goats… I know it’s a weird phobia but their eyes are terrifying. Their horizontal pupils scare the living s@#t out of me. It’s an irrational fear. I’ve scuba dived and met octopuses with similar horizontal eyes and I wasn’t afraid. But somehow goats are terrifying. I can’t explain it.
I mean, think about it. The brain is everything that you are. It’s the closest thing to your soul in physical form. And people can literally carve up your soul with a knife, and most of the time, you’re kept awake while they do it! It’s so common that it’s done on an industrial scale! And if even the tiniest thing goes wrong (or in thecase of a big resection, even if everything goes right) you’re disabled in some of the most terrible ways possible, and there’s no hope of it ever improving because the brain doesn’t regenerate.
Not me but I had a friend who is afraid of inflated party balloons, which I learned about the hard way.
One time for my birthday my gf at the time had arranged for my housemate to let her in 2 friends in and they spent a few hours blowing up balloons and filling my bedroom.
The next day my neighbour (the friend in question) asked me about the surprise my friends left in my bedroom, told her to go check.
She screamed and ran back home crying which I did find odd. Wasn’t until an hour later that her bf called me a cunt for making her go into a balloon filled room. Only after I looked very confused did he ask if I knew about her phobia, I did not.
Police. I get very nervous around the police. I think it’s because I know they’re armed and have the power to arrest people. I hate getting in trouble and always do my best to follow the rules, but always paranoid I’ve done something to draw their attention. Also I haven’t experienced trauma because of the police if anyone was wondering
Escalators. I had a traumatic experience on one and I still have a physical anxiety response when I get on a fast-moving downward escalator. I thought it would go away over time but 20 years later it hasn’t subsided.
Cotton wool, whenever I see it I think about the feeling between my teeth, and it I try to avoid thinking about it I think about it expanding until it is.
Dead insects. I never kill so much as a mosquito with my bare hands. I can kill very small moths with a shoe or a vaccum cleaner after we had three invasions of these pests eating my clothes (2x) or my food (1x).
But if there is a dead insect of any kind on my desk, I have to leave the room. If there is a vacuum cleaner available, on a good day I can vacuum them, but without touching them with the tube and without watching the moment they are sucked into the cleaner.
A few years ago, we cohabitated with a wasps nest in our bedroom. I can live withe thd live ones, I dread the dead ones or the ones fighting for death and dying in front of me.
Fear of getting lost I don’t think it’s officially recognized. Mazeophonia. Doesn’t help that I have hardcore ADHD when it comes to maps so I am absolutely worthless without GPS.
I have Thalassophobia. Mine is so bad, I can’t even swim in pools or venture underwater in video games. The amount of times I get “but it’s just a bit of water!” Or “it’s a game – how can you be afraid of pixels?”
I wouldn’t say it’s a phobia, but I really do not like bubbles and don’t want them touching me. Not like in a bath but like when people/kids blow soap bubbles like at Disneyland or the park, etc.
I’m scared of fish I can’t see. Swimming in a lake feels like playing “guess who’s gonna bite me.” No one believes me, but I’m convinced there’s an underwater mafia down there.
I’m ok with the foil ones. Just the rubber ones. Had too many bust in my face and even have a scar from one. People still love to be cruel and shove them in my face…..
Down escalators. I’m fine going up but I just can’t go down. I think it’s because the step is moving away from me and I’m frightened I’ll fall. It stems from when I was little my parents were watching the local news and a child was wearing wellies and they got caught in the machinery when he didn’t step off quickly enough. Strangely a good friend and I were talking about this one day and he said you aren’t going to believe this but that was me!
Talking into phones, radios, speakers etc. Idk what it is, it seemed to just develop around the age of 18 where I would burst into tears if a phone was ringing and nobody immediately answered it. Through constant exposure I’ve managed to mostly get over it, I still feel uncomfortable and stressed but I can deal with it now. I do always keep my phone on silent though.
My uncle has a phobia of buttons. Like, he could never wear a shirt with buttons because it just repulsed him.
I’ve had bouts of casadastraphobia which is an irrational fear of falling into the sky especially at night. It’s worse if I’m laying on my back. Yes I know it’s impossible but it’s very similar to the fear of vertigo if you were to look down off of a tall building. It sucks.
I’m mycophobic. I will cry and scream if I have to touch a mushroom in the outdoors or clean out something with mold. Especially those pancake looking mushrooms on trees, or the weird ones that like ears, the jelly ones, ones that look like nets…. NO
The only thing I can tolerate is clean, cut mushrooms from the store. And ONLY certain kinds. I’m still not a fan of eating them though.
When I was a small child, I was terrified of the moon. But only when it was a crescent moon! 🌙 Full moon was fine. I still cannot fully explain why, but I think it just seemed evil-looking to me, like a big creepy grin in the sky that followed you wherever you walked or drove – it was always there, leering down at you. I used to make my parents close all the blinds when I knew the moon was gonna be crescent. I’m pretty sure looking back I should have been assessed for autism, haha.
Hair. I know it’s insane. I’m disgusted and so freaked out by hair that’s not attached to someone. I can’t touch my own hair out of the drain without some layers of paper towel. A pube or a leg hair in the bathroom from my husband makes me want to puke. Random hair in a public sink? I’ll have nightmares about it that night.
I knew this guy in high school who was absolutely jacked for the time and had some weird phobia of cotton balls. He ended up telling a friend somehow and then he got pranked by people stuffing a bunch into his locker. When he opened it he freaked out super bad and it was a bit crazy to see. After he was done freaking out he got super pissed and wanted to fight his friends who did it. It was very unexpected to see.
I have a fear of buttons, as in clothing buttons. However, not a fear of buttons that are attached to clothes more like random unknown buttons. If i touch them it causes me to gag and sometimes vomit. I believe it’s called Koumpounophobia.
I’ve had this reaction since i was a small child. In kindergarten they used to have a cookie tin full of buttons for crafts. I couldn’t touch them.
Anything man made in water. I can’t go to a swimming pool because of drains, ladders, those floating things that separate lanes etc. I wouldn’t go in water near a pier or bridge or a boat. Even if someone put a plastic chair in a pool I would get panicked.
My brother is terrified of butterflies. He says it’s something about the way they move. He found out when we went through a butterfly house at a theme park. They wouldn’t let him go back out the entrance so he was army crawling and sobbing through the whole place. It’s super irrational. He’s shoved his girlfriend into the street to get away from them and he’ll jerk his car out of the way.
I once had a dream that I had to touch genatilia made out of pasta (specifically elbow shaped) and every so often my brain just plants that image in my head and makes me just gag and all the things. Obviously it’s never going to happen (fucking hope not) but every so often my brain goes “Imagine having to finger a vagina made out of soft pasta” and I recoil.
In more “normal” phobias, I hate the cluster of holes things.
Their bawk bok bok bok fills me with intense anxiety and dread.
We had them on a farm when I was a kid. The chickens were fine until we got a red island rooster (if you know, you know). One morning I went to get their eggs while the flock was roaming about. It turned into an ambush and I was ganked by the chickens and my dog had to save me as my legs were shredded by them. Been terrified ever since.
This doesn’t extend to chicken as a food, thankfully.
It’s not rare, but people sometimes make jokes or refuse to believe my OCD because it’s illogical / inconsistent. For example I get triggered by spiders and crickets but not by ants or moths. I don’t get why it’s so hard for people to understand that OCD is by nature illogical. My brain has categorized some insects as contaminants and some as harmless. It’s not a choice, it’s just how the disease works sometimes.
Comments
Does fear of water count?
I’m not going anywhere I need to be saved from.
I’m afraid of ladybugs
Not rare in how often it’s mentioned, but needles.
Like, an actual needle phobia. Stop telling me it doesn’t hurt that much, I’m well aware, that’s not what a phobia is. When I was 12 I had a perfectly healthy tooth pulled without anaesthetic, and the dentist had to twist. It’s not the pain.
Don’t know if it’s rare But the ocean
If I say it, the one person I don’t want to identify me on Reddit may be able to identify me, it’s that rare
Agoraphobia.
People think I don’t have it because I’ll never put myself in any situation that might induce it.
So I generally ask them who they think they are to think I’d put myself in any position to feel stuck in my phobia, just to lift their doubts. And then I avoid them like the plague.
If people don’t believe it and ask you to prove it, they’re a piece of shit. If you’re someone that doesn’t believe someone has a phobia of something, simply because they’ve never been exposed to it in front of you to see their reaction, stop. You’re an asshole. Find a healthier hobby than making everyone else miserable.
Giant flags
I can’t deal with anything eye related. I can’t use contacts or put in eye drops. I have to look away if others are doing it. Even watching my girlfriend put on make-up gets me.
I can watch gory horror scenes, but the second eyes are involved I’m a total baby.
I have arachnophobia. Not a rare phobia, but for context, it only came about since moving to the midwest and developed a fear of ticks. Now even those harmless house spiders freak me out.
My friends keep telling me I’m being irrational, but I can’t shake it.
Horses. Their faces are too long and they are just generally spooky.
I have a phobia of clusters of holes (trypophobia) people always think I’m joking until they see me physically shudder
Cockroaches
Not on a normal level my heart rate jumps i hyperventilate and panic i wont even go inthat room even a picture scares me
Bellybuttons. Seeing one isn’t a problem, but seeing one being touched…I’m really not confortable even writing this.
Emails and phone calls
Im TERRIFIED of buttons and people eating loudly. When I tell someone this, they say that I’m “making it up for clout”
When I was a kid, I was so afraid of water that I had to be washed by force until about 7 or 8 years old. I have no clue as to why that was. Now it’s all fine, swimming and everything, as if it never happened.
Cynophobia. I’m afraid of dogs. People just can’t understand.
bUt My DoG iS nIcE, hE tEh BeStEsT gOoD bOi, AdoRaBlE lItTlE fLuFfBaLl
No.
Just… no.
Tokophobia
Dinosaurs. When I was around 5 I had untreated anxiety. One night, while having an anxiety attack, I went crying to my parents to soothe me. When I walked into the tv room, they were watching Jurassic Park, right at the T-Rex in the rain scene. I watched in stunned, anxiety riddled silence as the T-Rex ate the guy in the toilet.
If that hadn’t cemented a life long fear of dinos in me, a very similar thing happened maybe a year later but with Godzilla.
My sister is death scared of lizards. Her heart rate would rise, she would panic, start kicking things and would run away. She wont calm down for hours.
I get extremely uncomfortable and physical shudders from seeing and or discussing tongues. Even during writing this, the thought of them is enough to start the strongest feelings of disgust to form throughout my body and mind.
I fear that at any moment, a space disaster happens without warning. Like the sun exploding out of nowhere, earth stops spinning all of sudden, earth colliding with another planet or an asteroid killing me or something.
I’m scared of vomiting and diarrhea. If I’m feeling like I’m gonna have either of them it’s full on panic attack. Having IBS does not help.
I have terrified of bacteriophages. I have nightmares of giant three foot tall ones running after me. I always wake up crying when it happens. I don’t know how to explain this fear to anyone and they people info tell just think I’m crazy.
Sleeping with objects above my head.
I just can’t help but be worried it will fall and I’ll die or be severely injured no matter the object.
I think I watched too many disaster movies as a kid with earthquakes shaking the house and things falling from the walls or ceilings lol
I don’t know if it’s rare, but bees/wasps/etc. My sister and I broke a hornets nest when I was a year or two old and I got covered in them. Don’t have a memory of it, but my subconscious remembers. It’s not as bad around bees anymore as long as they don’t get too close, but wasps are still public enemy number one. Just the sound of them buzzing triggers a fight-or-flight response. I’ve had full-blown panic attacks when they’ve gotten into the house and no one else was around to kill them for me.
And I guess it’s not so much that people refuse to believe it, more than they get exasperated whenever I react to one being too close. Like, yeah, I know it’s probably not going to sting me, but my brain doesn’t care about facts and logics, it has identified that thing as a threat and acts according 🤷♀️
Fun fact, though: the only time I’ve been stung since that incident is when I stepped on a dead bee while I was walking barefoot in my kitchen in the dark.
Goats… I know it’s a weird phobia but their eyes are terrifying. Their horizontal pupils scare the living s@#t out of me. It’s an irrational fear. I’ve scuba dived and met octopuses with similar horizontal eyes and I wasn’t afraid. But somehow goats are terrifying. I can’t explain it.
Not rare per se but I absolutely hate flying, and it surprised me how dismissive and even sometimes cruel people can be about it
I will not say phobia but when someone scratches unpolished wood… The idea of that makes my bones chill..
Neurosurgery.
I mean, think about it. The brain is everything that you are. It’s the closest thing to your soul in physical form. And people can literally carve up your soul with a knife, and most of the time, you’re kept awake while they do it! It’s so common that it’s done on an industrial scale! And if even the tiniest thing goes wrong (or in thecase of a big resection, even if everything goes right) you’re disabled in some of the most terrible ways possible, and there’s no hope of it ever improving because the brain doesn’t regenerate.
Not me but I had a friend who is afraid of inflated party balloons, which I learned about the hard way.
One time for my birthday my gf at the time had arranged for my housemate to let her in 2 friends in and they spent a few hours blowing up balloons and filling my bedroom.
The next day my neighbour (the friend in question) asked me about the surprise my friends left in my bedroom, told her to go check.
She screamed and ran back home crying which I did find odd. Wasn’t until an hour later that her bf called me a cunt for making her go into a balloon filled room. Only after I looked very confused did he ask if I knew about her phobia, I did not.
Not really rare but wanted to give yall my one; phasmophobia (fear of the supernatural (eg SW, Wendigos, shadow figures etc)
Police. I get very nervous around the police. I think it’s because I know they’re armed and have the power to arrest people. I hate getting in trouble and always do my best to follow the rules, but always paranoid I’ve done something to draw their attention. Also I haven’t experienced trauma because of the police if anyone was wondering
Escalators. I had a traumatic experience on one and I still have a physical anxiety response when I get on a fast-moving downward escalator. I thought it would go away over time but 20 years later it hasn’t subsided.
Ichthyophobia.. I’m afraid of fish
Cotton wool, whenever I see it I think about the feeling between my teeth, and it I try to avoid thinking about it I think about it expanding until it is.
Dead insects. I never kill so much as a mosquito with my bare hands. I can kill very small moths with a shoe or a vaccum cleaner after we had three invasions of these pests eating my clothes (2x) or my food (1x).
But if there is a dead insect of any kind on my desk, I have to leave the room. If there is a vacuum cleaner available, on a good day I can vacuum them, but without touching them with the tube and without watching the moment they are sucked into the cleaner.
A few years ago, we cohabitated with a wasps nest in our bedroom. I can live withe thd live ones, I dread the dead ones or the ones fighting for death and dying in front of me.
Fear of getting lost I don’t think it’s officially recognized. Mazeophonia. Doesn’t help that I have hardcore ADHD when it comes to maps so I am absolutely worthless without GPS.
I have Thalassophobia. Mine is so bad, I can’t even swim in pools or venture underwater in video games. The amount of times I get “but it’s just a bit of water!” Or “it’s a game – how can you be afraid of pixels?”
Tokophobia. Fear of pregnancy.
I wouldn’t say it’s a phobia, but I really do not like bubbles and don’t want them touching me. Not like in a bath but like when people/kids blow soap bubbles like at Disneyland or the park, etc.
submechanophobia. Machinery underwater (specifically under water animatronics).
Also a fear of blood / blood draws. I have to get blood tests every 3-6 months and I have to take anxiety medication the night before.
I can’t touch or be super close cotton wool, it’s….’squeeky’ ! And makes me feel hot and I get kind of like tunnel vision.
If it ever gets mentioned, people inevitably try to find some and proceed to squash it next to my face, and then gauge my reaction.
I’m scared of fish I can’t see. Swimming in a lake feels like playing “guess who’s gonna bite me.” No one believes me, but I’m convinced there’s an underwater mafia down there.
Balloons.
I’m ok with the foil ones. Just the rubber ones. Had too many bust in my face and even have a scar from one. People still love to be cruel and shove them in my face…..
Down escalators. I’m fine going up but I just can’t go down. I think it’s because the step is moving away from me and I’m frightened I’ll fall. It stems from when I was little my parents were watching the local news and a child was wearing wellies and they got caught in the machinery when he didn’t step off quickly enough. Strangely a good friend and I were talking about this one day and he said you aren’t going to believe this but that was me!
Talking into phones, radios, speakers etc. Idk what it is, it seemed to just develop around the age of 18 where I would burst into tears if a phone was ringing and nobody immediately answered it. Through constant exposure I’ve managed to mostly get over it, I still feel uncomfortable and stressed but I can deal with it now. I do always keep my phone on silent though.
My uncle has a phobia of buttons. Like, he could never wear a shirt with buttons because it just repulsed him.
You would never catch me swimming with dolphins. Too smart, too smooth, too many teeth
Nobody refused to believe it but I have chapodiphobia. Don’t think I know anyone else with this fear so might be somewhat rare
I’ve had bouts of casadastraphobia which is an irrational fear of falling into the sky especially at night. It’s worse if I’m laying on my back. Yes I know it’s impossible but it’s very similar to the fear of vertigo if you were to look down off of a tall building. It sucks.
I didn’t know the term so I googled it but, ornithophobia. The fear of birds.
I’m terrified of people in costumes. I can never go to disney land 💔
I’m mycophobic. I will cry and scream if I have to touch a mushroom in the outdoors or clean out something with mold. Especially those pancake looking mushrooms on trees, or the weird ones that like ears, the jelly ones, ones that look like nets…. NO
The only thing I can tolerate is clean, cut mushrooms from the store. And ONLY certain kinds. I’m still not a fan of eating them though.
When I was a small child, I was terrified of the moon. But only when it was a crescent moon! 🌙 Full moon was fine. I still cannot fully explain why, but I think it just seemed evil-looking to me, like a big creepy grin in the sky that followed you wherever you walked or drove – it was always there, leering down at you. I used to make my parents close all the blinds when I knew the moon was gonna be crescent. I’m pretty sure looking back I should have been assessed for autism, haha.
Hair. I know it’s insane. I’m disgusted and so freaked out by hair that’s not attached to someone. I can’t touch my own hair out of the drain without some layers of paper towel. A pube or a leg hair in the bathroom from my husband makes me want to puke. Random hair in a public sink? I’ll have nightmares about it that night.
I’m afraid of ship wrecks and submarines. I don’t even know why but just thinking about it makes my heart rate rise.
Emetophobia (everything that has to do with throwing up)
I knew this guy in high school who was absolutely jacked for the time and had some weird phobia of cotton balls. He ended up telling a friend somehow and then he got pranked by people stuffing a bunch into his locker. When he opened it he freaked out super bad and it was a bit crazy to see. After he was done freaking out he got super pissed and wanted to fight his friends who did it. It was very unexpected to see.
Manmade objects that are underwater. They’re just fucking eerie to look at.
I have a fear of buttons, as in clothing buttons. However, not a fear of buttons that are attached to clothes more like random unknown buttons. If i touch them it causes me to gag and sometimes vomit. I believe it’s called Koumpounophobia.
I’ve had this reaction since i was a small child. In kindergarten they used to have a cookie tin full of buttons for crafts. I couldn’t touch them.
Anything man made in water. I can’t go to a swimming pool because of drains, ladders, those floating things that separate lanes etc. I wouldn’t go in water near a pier or bridge or a boat. Even if someone put a plastic chair in a pool I would get panicked.
Whales and the things that sprout out of potatoes 😅
Bananas. People think I’m being funny or taking the piss. I’m not.
Slugs
My brother is terrified of butterflies. He says it’s something about the way they move. He found out when we went through a butterfly house at a theme park. They wouldn’t let him go back out the entrance so he was army crawling and sobbing through the whole place. It’s super irrational. He’s shoved his girlfriend into the street to get away from them and he’ll jerk his car out of the way.
Balloons… it’s the fact we fill our venues with the threat of jumpscares to mark celebrations… why?!
I’m scared of pavements (sidewalks to our American cousins).
I once had a dream that I had to touch genatilia made out of pasta (specifically elbow shaped) and every so often my brain just plants that image in my head and makes me just gag and all the things. Obviously it’s never going to happen (fucking hope not) but every so often my brain goes “Imagine having to finger a vagina made out of soft pasta” and I recoil.
In more “normal” phobias, I hate the cluster of holes things.
Chickens.
I’m absolutely terrified of chickens.
Their bawk bok bok bok fills me with intense anxiety and dread.
We had them on a farm when I was a kid. The chickens were fine until we got a red island rooster (if you know, you know). One morning I went to get their eggs while the flock was roaming about. It turned into an ambush and I was ganked by the chickens and my dog had to save me as my legs were shredded by them. Been terrified ever since.
This doesn’t extend to chicken as a food, thankfully.
It’s not rare, but people sometimes make jokes or refuse to believe my OCD because it’s illogical / inconsistent. For example I get triggered by spiders and crickets but not by ants or moths. I don’t get why it’s so hard for people to understand that OCD is by nature illogical. My brain has categorized some insects as contaminants and some as harmless. It’s not a choice, it’s just how the disease works sometimes.
trypophobia – Phobia caused by clusters of small holes (like honeycombs, coral etc.)