What is a phobia?

Phobias are persistent and intense fears of a particular:

object

person (like a doctor or clown)

situation

activity

If you have a phobia, you may experience severe anxiety and panic attacks when you’re:

exposed to the object or situation you’re fearful of

thinking about the thing you’re afraid of

anticipating an encounter with the item you’re scared of

  • Sunstream@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Parasitophobia and dermatophobia (fear of parasites and skin disease, respectively). This bleeds into a fear of fungal infection and worms in general. I guess my kryptonite would be a parasitic skin infection 🙃

    I don’t know what it is about them that repulses me/freaks me out over anything else- I quite like spiders, snakes, heights, the dark, etc- it’s just instant nausea when anyone starts talking about them. If there’s a hint I’m in danger of encountering either irl, I’m out.

    Worst fear is having something crawl into my ear (I guess I can thank Animorphs for introducing yerks to me as a kid). I’ve seen some videos of that sort of thing happening to people, and I can’t even fathom how calm people seem to be in comparison to how I would be if it were me. I’d have to have to put on a watch so I didn’t start ripping into my head in animal panic.

    I also have a particular dislike for really large fish and really large lizards. Anything larger than a foot and a half begins to make me uncomfortable. Dinosaurs are right out.

    As my sister would say (who has a fear of lizards, herself) “If I were trapped in a room with a komodo dragon and a gun with two bullets in it, I would shoot myself twice.”