Fear is a big part of why most people don’t do many things, like going on tall rides at an amusement park, going on boats, traveling by plane, or riding trains. But the weirdest fears can make people avoid or even prevent them from doing day to day activities such as bathing, opening your eyes, wearing clothes, and even a fear of the color yellow.
In this article we will cover some of the oddest fears and phobias in the world. One of the most popular fears in the world is arachnophobia along with acrophobia (fear of heights), and ophidiophobia (fear of snakes).
One of the weirdest and most specific fears is the irrational fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. This fear is called arachibutyrophobia and its severity varies from person to person with some people avoiding eating peanut butter entirely.
You might’ve heard of people hating math, but have you heard of the fear of numbers? Arithmophobia is the uncontrollable fear of numbers. People with this fear get anxiety just looking or thinking about numbers. This fear can impair their lives due to the importance of numbers in our day to day lives.
Most people are attracted to money and try to gain as much as possible through stocks and working hard at their job. But people with plutophobia, the fear of the management of money, don’t. This fear can take over people’s lives and lead to them sabotaging their own careers due to this fear.
You know that one friend who always smells horrible, maybe you should cut them some slack because there’s a chance they have an irrational fear of bathing. Ablutophobia or a fear of bathing that usually develops in children, that causes them to avoid bathing and showering. This fear goes hand and hand with aquaphobia (fear of water) and leads to extreme anxiety over getting wet or showering/bathing.
The color yellow is used to catch the attention of people, like buses and taxis that need to stand out in busy streets. But some who have the fear called xanthophobia can’t stand the color yellow and at some points can’t even get on a bus or taxi. At very extreme levels, these people might even find yellow food disgusting and can’t eat it.
Truly one of the weirdest fears of all is the fear of fear itself. Phobophobia, the fear of fear, can be explained as fear that is triggered by anxiety and that fear leads to a downward spiral of fear causing anxiety and anxiety until it is either stopped or the person has a panic attack which leads to even more fear and anxiety. People with phobophobia often avoid anxiety inducing situations and public interactions
Though these phobias might seem pretty weird and funny, they can impair a person’s capability to live their day to day life. Although the most common fears are explainable and understandable because most of these phobias are over things that can kill you such as snakes and spiders, these unusual fears aren’t as relatable because most of them can’t even hurt you and most of them seem like pretty normal and unintimidating experiences to the average person.
