The world’s strangest phobias

At times we’ve all felt the need to be wary of something. Perhaps a particular situation arises and creates a little spurt of fear or caution to warn us of potential danger. We take care, we consider any potential threat and then either continue or back off. We make a rational decision and act appropriately, all of which is a natural function of restraint and reasoning.

A phobia, on the other hand, is totally irrational. As Bernie Hobbs says in the Australian National Library publication, A Duck Is Watching Me – Strange And Unusual Phobias,“As soon as we see a threat, real or perceived… the amygdala kicks off a chain reaction that fills our bodies with the stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol. With a phobia, reasoning does not cut it: You’re just not able to talk yourself down from freezing at sight of a spider or a needle.”

It is not unusual to suffer a level of anxiety over certain things about us. Some will be tangible, for example having to cross a creek by means of a narrow plank. It causes no problem to most because we can assess whether there is potential to get wet or, worse, hurt. We have several potential courses of action: Turn back, there is too great a risk; simply walk on over the plank, it is safe; or take off our shoes and wade across the creek, it is even safer still. That is reasoning, with logic taking over, and how most of us would treat the situation.

Some situations will be intangible. Take the person who has to walk through a room and sees a spider scurry off, disappearing through a crack metres away from where they will pass. Arachnophobia – fear of spiders – kicks in and the person has to stop because they suffer what is, to most, an irrational fear of hairy, eight-legged pest exterminators. To them there is no absurdity in the situation of having to postpone what they were in the process of doing, lest the spider suddenly reappear, or even for them to take a different course. What they suffer is an anxiety disorder.

There is a huge difference.

Some of the phobias in the book are pretty much self-explanatory: Selenophobia, for example, is a fear of the moon; papyrophobia, a fear of paper. Others are more obscure (although, in itself, the word that follows might offer a clue to its sense): Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliaphobia, a fear of long words.

Perhaps my favourite part of the book is the selection of illustrations, most of which add a touch of humour… or fear. The one I chose is from p. 78, “Matron Young in the new operating theatre at Gundagai”, a glass plate negative from the Pictures Collection of the National Library of Australia. Although no doubt a caring person, the matron’s pose and the ambience make the photo seem admirably suited to nosocomephobia, fear of hospitals.

Because I think A Duck Is Watching Me a great coffee table book, I placed it on a table at a recent gathering. It took a while for someone to pick it up but once it was opened, it soon became the main topic of conversation. Someone exclaimed, “How ridiculous!” and showed a page to one of the others, who read the entry and responded, “Well, certainly not if you suffer.” From there, others entered the discussion and the group spent ten or fifteen minutes discussing their own phobias and those of others. Q.E.D.

Get yourself off to Dymocks and grab a copy of this quirky book. I promise that, even though it will take no more than fifteen minutes from cover to cover, it is a book you will return to time and again.

To finish: Is there a word that expresses the fear that somewhere, somehow a duck is watching you? Most definitely! It is Anatidaephobia…

A Duck is Watching Me by Bernie Hobbs is available now from Dymocks. Click here to learn more.