Strange Phobias

Phobia is defined as an intense fear of any particular object, place or situation caused by various biological and environmental factors. Emotional traumas and unpleasant situations like death of a relative or failure in work are the most common factors responsible for developing phobia. A phobic person often show signs of nausea, anxiety, sweating, panic attack and breathlessness.
Every individual experiences a blend of negative and positive experiences at some or the other stage of life. All these experiences are linked to the amygdala and hippocampus areas of the brain through the nerves. The nervous system regulates the body’s response to negative and positive experiences of life and stores them in the brain memory. Good memories of positive experiences often come out as laughter and happiness whereas bad moments from unpleasant and negative situations come out as fear, anxiety or elevated stress.
In case of any unpleasant situation, a person receives a shock that gradually activates the NMDA receptor, a brain receptor responsible for excitatory neurotransmission. These molecules further produce specific physiological effects in the cell that gets triggered when the shock reaches the brain. Over a period of time, these NMDA receptors leave their imprints on brain cells that are further transformed to phobias.

There is an endless list of phobia that greatly influences the physical and mental well being of the individual. The list includes serious phobias, funny phobias, unusual phobias and various other strange facts.

Strange phobia is an excessive and unreasonable fear of something strange, something that no body can even imagine. These phobias often lead to elevated stress and sense of impending death. Following is the list of phobias:

• Allodaxaphobia - Fear of the opinions of other people. People suffering from this phobia avoid going for debates and discussions as they can’t bear opinions of any other people.

• Barophobia - Fear of gravity. It’s so strange to imagine that there are people who have the fear of gravity.

• Chromophobia - Fear of colors. People suffering from this phobia tend to stay away from anything colorful.

• Dextrophobia - Fear of objects at the right side of the body.

• Euphobia - Fear of hearing good news. Many people have experienced so many bad moments in life that they fear good news and good moments of life.

• Francophobia - Fear of France or French culture. Many people fear foreign culture and language.

• Genuphobia - Fear of knees. It’s again a very strange and weird fear.

• Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia - Fear of long words. People suffering from this phobia tend to be brief in their talks as they fear long words.

• Ideophobia - Fear of ideas.

• Japanophobia - Fear of the Japanese. People, who have experienced some unpleasant situation in Japan or heard some negativity of Japanese, develop a fear for them.

• Optophobia - Fear of opening one's eyes. What a weird fear? Few have this fear because they feel that if they open their eyes, they will see something bad happening around.

• Plutophobia - Fear of wealth. In today’s corporate world, how can one fear wealth? Everyone is becoming a machine to earn more and more wealth but there are people who don’t want to become wealthy as they fear wealth.

• Selenophobia - Fear of the moon. Few of the people don’t go out during night as they fear moon and moonlight.

• Uranophobia - Fear of heaven. Heaven is a place that everybody wants to go but yet they are people who have the fear of heaven.

• Cacophobia: Fear of ugliness. These people react strangely to ugly characters, people or any other strange and ugly looking items.

• Dendrophobia: Fear of trees. These people are afraid of any place where there are ample of trees so they avoid going to forests, hiking trails and parks.

• Telephonophobia: Fear of telephones. Even though telephones have become the fastest means of communication today, there are many people who will avoid using telephones.

• Aritmophobia: Fear of numbers. These people avoid learning any financial issues, prices and other activities related to numbers.

• Heliophobia: Fear of the sun. The fear of sun is really a weird phobia but no doubt many people have this fear and these people avoid going to the beach, sitting outside, or any other activities where they are exposed to sunlight.