Phobias - what are they, and are they common?

Written By Nik & Eva Speakman
'No fear' handwritten

Phobia – From the Greek: Phóbos, meaning “fear” or “morbid fear”

Phobias: a persistent (and often irrational) fear of an object or situation. Greek physician Hippocrates (470-410 B.C.E.) first described phobias 500 years after Hippocrates, Roman doctor, Celsus used the word hydrophobia for a patient who feared water. Now there are 400 phobias recognized by the medical profession.

Top 10 Phobias

  1. Fear of public speaking – Glossophobia

  2. Fear of death – Necrophobia

  3. Fear of spiders – Arachnophobia

  4. Fear of darkness – Achluophobia, Scotophobia or Myctophobia

  5. Fear of heights – Acrophobia

  6. Fear of people or social situations – Sociophobia

  7. Fear of flying – Aerophobia

  8. Fear of confined spaces – Claustrophobia

  9. Fear of open spaces – Agoraphobia

  10. Fear of thunder and lightning – Brontophobia

Celebrity Phobias

  • Scarlett Johansson: Ornithophobia – The fear of birds

  • Orlando Bloom: Swinophobia – The fear of pigs

  • Megan Fox: Bacteriaphobia – The fear of germs and bacteria

  • Billy Bob Thornton: Chromophobia – The fear of bright colors

  • Madonna: Astraphobia – The fear of thunder and lightning

  • Oprah Winfrey: Chiclephobia – The fear of chewing-gum

  • Nicole Kidman: Lepidopterophobia – The fear of butterflies

Phobias You May Not Have Heard Of

  • Anablephobia - Fear of looking up

  • Anuptaphobia - Fear of staying single

  • Bibliophobia - Fear of books

  • Cathisophobia - Fear of sitting

  • Ephebiphobia - Fear of teenagers

  • Genuphobia - Fear of knees

  • Hellenologophobia - Fear of Greek terms or complex scientific terminology

  • Helminthophobia - Fear of being infested with worms

  • Logizomechanophobia - Fear of computers

  • Meningitophobia - Fear of brain disease

  • Omphalophobia - Fear of belly buttons

  • Phobophobia - Fear of phobias or fear

Source

Check out our TikTok channel, specifically the videos in our playlist on ‘Overcoming Your Phobia’ for more helpful hints and tips! Also – we discuss many phobias and tips to overcome them in our podcast ‘Making The Change’.

Nik & Eva Speakman

We have studied and worked together since 1992. Between us we have studied human behaviour and psychology for seven decades. We both share an uncontainable passion to offer hope and to help people lead happier and less inhibited lives.

After many remarkable breakthroughs we created our own behavioural change therapy, ‘Schema Conditioning.’® Subsequent work with trauma victims and their related symptoms, led to the creation of two further trauma-based therapies.

‘Schema Conditioning Psychotherapy.’®

‘Visual Schema Displacement Therapy (VSDT)’®

‘Visual Schema Detachment & Restructuring (VSDR)’®

Qualifications from the creation of our therapies, resulted in training psychology professors, doctors and masters students at Universities in Amsterdam and Utrecht. In 2015, this training produced the two sets of scientific studies conducted into the workings of our therapy; the first two study papers highlighting the remarkable efficacy, was published in the Journal of Behaviour Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry in June 2019. A further third study was then published in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology in April 2021, with a fourth clinical study with hospital patients is currently underway and will be completed by the end of 2022.

In addition to members of the public, we work with, and have treated many high-profile clients and ‘A’ list clients around the world, having had prodigious successes. We are resident therapists on ITV’s multi award-winning ‘This Morning’ and have been for over a decade, we have also had own television shows, one of which, ‘The Speakmans’, also aired on ITV and several countries worldwide. Over the last two decades we have appeared on numerous other television shows as experts, such as the multi award-winning Saturday Night Takeaway.

Our mission is to illuminate that there is ALWAYS HOPE and that overcoming trauma and improving quality of life is entirely possible. Many people have either never been given hope, or worse had hope taken away from them, our aim is to correct that by sharing our message in any way we possibly can, including live workshops, theatre tours, books, podcasts, radio, television, social media and YouTube.

At the heart of all we do, is our relentless mission to offer HOPE to as many people as we possibly can.

https://nikandeva.com
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