10 Phobias You Wouldn't Believe Are Real

By Raza Mehdi

Nov 09, 2022

Imagine having a fear of falling asleep! People living with this phobia associate sleeping with a lack of control or nightmares, losing time while asleep or dying

Somniphobia

Fear of falling asleep

An abbreviation of "no-mobile-phone phobia", it is common in the present age. This phobia is the anxiety of being without your mobile phone, a phone without battery life or unable to connect to the internet.

Nomophobia

Fear of being without a phone

Those with this social phobia fear eating in public or engaging in mealtime conversations. They prefer to eat alone quietly, and when in company with others, they expect them to be silent.

Deipnophobia

Fear of dining in public

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Sounds like an ironic 36-character name for a phobia of long words! People dealing with this phobia could land in a pickle if they want to be in a spelling bee contest.

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia

Fear of long words

Scriptophobia can cause social anxiety while writing when people are around. It is also related to graphophobia, which is the fear of writing manually.

Scriptophobia

Fear of writing in public

Some people prefer a man without a beard, but people with pogonophobia have a legitimate fear of facial hair. It can also be moustaches or goatees that cause severe stress.

Pogonophobia

Fear of beards

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People who have anthophobia have an extreme fear of flowers. The fear can be of any flower or a specific type. Any part of a flower or plant — stem, leaf or petal — may cause anxiety.

Anthophobia

Fear of flowers

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For people with turophobia, just the sight, thought, or mention of cheese is enough to give them the heebie-jeebies. Lactose-intolerant people are also afraid of cheese.

Turophobia

Fear of cheese

People with barophobia fret that gravity will cause a fall or topple a heavy object onto them leading to severe injury or death. Overcoming this fear can be quite challenging as avoiding gravity on our planet is practically impossible.

Barophobia

Fear of gravity

Image: GIPHY

People with panophobia experience more than one type of phobia. They remain in a constant state of vague fear without any rational trigger and believe something terrible is about to happen.

Panophobia

Fear of everything