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Oftentimes when we hear the word “phobia,” our minds tend to go to one of two places: claustrophobia (fear of confined or crowded spaces) or arachnophobia (fear of spiders).
However, these two aren’t the only phobias out there — in fact, they just barely scratch the surface. The reality is, there are a lot of common phobias we don’t talk about that can be just as debilitating.
According to licensed clinical social worker Ken Goodman, the author of The Anxiety Solution Series, phobias tend to begin as anxiety and turn into phobias when people actively avoid things that provoke their anxiety. A scary experience usually triggers a person’s phobia.
For example, if you were to have an episode of severe vomiting that led to a panic attack, you might develop an irrational fear of vomiting and avoid going places where you think you might vomit.
“When people begin to avoid, the fear turns into a phobia, and if severe, can be so debilitating it can alter the course of their life,” Goodman told The Mighty.
In order to expand the conversation about phobias, we asked Goodman to talk to us about five phobias we don’t often hear about — but are actually more common than we think. In addition to his insight, we turned to our community to share their experiences with these phobias in their own lives.
Here’s what Goodman and our community had to say:
