It’s normal to feel afraid while facing a life-threatening situation, like an earthquake or a sudden appearance of a cobra. Some people, however, feel scared of extremely innocuous objects. According to the Australia and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, a phobia is an irrational and excessive fear of anything. It can happen through exposure to the feared object or situation. But in some cases, it may occur by merely thinking about it. Some common symptoms associated with phobias include trembling, increased heart rate, dizziness, a sense of unreality, nausea, breathlessness, and fear of dying. Perhaps, you must have read about some common phobias in high school, such as Acrophobia(Fear of Heights), Ophidiophobia(fear of snakes), and Arachnophobia(Fear of Spiders).

Here we have discussed some uncommon phobias that you might not be aware of:

Haphephobia

It is the fear of being touched. This might sound unrealistic, but it’s a real disease. The patient avoids touching any person and also being touched. So, they avoid visiting crowded places and using public transportation facilities. In most cases, the person even avoids shaking hands, hugging, or sitting close to someone. In some extreme conditions, the patient feels pain whenever someone touches him/her, and he could also remember every single time he/she gets touched.

Ergophobia

It is the phobia from one's workplace. If you think that you might be suffering from this disease as you too dislike going to the office, then that’s not the case. A person suffering from this disease shows some extreme symptoms. Having a job causes stress and anxiety in every person’s life at some point. But due to this disease, the patient lives under a constant threat of getting fired. Some of its symptoms include rapid heartbeat, uneasiness in breathing, excessive sweating, panic attacks, frequent urination, and vomiting. The person keeps on changing the job and with each new job, the fear increases.

Somniphobia

This disease can be defined as an excessive fear of falling asleep. It is more common in kids than adults, but is not age-specific. There are many causes of this problem. In most cases, the person associates going to bed with dying. In children, it usually occurs due to repeated nightmares. Sleep paralysis is another cause of Somniphobia. In this state, a person, upon waking up, experiences muscular paralysis for a few minutes. This might happen several times which makes the patient afraid of sleeping.

Bibliophobia

Bibliophobia means the fear or hatred of books. Many people suffer from only a subset of this phobia, such as mythophobia(fear of legends) or metrophobia(fear of poetry). The patient may experience some extreme symptoms such as suffocation, vomiting, sweating, dizziness, or panic attack by merely entering a library or looking at books. More often, the bibliophobic person would express uncanny emotions like crying when said to read a book. One most common cause of this problem is learning disabilities like dyslexia. It is also caused by negative experiences with books, which can be generated by reading something that contradicted one’s moral or ethical values.

As per the professor of psychology at Curtin University, Ottmar Lipp, phobias are quite common, with social phobia affecting about 7 percent of the population and specific phobias affecting approximately 9 percent. Moreover, 10 percent people experience a clinical level of anxiety at some points in their lives. Ottmar says that cognitive behavioral therapy is very effective in reducing anxiety and phobias. If you are a medical student or enrolled in any degree program of psychology, then you must know more about phobias by reading the journals published by various colleges and psychological research centres of Australia. And, if loads of pending projects are not letting you expand your knowledge horizon, then seek assistance from our biomedical engineering assignment help experts.