Phobias are types of anxiety disorders characterized by persistent, irrational, and excessive fear of specific objects, situations, or activities. These fears can cause significant distress and impairment in daily functioning.
1. Specific phobias is a generic term for any kind of anxiety disorder that amounts to an unreasonable or irrational fear related to exposure to specific objects or situations. As a result, the affected person tends to actively avoid direct contact with the objects or situations and, in severe cases, any mention or depiction of them. The fear can, in fact, be disabling to their daily lives.
2. Social phobia is the most common anxiety disorder. It is characterized by intense fear in one or more social situations, causing considerable distress and impaired ability to function in at least some parts of daily life. These fears can be triggered by perceived or actual scrutiny from others.
3. Acrophobia is an extreme or irrational fear of heights, especially when one is not particularly high up. It belongs to a category of specific phobias, called space and motion discomfort that share both similar etiology and options for treatment.
4. Agoraphobia is an anxiety disorder characterized by anxiety in situations where the sufferer perceives certain environments as dangerous or uncomfortable, often due to the environment's vast openness or crowdedness.
5. Algophobia is a phobia of pain - an abnormal and persistent fear of pain that is far more powerful than that of a normal person. Algophobia is much more common in elderly people. It can be treated with behavioral therapy and anti-anxiety medication.
6. Ailurophobia is a type of specific phobia: the persistent, irrational fear of cats.
7. Erythrophobia or the fear of blushing, is a relatively complex phobia to overcome. Blushing is a physiological response to, among other things, anxiety. This makes erythrophobia one of the few self-perpetuating phobias in that the more you worry, the more likely you are to experience your object of fear!
8. Panphobia also called omniphobia, pantophobia, or panophobia, is a phobia known as a "non-specific fear" or "the fear of everything", and is described as "a vague and persistent dread of some unknown evil." Panphobia is not registered as a type of phobia in medical references.
9. Claustrophobia is the fear of having no escape and being in closed or small spaces or rooms. It is typically classified as an anxiety disorder and often results in panic attack, and can be the result of many situations or stimuli, including elevators crowded to capacity, windowless rooms, and even tight-necked clothing.
10. Xenophobia is the unreasoned fear of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange. Xenophobia can manifest itself in many ways involving the relations and perceptions of an ingroup towards an outgroup, including a fear of losing identity, suspicion of its activities, aggression, and desire to eliminate its presence to secure a presumed purity. Xenophobia can also be exhibited in the form of an "uncritical exaltation of another culture" in which a culture is ascribed "an unreal, stereotyped and exotic quality".
11. Zoophobia or animal phobia is a class of specific phobias to particular animals, or an irrational fear or even simply dislike of any non-human animals.