Fears and phobias are one of the most prevalent forms of mental anxiety disorders that affect people of all ages and interfere with daily life.

Here are the 10 most common fears and phobias:

10. Fear of getting old

This fear is quite rare in young people but rather frequent in middle-aged women and men, who are over 50 years old. This fear is understandable because at the biological level, the mission of a woman is giving birth and upbringing of children, and the mission of a man is reproduction and providing his family with food and safety.

9. Fear of being poisoned

This fear is independent and usually does not correlate with other phobias. This is because, as a rule, this fear affects people with an intuitive way of thinking. And according to different estimations, these are no more than 5% of the total world population.

8. Fear of being a coward

This is a purely male fear that sometimes is experienced by young people who have a kind of innate sense of responsibility for others. These people have very developed managerial skills and innate charisma. Some women also experience it.

7. Germophobia (fear of bacteria and microorganisms)

Surely at least once in your life you’ve seen or heard about people who wash their hands dozens of times a day, do house cleaning several times every day and cannot touch many innocuous objects only because they are afraid to catch some dangerous virus or bacteria.

6. Fear of going crazy

It is a rather uncommon and steady fear, which is experienced only by those who think in abstract terms. Often these are people who aspire to explore the spiritual world and cognize the universe; they are often interested in religion, philosophy and physics. These are the people who can give birth to a brilliant idea, even if initially it may seem a little crazy.

5. Fear of intimacy

This fear occurs not only in 16-year-olds, but is also quite common in 40-year-old men and sometimes women. Surprisingly, this fear affects people who have increased libido compared with others. However, these people have complicated sexuality because of a bad first experience or deep-seated resentments and repressed emotions.

4. Fear of spiders, rats, cockroaches, snakes, airplanes, monsters, demons, mirrors, high heels…

The common point in all these phobias is that their root lies in an undeveloped imaginative type of thinking of those people who have an innate imaginative intellect. Such fears and phobias affect people with innate imaginative thinking and so-called sensitive nature, such as actors, artists, models, etc. These are people who think in images and emotions rather than logical terms.

3. Social phobia (including the fear of public speaking) and agoraphobia (fear of open spaces)

Of course, to some extent, we are all afraid to show our feelings and emotions in front of others. However, for some people, such fear becomes obsessive and turns into a phobia. Most of those who suffer from these fears are people with imaginative or systematic thinking.

People of the first category have an innate creative side and being the center of attention is a natural thing for them, so the fear of public speaking or of open spaces arises only in consequence of certain particularities of perception. At the same time, for the people from the second category, it is rather a fear of appearing incompetent, ridiculous or stupid to others.

2. Fear of death

This fear is common in hypochondriac and anxious people who have a rich imagination. Such people are the main subjects of the fear of death and other similar phobias: fear of enclosed spaces, fear of blood, fear of heights, fear of corpses, fear of pain, fear of rape and others.

1. Fear of loneliness

Even people with autism, who are characterized by complete isolation and antisocial behavior, are afraid of complete solitude. The basis of this fear has to do with the fact that everyone aspires to be happy. But since initially humans are “social animals”, it implies that we can feel happy only when being a part of society.

These are only a few of the most common fears and phobias. What other phobias do you know?

References:

  1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5674525/
  2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5359916/
  3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8561762/

Copyright © 2012-2024 Learning Mind. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint, contact us.

power of misfits book banner desktop

Like what you are reading? Subscribe to our newsletter to make sure you don’t miss new thought-provoking articles!

This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. tina kirby

    I enjoyed reading this information, it was appealing to me thank you for your showing this veiwing

  2. Graceson Kamei

    I like reading and knowing these words

  3. burhan mohammed

    fear can be manupulated like everything else by those who are at very top ie politcians who are pshycologicaly putting fear in to people through media with this current situation with covid 19 putting fear and mass paranoia in society. with social distancing and lockdowns and face covering has negative impacts in people lives. there seems to be to much of fear in society and that is why society is the way it is and understanding that fear is not needed in society so this need to change.

Leave a Reply