A phobia is an irrational, persistent fear of a situation, person, activity or object that an individual feels compelled to avoid at all costs. A mix of social, environmental and a genetic predisposition are what most psychologists believe to be what causes phobias the majority of phobias people experience.

There are three classes of phobias, specific, social and agoraphobia. Agoraphobics have the fear of being in a situation and not being able to escape it or having help escaping if they become panicked or overwhelmed with anxiety. This is the most debilitating of all the phobias and there are so many associated fears that treatment is difficult. Social phobia can disrupt ones life because people afflicted with social phobias can not lead a normal life or sometimes have a relationship with anyone outside of their homes. And specific phobias contain four categories, blood-injection phobia, fear of the environment, animal phobias and situational phobias. All together in the four categories, there are over 350 varieties of phobias ranging from social phobias – extreme personal space invasion, to arachnophobia – the fear of spiders.

Phobias bring on a panic, fear even a terror of the item or situation in the person who has the phobia and it may seem irrational to others without the fear, but it is very real to the person with the phobia. 

What causes phobias can be different in different people; it can be something from childhood, a traumatic experience or a fear that never seemed to go away and was brought to adulthood. There are as many explanations for what causes phobias as there are phobias and there are a lot of phobias according to the National Institute of Mental Illness.

A few of the weird phobias are Chorophobia, which is the fear of dancing, either alone or with a partner. Osphresiophobia is the fear of body odor, both your own and others. Amathophobia is the fear of dust and Heortophobia is the fear of holidays, any and all holidays will cover this one. Archibutyrophobia is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth – now that’s a weird phobia! Genuphobia is the fear of knees and Paraskevidekatriaphobia is the fear of Friday the 13th.  Pogonophobia is the fear of beards. Helminthophobia is the fear of worms and Batrachophobia is the fear of reptiles. Anablephobia is the fear of looking up and Europhobia is the fear of cats. Heliophobia is fear of the sun and Noctiphobia is the fear of the night time. Pediophobia is the fear of dolls and Peledophobia is the fear of bald people. Novercaphobia is the fear of mother-in-laws and Rupophobia is the fear of dirt. Coulrophobia is the fear of clowns which many people posses.

There are thousand of weird phobias listed on the Internet and in the Medical Journals and Mental Health Journals that everyday people do not fear and go about their daily lives knowing nothing about; however, some of these weird phobias are debilitating to about 30 to 40 percent of the population.