Manic Monday (Even though its Tuesday)

*(I am starting a weekly series of posts on my blog. Today will be a post of yesterday’s blog that I never got to post because I was sick at home. I hope that you guys enjoy the new weekly posts.)

So on Mondays, we will be presenting a new item each week that informs you of something that drives people….well manic. Some thing that gets on your nerves more than anything or a fear that people have of which you may not yet be informed. We’ve all probably heard of Arachnophobia (partially thanks to Jeff Daniel’s very 90s movie Arachnophobia), claustrophobia and many of us have, without even knowing its name, acrophobia. Acrophobia is the third most common phobia and is described as the ‘fear of heights’. I just got a chill just thinking about being atop a 20′ ladder or standing on the edge of a 50 story building. We have phobias linked to a fear of dogs, germs or even death itself but you don’t think about the less common things that legitimately are fears. Today’s Manic Monday topic was suggested by one of my long time friends, Tiffany. She informed me of something about her that I did not know; she has a phobia. In response to a Facebook post where I asked my Facebook friends to vote on suggested blog topics, I figured she was going to tell me that she had aerophobia (a fear of flying in an airplane) or maybe even trypanophobia (which is the fear of needles) and I was thankful to hear that my friend didn’t have pogonophobia (which is the fear of beards); but I must admit that I was quite floored when she told me that she had hydro-papyrophobia. This isn’t quite a phobia to her because she doesn’t run in fear at the first sight of wet paper (which is what hydro-papyrophobia is) but it just gives her the ‘heebie-jeebies’ as she says.

Just like Tiffany, it is a common thing when it comes to fears and phobias that the person is not actually scared of the object but more of less just doesn’t want to interact with it. Someone with aerophobia doesn’t run and hide every time they see a plane fly over but they merely don’t want to get on and fly on a plane themselves. There are cases and phobias where the phobia itself alters the person’s life. My life long best friend Jacob has songlobophobia. We chased him around the house many times with cotton balls and I remember seeing him quiver in disgust as he would be forced or accidently touch cotton balls. No one understood why he freaked out so badly but the sensory processing disorder is most commonly caused by a response to the touch or sound of cotton balls. This touch or sound, in people with this phobia, triggers a spike in cortisol which causes a subsequent stress response.It may sound silly to you but just notice that feeling in between your fingers the next time that you grab a cotton ball. You might start to develop a phobia which some might view as irrational because until you have to alter certain parts of your life just to deal with something that causes such a repulsion then you really can’t judge.

I hope that you don’t have a fear of saying goodbye because I must now say…

Love, peace and chicken grease;

-Chris