Page 14 - ADU Voice

14 voice · FALL 2022

PHOBIAS

& FEARS

BY VIOLET SARAH PRINCE

Everyone’s afraid of something —

or a lot of things. However, a fear is
not the same as a true phobia.

hobia is derived from the Greek term
“phobos” which means “fear”. Let me
P define what a phobia is: A phobia is an
intense and overwhelming fear of an object,
place, situation, emotion, or animal. Phobias
appear when a person has an excessive or

unrealistic fear of an object or a circum-
stance. While most of you might have heard
of common phobias such as fear of heights
(acrophobia) or enclosed spaces (claustro-
phobia), there is a whole range of strange
phobias to explore. Here are five weird and
unusual phobias you may not have heard of!

Eisoptrophobia
Fear of mirrors

This is the fear of mirrors or of seeing your

own reflection in a mirror. People usually
have this fear when they are not confident
regarding their body. They feel that mir-
rors distort the way they look in reality. You
won’t hear a person suffering from eisoptro-
phobia say anything like, “Mirror, mirror,
on the wall. Who’s the fairest of them all?”