Pathological fear is an interesting subject of which is very difficult to comprehend without being clinical psychologist. To the rest of us its an inexplicable reaction to a thing or a situation that causes us involuntarily run a country mile in order to avoid that which we are fearful of. Yet people these days claim they have a phobia, when merely they’re just afraid.

I have read about various different phobias which are well documented such as birds, dolls, and quite possibly the weirdest one I’ve read about is ringmasters and clowns! (This fear is called coulrophobia if you’re interested!). People who have genuine phobias actually suffer so when you hear some people saying they have a phobia, it’s not really is it?

Personally there’s lots of things I’d say I’m afraid of but it’s dubious whether I have a phobia of these. I don’t like spiders, heights, flying and big things that swim, weird I know but I wouldn’t say these fall into the category of “phobia”. However needles is completely different, the mere thought of this makes me feel ill and just the description of anyone having a blood test will cause myself to insert fingers into ears to avoid hearing any details. But is a phobia? Possibly. Plus if I was swimming in the ocean and I saw a Liopleurodon Ferox, I’d be fucking terrified!

It just seems that the notion of phobias is rather exaggerated today as the general frequency of hypochondriacs seems to be on the rise. Don’t get me wrong, its ok to be afraid of something, but classing it as a phobia is generally short sighted.

One of the most common fears people have, if they choose to believe in it, is ghosts. When asked what it is they fear about it,  is it the fact that the dead aren’t really dead? Or is it something like they can walk through walls? David Copperfield did that but you don’t hear anybody having a fear of David Copperfield now do you?

Aliens is another one. This is probably consistent with ghosts as surely its more of a fear of the unknown rather than an intergalactic race. Does that qualify as racism then? If somebody said publicly that they were afraid of Lebanese people, that would be deemed as racist. So why does the same not apply here? In common culture aliens have always been portrayed as being humanoid with funny pointy eyes and angular faces…many people will say they’re afraid of these aliens…so why is no-one afraid of Lily Cole? I mean come on she looks like the boy from System Of A Down’s video for Aerials!?!

It’s understandable that people can be afraid of situations that can be fatal such as burning houses, drowning and falling from great heights. But playing Devil’s Advocate a minute, surely that’s the survival instinct of self preservation which inhibits every living creature, except possibly moths. Those dumb fuckers keep flying into flames!

But the converse is also true. You know when you ask someone if they’re afraid of anything, and they reply “I’m not afraid of anything”, that’s complete bollocks. For example if Godzilla was rampaging outside your house destroying the neighbourhood, you’d be pretty scared! The same way that if you indulged on a nice relaxing cruise and a kraken attacked the boat. Again, you’d be pretty afraid.

In conclusion, everyone is afraid of something or other, that’s just human nature. Not everybody has a phobia per se, as such a claim would entail pathological symptoms which go beyond simple fearfulness.

Hypothesis: Everyone is afraid of something, not everyone has a phobia