Weirdest phobias

[WeeAgnes]

What's the strangest phobia you have ever heard of, or come across?

I remember reading years ago that someone had a phobia of sprouting potatoes.

I don't know if it's as extreme as a phobia but clowns freak me out in a disportionate way.

I'm a calm and logic person otherwise and I know it's beyond ridiculous. It's just make up and clothing.

Honestly, if given the choice, I would rather be stuck in a room with a wild bear than even my mum, partner or best friend dressed as a clown. An unknown clown would really send me over the edge.

Bonkers, I know it is.

I have the balloon fear, I hate it 😔. Started when I was 9 and in hospital after an operation for appendicitis and the nurses took us into the day room that was filled with balloons and told us to pop them. Think it must of been the trauma of being rushed to hospital and then the operation and pain afterwards that caused it. Its certainly stayed with me.

That tree- thing from Guardians of the Galaxy. Is it Groot? I'm not googling to check. I can't look at it/him. Just makes me feel quite anxious.

Mine is tripe. I used to have a cat who brought a big piece in from time to time - goodness knows where she kept finding it but she used to drop it in the hallway in our tiny flat and I couldn’t bring myself to step over it to go past.

I don't know if its a phobia but I have a massive reaction to forks / fork tines getting stuck together. I NEED to separate them immediately but it makes me feel sick and inexplicably angry.

i get a cold sweat and my arms will start going numb. I can't look at them and i hate the feel of it. If they don't separate right away I have to throw them down and run away from them. Its very weird.

Mine is ice lolly sticks or coffee sticks they give me the heeby jeebies

Big bird off sesame street.

A recent phobia too, DH put it on to show the kids (I'd never seen it) and I freaked the full out when I saw it, feel anxious just typing it!

Steep inclines, like escalators or driving up a steep driveway.

I used to get off a train station near work that had an escalator so tall and steep that when you got on at the bottom you couldn't see the top. I'd grip the side rail and stare at my feet, fighting the urge to vomit.

Also stray hairs. Having to pull hair out of a clogged drain makes me ill.

Not a phobia but something that makes me feel weirdly anxious is the sea on Google Maps, especially in satellite mode. There's something about it that I find really creepy and I have to look away or quickly move over land. The thing that makes it weirder is that thankfully I don't have an issue flying over water in real life, despite there being a rather higher chance of falling into the sea in a plane than on Google Maps!

I get that too! I first noticed it when someone had posted an aerial image of an area at Loch Lomond following a drowning to show how suddenly and deeply the ground falls away and there was definitely a visceral reaction to it. I get it for any large bodies of water but especially when I can see where the water gets deeper. It's like a strange sense of vertigo mixed in as well and have just developed some weird feelings (like eeriness) about open water, most often aerial images. I didn't used to bother about planes going over the sea but in recent years I get a bit of jelly legs at the prospect.

The same! I have no idea why. I can't watch any movie set on one, I can't breath properly. I saw one in a dry dock once and had to get away, thought i was going to cry. Very weird.

I haven't come across anyone else who get this, I'm glad I'm not the only one!

Another one. Upturned trees after a storm showing all the severed roots. 😬 I think this ties in with trypohobia and the close pattern thing.

@APatternGrammarNo, nothing like that. But I have hallucinated once and it was terrifying, it reminds me of that and makes me feel like I’m losing my mind. I don’t feel that with miniature things though, only things that are blown up to much bigger than they’d normally be.

I used to be scared of eBay.

No idea why. I'd never even used it at the point of me being scared of it. But every time I saw an advertisement or I saw someone else using it, I'd have to leave the room and I'd be audibly gagging and sobbing.

Then I got a job where people would place orders through eBay, and the fear gradually went away.

My other fears are zombies and the dark, but zombies are less of a fear now. I used to have nightmares every night though.

Im with your daughter, mushy peas as well. It’s a texture thing.

My son had an intense fear of them(and particularly the ones with legs that bob around, due mainly to being in shop in his push chair and one "following" him) and also clowns. We were once trapped in Early Learning Centre as on one side of the shop was someone selling helium balloons and the other was a clown handing out fliers.

The sea thing is weird.
If I'm flying over it, or on a beach I'm OK but it's when we're driving on the road alongside it, it freaks me out.
It's the vastness and just this massive body of water, it feels threatening.
Hard to describe.

I can barely bring myself to type this but I am absolutely repulsed by cigarettes. Even the emoji picture makes me feel sick. I walk everywhere looking at the ground incase my foot touches one, I hated Tenerife and will never go back because there were ends of them everywhere and I was wearing sandals. I was panicking one was going to touch my bare skin.

I can’t eat if I can see an end anywhere around me and have to look away if people are smoking even in films.

I absolutely can not touch any form of it, be whole, end, box, I can almost feel it on my fingers.

If I was queen of the world smoking would be punishable by death or at least a lengthy Prision term.

I get that too! I was googling an area near our house and found myself over Lough Neagh and my heart started racing and had to scroll away fast.

Although I do have a bit of a fear of deep water, its only a real panic feeling on Google maps. I can look at pictures of deep water. Google map. Nope.

Topiary no idea why 🤔

That might have been me! I've definitely posted it before. It stems back to c. 1978, age 6 and reaching into a big paper sack of potatoes which was nearly empty. The potatoes at the bottom had sprouted so much that my entire arm got touched by potato shoots. I was utterly freaked out and still would be, if it ever happened again (which it won't because I don't plunge into dark potato bags).

I also get freaked out swimming in the sea if there's seaweed and it touches my legs.

I have a phobia of Mary Tudor. Yes I am weird.

Not a phobia exactly but cold baked beans make me feel sick, I can't touch them and if a bit of the juice gets on me when putting them in a pan I feel queasy
Once they are warm I quite like them though