Fear of maths was identified as a separate fear in the 1950’s.
Maths is one of the core topics at school and you’re expected to take the subject, regardless of whether or not you’re scared about it.
One of the biggest problems with maths is that – unlike most other subjects – answers are either right or wrong. There’s little, if any, middle ground. And that can be quite off-putting.
Money fears are common – which is probably not reassuring if you’re unfortunate enough to be experiencing them.
The fear of not having enough money can come from lots of different places in your life but it’s usually to do with employment – either you’re not being paid enough or you’ve been made jobless or your pension and savings aren’t going as far as you’d expected.
Whatever the reason, what can you do about this fear?
Fear of spiders is normal – some of them are dangerous, so it’s part of our survival instinct. We tend to generalise things (otherwise you’d have to work out what a car was every time you encountered a different make or model or colour) so, even in countries where spiders are just regular creepy crawly things, the fear is common.
But how do you stop being scared of spiders?
Mistakes happen. And they’re not always negative – Post-It notes were the result of a mistake making a super strong glue.
So the short answer is that you shouldn’t be worried about making mistakes.
In fact, your whole life has probably had a series of mistakes that haven’t adversely affected you. You didn’t walk the first time you stood up – you made mistakes until you learned how that worked. Likewise you almost certainly didn’t achieve perfect balance on your bike. And when you learned to drive a car, it took a while and not everything you did was perfect. The list goes on.
The quick answer to the question “can claustrophobia be cured” is a resounding yes.
So if you’re unfortunate enough to be claustrophobic – whether mildly or more deeply – then there are some things you can do to lessen your symptoms and overcome it completely.
With the current lockdown, it’s quite possible that you’re the only one in your house. And whilst that can initially seem to be a nice idea – no-one interrupting you, doing things on your own terms and your own schedule – it can quickly turn into something scarier.
This fear is called Monophobia – you can probably work out the origin of that word, “mono” for one and “phobia” for fear. They weren’t being particularly inventive when they came up with the name.
And that’s kind-of one of the problems if you’re suffering from this fear. Without other people to bounce things off, it gets lonely fast and ideas fade away.
So, what can you do if you’re unfortunate enough to be suffering from this fear of loneliness?
Fear of success is one of those odd phobias that people don’t really understand. After all, if you’re successful then surely you’re doing OK for yourself?
But for some people the fear is very real. If that’s you, here are some ways that you can get rid of your fear of success – hopefully once and for all.
Oceans are – by definition – big masses of water. There’s around 264 billion of gallons in the Atlantic alone. Which is a difficult number to visualize. And it’s not the only large ocean on our planet.
It’s not unusual to be afraid of big lakes or oceans – the official name for this fear is Thalassophobia.
And there are lots of perfectly good reasons to be afraid.
One of the few certainties in life is that we’re all getting older and we’re all going to die.
That doesn’t mean we have to be afraid of those things – they’re going to happen. The fountain of youth only exists in movies and fairy tales. Modern medicine can do lots of things including making you look younger but it can’t stop them physically happening.
That said, there are some things we can do to get over being worried about getting older or at least reduce the impact those thoughts have on us.
Deep down, most of us are afraid of change. We all know people who are set in their ways – they’ve had the same job for years, their taste in music goes back to when vinyl was the only option, they eat the same food, live in the same house. The list goes on.
Sure, there’s a cliche that familiarity breeds contempt but for most of us that’s simply not true.
Familiarity is our own, built in, Linus blanket that we hold on to in the hope that it will protect us against change.