What is a phobia?
Phobias are persistent and intense fears of a particular:
object
person (like a doctor or clown)
situation
activity
If you have a phobia, you may experience severe anxiety and panic attacks when you’re:
exposed to the object or situation you’re fearful of
thinking about the thing you’re afraid of
anticipating an encounter with the item you’re scared of
Parasitophobia and dermatophobia (fear of parasites and skin disease, respectively). This bleeds into a fear of fungal infection and worms in general. I guess my kryptonite would be a parasitic skin infection 🙃
I don’t know what it is about them that repulses me/freaks me out over anything else- I quite like spiders, snakes, heights, the dark, etc- it’s just instant nausea when anyone starts talking about them. If there’s a hint I’m in danger of encountering either irl, I’m out.
Worst fear is having something crawl into my ear (I guess I can thank Animorphs for introducing yerks to me as a kid). I’ve seen some videos of that sort of thing happening to people, and I can’t even fathom how calm people seem to be in comparison to how I would be if it were me. I’d have to have to put on a watch so I didn’t start ripping into my head in animal panic.
I also have a particular dislike for really large fish and really large lizards. Anything larger than a foot and a half begins to make me uncomfortable. Dinosaurs are right out.
As my sister would say (who has a fear of lizards, herself) “If I were trapped in a room with a komodo dragon and a gun with two bullets in it, I would shoot myself twice.”
