What Are You Scared Of?

I avoid the dentist at all costs. The sound of the metal instruments scraping against my teeth is worse to me than the proverbial nails on a chalkboard; the dentist always seems so judgmental, and I’ve never once left without bleeding gums from some floss-happy nurse. Besides, doesn’t it seem contradictory to pay someone to make you miserable? As an adult, I should be ashamed to say this, but if I don’t have someone looking over my shoulder I’ll do just about anything to cancel last minute.

“I’m really sorry, I know I’m supposed to be there in fifteen minutes, but, um….my car battery died,” I’ll say as I’m weaving in and out of traffic.

I think it has something to do with my braces, although I’d never go back and say I wish I’d never had them. I had gaps between every tooth, vampire fangs, and according to my dentist, an upper jaw too small to accommodate all the dental work to come. If I’d been born in the Middle Ages I wouldn’t have lasted long. Between my awful teeth and my bad eyesight I would have been cast out of society as a witch or kindly suffocated in my sleep before long.

I had braces for four years, along with a palate expander: a lovely little device that slowly separated the plates in the roof of my mouth and widened my jaw. After I had them taken off my junior year of high school I didn’t set foot inside a dentists’ office for almost nine years. When I’m stressed, I dream I have braces again and wake up with my mouth aching. It’s clearly a phobia of mine, similar to my paralyzing fear of The Kraken and other mammoth deep-sea creatures. Only my fear of the dentist clearly seems more rational.

Apparently, I’m not alone. There are actually dentists out there

that specialize in patients that suffer from dental phobia and dental anxiety. It’s estimated that almost 75% of Americans suffer from some sort of dental fear, with women generally reporting more dental fear than men.  Overall, it’s approximated that 9% to 18% of

Americans suffer a serious phobia of some sort, ranging from the fear of confined spaces (claustrophobia) to the fear of bald people (peladophobia) or the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth (arachibutyrophobia). It seems every fear is worthy of a scientific sounding name. Here are some that seemed unusually reasonable…

• Anuptaphobia: the fear of staying single
• Atychiphobia: the fear of failure
• Eleutherophobia: fear of freedom
• Gerascophobia: fear of getting old
• Nyctophobia: fear of the dark
• Pentheraphobia: fear of mothers-in-law

On the a less serious note we have…

• Bolshephobia: fear of Bolsheviks
• Geniophobia: fear of chins
• Ithyphallophobia: fear of seeing, thinking about, or having an erect penis
• Omphalophobia: fear of belly buttons
• Proctophobia: fear of rectums
• Zemmiphobia: fear of the great mole rat

There are many websites devoted to phobias that do not yet have scientific names such as the fear of insects crawling into your ears, a shark attacking you in the bathtub, buttons, flatulence, and spontaneous human combustion. All I know is that paralyzing and seemingly irrational fear is real…so where does it come from?

Most scientists conclude that phobias are learned. We experience an unpleasant or scary situation at a young age and it is literally forever imprinted in our brain. The original emotional response creates a sense memory that is linked through our nerves, and this is essentially where phobias originate. Whether we can pinpoint the experience that birthed our fear is irrelevant. It’s actually quite common to be unable to remember that memory, and occasionally the tactic of memory recall is applied to patients in therapy for their phobias. For brave souls, desensitizing is also a favored method of phobia therapy that simply involves continuous exposure to whatever triggers your fear. Those with a debilitating fear of snakes are encouraged to start handling snakes frequently. Those who are afraid of clowns are told to go to the circus.

Luckily, I know exactly why I hate going to the dentist, but I can’t pinpoint the origin of my fear of sea monsters like the Kraken. I just know that wood-cut engravings of huge sea creatures devouring ships horrify me, and when I’m at the beach I keep my eyes peeled when looking toward the horizon. Did I see something in the ocean that scared me as a child? Was I frightened by an octopus at the zoo? Unless I go into therapy I suppose I’ll never know, but until I’m stuck on a ship with no land in sight I think I can keep this particular phobia in check.

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