I've heard many people say that Americans are more fearful these days -- afraid to fly, afraid to open their mail, afraid to work in tall buildings. And whenever I hear rumors of a national mood, I turn to the Internet to check it out. In this case, I visited www.phobialist.com, a remarkable Web site that lists every phobia, A to Z, along with links to the treatment and trivia of irrational fear.

The first thing I noticed was that, for some reason, more of our bugaboos start with A than with any other letter. These include some of the standards such as fear of open spaces (agoraphobia) and fear of spiders (arachnophobia). There are also some lesser-known sources of dread in this group, like chickens (alektorophobia) and the Northern Lights (auroraphobia).

Of course, my first reaction was to chuckle at all this. For instance, the clinician who named the fear of long words "hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia" must have been a wry sort. And I had a good laugh picturing the immersion therapy for people with lachanophobia (fear of vegetables) or Dutchphobia (fear of the Dutch). Then I had an even bigger laugh imagining the cure for those afflicted with both simultaneously. I even entertained the thought of sneaking up behind an alektorophobe and screaming, "BACAWW!"

But my snickering soon subsided. There are lots of fears on the list that didn't seem irrational at all. I mean, who doesn't fear hurricanes and tornadoes (lilapsophobia) or nuclear war (atomosophobia)? And there may be some folks out there who have freed themselves from the shackles of ballistophobia (fear of missiles and bullets), but I don't want to meet them. Some fears are useful, after all. We're hard-wired with the basics. The rest we learn by touching hot stoves and the like. It's all meant to keep us alive and generally out of trouble.

The real trick is to know when our necessary reservoir of fear oozes into aspects of our life where it doesn't belong. Unfortunately, the more time I spent with the phobia list, the fuzzier that boundary became. I began to see the frightening potential of stuff I'd never thought to fear. It reminded me of the tendency of second-year medical students, inundated with the details of disease, to think they've contracted whatever they're studying. And though it may be redundant to say I began experiencing psychosomatic phobias, this is exactly what happened.

Beyond admitting that I was scared of needles, vile odors, and leprosy, all of which are listed, I started to believe I had a bunch of the weirder ones as well. I think I have a slight case of ichthyophobia (fear of fish), for example. It might have something to do with an allergy of mine, but then there are those bulbous, unblinking eyes, those scales, and the way fish flip and flop when out of water -- yeesh! In addition, I'm simultaneously afflicted with anuptaphobia (fear of staying single) and gamophobia (fear of marriage), both presumably related to my apeiroophobia (fear of infinity).

What's worse is that I started identifying several personal phobias that weren't on the list, and which were therefore left to me to name and confront all on my own. For example, I'll do almost anything to get out of tasting the wine at a fancy restaurant. There's something about having to approach it like you know a lot about wine, swirling the glass, sniffing it, sipping, and whatnot. Plus, everybody watches you expectantly, as if, after swallowing, you might do something besides nod and say, "Oh yeah . . . that's tasty." So I've diagnosed myself with acute zinfandelophobia.

Another liquid-related phobia I've lived with for many years is my fear of drinking the last dregs from a jug of milk (I'm calling this gagalactaphobia). Like a lot of neuroses, this one has its roots in childhood. As a kid, I used to take swigs of milk straight from the carton when nobody was looking. I surmised that the rest of my family was secretly doing the same. Such thoughts diluted my shame, but also made the last milky sloshes extremely unappetizing.

Unlike my gagalactaphobia, which has been nearly lifelong, I've only known about my self-named sambaphobia for the past few years. Loosely defined, sambaphobia is fear of any dances for which the main instructions are, "Just bend your knees and swivel your hips." Clearly, these words mean something very different in Latin America than they do where I'm from (Pittsburgh). I hold out hope of overcoming my sambaphobia; perhaps some future girlfriend will drag me to a dance lesson or two. But please tell me what I can do about velcrophobia, which is the creepy fear of my own bushy eyebrows. Tweezers? No thanks. Move to Greece? It hardly seems practical.

And maybe there's a lesson there. Maybe there are some fears and insecurities we'll never conquer, and we should just accommodate, even appreciate them. I hope I don't sound too pessimistic about the prospect of enjoying a fear-free life; indeed, I hope all our lives become a little brighter in the coming weeks and months. But the more I looked at the phobia list, the more I saw that there's hardly anything in the world that doesn't cause a shiver to run up somebody's spine.

Personally, there are some fears I'll leave alone to shape the flow of my life and serve as catalysts for good conversation. As for the rest? Well, I invite all my fellow zinfandelophobes to join me for several glasses of therapy at the bar of your choice -- preferably one without a dance floor.

Kris Frieswick can be reached at cberdik@hotmail.com.

Issue Date: March 29 - April 4, 2002