There’s Nothing Irrational in a Healthy Fear of Heights
But some phobias are miles away from simple survival strategies
Just a couple of months ago, I’d never heard of koumpounophobia, and now I know of three people who suffer from it. The first was a primary school teacher. That’s a tough job for a koumpounophobic.
A confession: when I say I’d never heard of koumpounophobia, I don’t mean that the word now rolls effortlessly off my tongue. Far from it. I had to look it up to write this. Fear of buttons.
It’s odd to have come this far through life without encountering anyone with especially strong feelings either way about buttons, only to bump into three-button phobics in the space of a couple of months.
Where do phobias come from?
Although button phobia can stem from an early life/death struggle with a button threatening to wedge in the esophagus (babies being totally un-phobic about putting anything and everything into their mouths) it’s not an obvious survival issue like a fear of heights (acrophobia) or fear of snakes (ophidiophobia). I’ve found no one making the case that we can be born with a fear of buttons. Whereas ophidiophobia and acrophobia can be innate — inbuilt fears that lie within us long before we face our first limbless reptile or teeter at the top of our first cliff.
Fear of heights turned up as the most common phobia in the UK in a recent survey, although the UK is notably short of the highest of anything in world terms, and more structured studies usually put the fear of spiders and snakes above the fear of heights.
The most common psychiatric disorders amongst women (and second most common amongst men) are said to stem from phobias. The good news is that most can be successfully managed and sometimes cured with modern therapies.
My own experience with phobias
Phobias past
I used to be seriously phobic about spiders but inadvertently found a homespun cure by forcing myself not to show fear when raising children, not wanting to pass it on to them. Spiders, I taught them, much preferred to be outside, so if we found one inside, I taught them to lift it carefully into a glass (grown-up hands might damage the creature’s delicate legs, you understand) and tip it out of a window (no, they didn’t mind the fall).
I more than once found myself in the path of a determined toddler armed with a glass full of spiders, climbing over me to get to the nearest open window. No choice but to sit still, eyes tightly closed, and await the inevitable, ‘Oops, I dropped it.’
Phobias present
When I caught myself the other day, turning the TV off with a vicious stab of the button, and hurling the remote control onto a chair, I thought, could this be tilecheiristiriophobia? Actually, I didn’t. I thought, why am I taking this out on the remote control; it’s not their problem? But I looked up fear of remote controls and found that it is a thing — tilecheiristiriophobia. I’m glad not to have it. I can’t see tilecheiristiriophobia ever rolling easily off my tongue; and anyway, it wasn’t the control, it was the programme.
I’ve developed a phobia of lying politicians. Oddly, given how widespread it has become, that was one phobia I couldn’t find a word for, but I think the world is going to need one…
… and I think it might be “rational.”
Back to buttons
Fear of buttons is not a common phobia, so it’s no real surprise I’d not come across it before this year, though I’m hard-pressed to account for meeting three in such a short space of time. Strictly speaking, I didn’t meet the 3rd, but encountered her in the article that started me pondering on phobias in the first place: this one by Ellie Jacobson:-
I don’t know if any of these writers have phobias but I know they’re good story-tellers and worth following: Diana Lotti, Will Hull, Ann Litts, Stuart Aken, Linda Acaster, Kris Bedenian, Mary Chang Story Writer, kasey sparks, Dunelair, Stephen Reed, Kim Zuch, Ellie Jacobson, Divina Grey, Dennett, pockett dessert, Susan Alison, Susan Foster. You can access more stories and support me and thousands of other writers on Medium via THIS LINK.