To review, yesterday's stress management lesson involved a focus on the tragedies that we know will never occur, in areas of life which do not matter anyway. Summary: Embrace the trivial.
Today, we will completely regress and dismantle any productive foundation you may have begun constructing yesterday. Why? Because what we are discussing today is funny. And funny beats productive any day of the week. Today we will be discussing phobias, and as we all know, the best way to give yourself a mental disorder is to read about it. Like when you read a psychology textbook or the DSM, and diagnose yourself with EVERY disease you see listed, and actually experience the symptoms thereafter. That is our agenda.
Please understand, I am not ridiculing all those who suffer from these irrational fears. I am only ridiculing one of them: myself. I know when I've gone too far and hurt my feelings, and owe myself an apology, and maybe a nice gift basket. So at the risk of offending myself, as well as adding to my existing cornucopia of phobias, I researched a comprehensive list of them on About.comPsychology. I cannot allow you to have the link just yet, because then you would just read their page instead of mine, because they know what they are talking about and do not ramble or end their phrases with prepositions. Obviously, I cannot compete with such pompous overachievers.
In my ever-present quest to make my readers improve their self-esteem, by dissecting my own weaknesses, I thought I would see just how many of these phobias I can already claim. If all goes well, I may have several (hundred) more by the end of this post. To my delight, the site lists them alphabetically, so I can organize my neuroses in such a way as will please my obsessive-compulsive disorder.
The first one we read is called "agliophobia." I had thought perhaps I could browse through a few, or at least one, before I stumbled on something that looked annoyingly familiar. Alas, I expected too much. This one resonated with me. Agliophobia is the fear of pain.
Now this raises a pertinent question. Are most people NOT afraid of pain? I was promised a list of IRRATIONAL fears. About.comPsychology, where did you go to Psychology School? (No, I will still not provide you with a link. You will stay here with me and you will like it.)
We will ignore this obvious oversight (because that is the type of understanding, forgiving people our therapists taught us to be) and move forward. Let us examine "aichmophobia," the fear of needles or pointed objects... Seriously, do most of you enjoy receiving shots or stepping on errant sewing pins? Because, it seems to me that a DESIRE to be poked with sharp objects would be symptomatic of a worse mental condition.
Third time is the charm. We shall discuss the misplaced fear of gravity, or "barophobia." Listen, Mr. Dot Com Psychology, if you do not have a healthy fear of gravity, your chin will resemble that of my youngest child, who is forever marked by the scar reminding her of the time she attempted to walk across a poorly-constructed "bridge" from our pool table to our sofa. Children do not have a fear of gravity. That is why they have rational parents to fear it for them.
Moving right along, although I am beginning to have serious reservations about the qualifications of our "experts," we will study "coulophobia." This is a fear of clowns. I believe I made it perfectly clear in a previous post that EVERYONE is terrified of clowns. Any mental health "professional" unaware of this fact cannot possibly even be a real doctor. ("Iatrophobia" : Fear of doctors.)
Having exhaustively researched a number of phobias (the exact number being 4) I feel I have acquired the level of expertise necessary to diagnose all of you: You suffer from an irrational fear of being completely miserable. According to my studies, it is a sure sign of lunacy to object to being inflicted with torture. I have not discoverd a name for this all-encompassing phobia, but this disease can prove fatal. It must be treated by a doctor who will alleviate your symptoms by taking large sums of money from your wallet to quell the root problem: papyrophobia, or the fear of paper. This is the key component of cash, and only by ridding your life of this primary trigger can you hope to improve your obviously diseased mental state. At least, that's what my psychologist told me.
Oh, yeah. You can have the link now. http://psychology.about.com/od/phobias/a/phobialist.htm
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