Many millions of healthy men, women and children are made extremely frightened by things others see no reason to fear.
This type of acute anxiety is called a phobia from the Greek phobos meaning a ‘dread’ or ‘horror’.
Phobias are described as ‘irrational’ because the many things sufferers fear – from beetles and birds to thunderstorms and spiders – pose little or no real threat.
Embarrassed by what they regard as ‘foolish’ fears, dreading ridicule, and sometimes embarrassed by what they are convinced is a form of mental illness many phobic people suffer in silence and in secret.