If I don’t know who left a voicemail I don’t listen to it and delete it.
I have a phobia about colonoscopy prep. I don’t care about the procedure itself but I can’t imagine doing the prep. I cannot drink a gallon of anything. I cannot make myself sick.
I have a bit of travel phobia. I like to travel but I cannot book something a month or six months in the future. I obsess about it from the time the plans are made until the event. Not worth it.
Scorpions. Flying. Drowning. Crowds (can’t attend concerts, plays, sporting events, etc.). Not exactly a phobia, but weird, I have misophonia; I can’t stand the sound of other people’s chewing and have to leave the table/room if I hear it. It’s not a problem at parties or restaurants because I can’t hear the chewing/crunching over talking and other background noise, but I often have music playing during meals at home so I can’t hear DH chewing.
@Singswimsew: I, too, put off colonoscopy for years due to the inability to drink the prep until I was informed that procedures have changed, and all I had to do was drink a completely tasteless powder in 64 ozs of Gatorade over a two-hour period while watching a movie. It was nothing. You might want to check out the “COLONOSCOPY: How Hard is it on You?” thread. It really helped me out. I finally got my first one at 60 and I’ll never dread it again.
I’ve never liked having my picture taken but I have, since COVID, developed a real phobia about being on video conferences. When the courts first started doing them, I convinced my doctor to give me scrips for Xanax and Lexapro. I took a half xanax before my first conference and I was calmer, but it got better when I realized that I could just lie and say I don’t have video and do them on audio. My boss has even given me a dispensation from appearing in person at the weekly office ZOOM meetings, but she doesn’t know that I lie about the camera for court and depositions. I told her that I use the camera if someone insists (but nobody has yet.)
My D and I had a standoff. She refused to talk to me unless I did videocalls, but I am much stronger willed than she is. She speaks to me on the regular phone now, without video, because after two weeks, she gave up and I didn’t.
I also have a phobia/fear of large dogs. I often cross a street or walk out of my to avoid them. By large, I mean most dogs bigger than my 4 pound Maltese.
My weirdest phobia though is probably mushrooms. I am terrified that if one is ever in anything I eat, I will die, either from choking or poisoning.
@ChoatieMom I’ll have to look into colonoscopy with your info. I have been doing Cologard.
@1214mom google Tinklebell, a device that lets women, er, function like men when a bathroom isn’t around 
I totally forgot the flying phobia that kept me off planes for 45 years. With kids 3,000 miles away I had to fight it. Did EMDR, trained in Reiki, hypnosis…for my first flight 25 members of my Reiki class did Reiki for me at take off time, and a friend had a bunch of nuns pray! I kid you not.
Very encouraging that I forgot about it.
Of course right now almost everyone is afraid of flying.
I find it interesting that childhood exposures can cause phobias. There were many plane crashes in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, which were on the news. Just hearing “Pan Am” makes me afraid. I think this is true of quicksand phobias as well. We watched Westerns in those days and it seems quicksand was frequently featured.
Both my sons are terrified of bees. They’d come running in the house if they saw even one in the yard. S2 was stung several times, the first time when he was 2yo, but S1 has never been stung.
I use to also have a bridge fear, so while traveling, my husband would have to be the driver when we knew a bridge was upcoming. If I was a passenger in a car, I would close my eyes until we were on the other side! I have gotten better and will drive on the bridge, but I am really happy when I get to the other side!
I have the usual rational ones like heights, birds, and curving highway exits. It is crazy how many exits curve around with no guard rails and a pond below. Add in winter packed snow and I am certain we will die.
My reoccurring nightmare features rogue waves. I live in the frozen north. There is no past trigger for this. My husband says it is a manifestation of anxiety.
Yes! I was terrified of them as a kid/teen. We don’t really have them where I live now, but growing up we had huge June bugs every year that would fly into you and cling to your hair or clothing. Shudder! The front door of our house had a glass window that would be covered with June bugs at night if the kitchen light was on. Coming home at night and trying to open the door to get inside was a panic-inducing nightmare every time!
I have an aversion to flying cockroaches.
I’m terrified of anything that the return address is the home owner’s association.
I can’t drink 64 oz of Gatorade. I don’t like sweetened drinks. The last colonoscopy I persuaded the doctor to let me take pills instead and drink plain water. I gather they don’t think the pills do as good a job.
Apparently a lot of people have a terror of certified mail. Every time I have a project that requires a zoning variance I have to send letters to all the abutters within 150 feet - at least half of them come back.
Most of the phobias listed aren’t really “weird.”
You bird phobia people would not have liked what happened to me.
I was in Grand Cayman. I was walking to the spa for a massage appointment, when all of a sudden “WHACK”! Something thumped the back of my head-actually a hair clip I’d put on to put my hair up. I looked around and didn’t see anything. Then a moment later, “WHACK”! Again, on my hair clip! I turned around to see a big crow coming straight for me. I began to run toward the spa. “WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!” By this time, I was shrieking in fear. I felt like I was in the movie The Birds. I made it into the spa, and panting heavily, told the receptionist “Oh my God! I just got attacked by a bird!” I expected her to say “OMG are you serious???” Instead, she sighed heavily. “I’m sorry. This keeps happening lately-they have had to close the patio at the restaurant because of it.”
YIKES. Apparently the birds were nesting and landscape crews had disrupted this by trimming back the trees, so the mama birds were very upset and on the offensive. I later learned that running away shrieking actually makes them chase you even more. The rest of that vacation, I was completely paranoid about the birds. For a while after that, I did have a little residual fear of birds, but it gradually faded.
Paper cuts! I would never lick an envelope for fear of getting a paper cut on my tongue. I buy the kind that have a sticky flap.
I have a phobia of naming my biggest phobia. I worry it might make it happen.
But also, @VaBluebird , I won’t look at your links, just in case, but I get sickened by some kinds of “teeming” things–like ant egg cases under a rock, for instance, and I think it might be related. Shudder!
For all my adult life, I’ve been afraid of steep slopes and inclines - never wanted to downhill ski, very nervous on the outside seat on winding mountain rides, and not even comfortable with three story escalators (like in one pavilion in the New York World’s Fair, or certain subway stations).
Then a few years back I heard more about a vacation we took when I was probably four years old from Boulder to Las Vegas. This was way long before the Eisenhower tunnel. I learned that my older brother and I spent much of the trip over the mountains screaming on every curve. Ah ha moment for me - that explained the phobia!
Not really a phobia but a mild aversion. I don’t like standing in showers with “river rock” type textured tile that was popular a few years ago. One of our bathrooms has it and I won’t use it. Our master shower has the builder grade white tile that my husband has been wanting to upgrade but I refuse to.
This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where George would not spring for self-sealing envelopes for his wedding invitations; instead, Susan, his fiancee, licked each one and died of glue poisoning!
OP asked:
Do you have a weird phobia ?
No, all of my phobias are normal.
Dental work. I need drugs to get it done.
I have recurring nightmares about a tsunami wave swallowing up the beach I am on, and about being stuck on a track in front of an oncoming train.
I also hate swimming in open water.
The really odd thing is that I love beaches, the sea, lakes, rivers, bathing, boating, rowing. I love ships and ferries. I love trains, too, I travel to work on a train daily (or used to before Covid, now it’s twice a week), I will take a train anywhere over taking the car. But I never strike too far off the shore wherever I swim, and on platforms, I stand way back, usually keeping some structure behind me. There have been too many news reports of disturbed people pushing unsuspecting passengers in front of oncoming trains.
So maybe my phobias are my brains rational way of keeping me safe in light of my lifestyle and vacationing choices?