Some phobias are pretty easy to justify. If someone told you they had a phobia of snakes, that would be totally understandable- some snakes can kill you. Likewise a fear of heights, or thunderstorms, or hypodermic needles would require little explanation. But what about fear of buttons? Or fear of bananas, or numbers, or of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth? There are definitely some weird and wonderful phobias out there, and while they may be a little confusing for most of us to get our heads around, for the people suffering from them they’re no joke. So how do these unusual fears develop?

All Phobias are Irrational

One thing to remember before we dive into this is that all phobias are irrational- that’s kind of the point. Sure, it’s normal to show some fear around the idea of being bitten by a snake, but being mortally afraid even at the sight of one on TV would hardly be considered rational. Feeling fear at the thought of falling from a great height is pretty reasonable, but adjusting your entire life around never having to go up a tall building is not.

Phobias produce an irrational, excessive amount of fear given the actual danger of a situation- that’s literally in the definition. If something was totally sensible, it wouldn’t be diagnosable as a mental health disorder. So while it’s definitely easier to see where some phobias come from than others, none of them are totally realistic reactions to reality.

Conditioning

A lot of phobias develop as a result of some kind of direct experience. Learning to fear spiders after encountering one suddenly in your glove box while driving would be one example. But through the process of classical conditioning, you can also come to fear totally harmless objects and situations if you encounter them alongside something dangerous.

Take the previous example of a spider in the glove box. Developing a phobia of spiders is a possibility here, but it isn’t the only one. Say the person who received the fright now gets a little jumpy every time he gets into his car, and starts checking the glovebox and under the seats before he feels safe driving. The fear of spotting a spider again could make the poor guy so tense while in his car that he eventually develops a phobia of cars, or driving. Or maybe he starts to check inside his gloves before wearing them, and eventually starts getting anxious at the sight of any gloves, leaving to a phobia of them.

Neither the car nor the gloves pose any real threat (technically there are way more driving-related deaths each year than spider-related, but that’s not the point), but by being paired with the spider, they become linked to fear in the person’s mind.

Escalation

The tricky thing about phobias- and anxiety in general- is that once they get started, they tend to snowball. Once you’ve had one frightening experience, they way you think and act can start to maintain or even worsen your fears. And so even a relatively mild frightening experience can escalate into a phobia.

Take Koumpounophobia, or phobia of buttons. For many people with this rather rare phobia, the fear centres around the possibility of accidentally swallowing and choking on a button. But to develop this fear you wouldn’t need to actually have a near-death experience choking on a button. The start of the phobia could be something as seemingly innocent as a parent telling a child not to play with buttons in case they accidentally swallow one. The child might feel a little jolt of fear the first time they hear this, and then again every time they see the button box in their mum’s sewing kit or on the front of dad’s coat. And each time they see a button, they might start to imagine choking on it, which of course only increases the fear they feel.

The child then starts to get so afraid of buttons and the thoughts of choking they provoke that they start to avoid them entirely- refusing to wear anything with buttons on and keeping away from their parents anytime they wear something that makes them anxious. The more the child avoids buttons, the more the idea that buttons are dangerous is cemented in their mind. Soon an entire cycle of fear, mental images and avoidance turns these totally harmless objects into a source of real fear and distress. Similar patterns can be seen with many other phobias and anxiety disorders- one inciting incident is all it takes for our minds to start spinning out of control.

Disgust

Some more unusual phobias start to make a bit more sense when you think of them in terms of emotions other than just pure fear. Disgust is an emotion that is designed to tell us that what we’re experiencing with our senses is unclean, unhealthy or downright nasty. Disgust plays a core part of several phobias.

Being afraid of bananas might seem a little odd. But being disgusted by the sight or smell of an overripe banana, with its brown colour and squishy texture like a giant slug is far more understandable. And wherever you have disgust, fear can follow. You find bananas disgusting, so you fear coming anywhere near one in case it gets on your skin, or you start to smell or taste it. Disgust is such a strong, unpleasant emotion that it’s perfectly natural to want to avoid it. And wherever you have natural, understandable fear, you have the possibility for it to spiral out of control and become a phobia.

What’s the Prescription?

Whatever your phobia centres around, treatment is always possible. The most scientifically supported treatment for phobias is Exposure Therapy, a process for safely and gradually facing the different things you fear, so as to re-write how your brain responds and prove that there’s nothing to fear. This works whether you fear heights, dogs, umbrellas or anything else- so if your unusual phobia is causing you serious trouble, know that you don’t have to live with it.