Places & Situations · 26 entries
Situational Phobias
Enclosed spaces, crowds, bridges, lifts, tunnels and flight. What is feared here is the setting and the difficulty of leaving it, which is why the same person can be untroubled by height on a mountain and unable to cross a footbridge. The situational type is one of the five DSM-5-TR sorts specific phobia into, and it is the type where avoidance is easiest to arrange and most expensive to keep.
Claustrophobia is the entry that makes the group legible. Rachman and Taylor established in 1993 that the beliefs behind it are two, fear of suffocation and fear of restriction, which explains why a large crowded lift can trigger it and a small empty cupboard sometimes cannot. It also carries the firmest prevalence figure in this catalogue, 3.3 per cent diagnosed, from a named 2008 study rather than a circulating range. Agoraphobia sits here too, separated from panic disorder in DSM-5 and given criteria of its own, which was the largest single reclassification in the manual's recent history.
In this category
All 26 situational phobias
26 entries
- A Surgeon's Fear of OperatingA fear that your own movements will disastrously affect the world around you. For a surgeon that is not a metaphor, which is why the word attached to them.
- AgoraphobiaWestphal coined it in 1871 from agora, the marketplace. The situations it covers include queues, cinemas and being at home alone. What unites them is escape.
- ClaustrophobiaRachman and Taylor showed in 1993 that two beliefs drive this fear, and neither is about how small the room is. What the record holds, including the miners.
- Fear of AccidentsDystychiphobia is the fear of accidents, a word that lives in phobia lists rather than in clinics. Its object is a probability, which is why it hides inside other fears.
- Fear of Bathing and WashingAvoiding washing and washing compulsively are filed under one term, and the encyclopedia routes both to obsessive-compulsive disorder without saying how they meet.
- Fear of Being RobbedRobbery is legally theft by force or fear, so the fear sits inside the offence, and the word for fearing it gets seven words in print.
- Fear of Being Tied UpRope, handcuffs, chains, and also seatbelts, thread and tape. When thread is on the avoidance list the object is not the material but the fastening.
- Fear of CarsThree words split this fear between the vehicle, the passenger seat and the driver, and the encyclopedia entry rests on a guide for teenagers.
- Fear of Certain PlacesThe OED has one quotation for it, from 1899, and a frequency line flat for twelve decades. The live literature under the word belongs to geography, not psychiatry.
- Fear of Crossing BridgesThree bridge authorities have run services driving frightened people across. Mackinac handles a thousand a year, which is the best prevalence evidence the term has.
- Fear of Crossing the RoadAfter a road accident, refusing to cross alone reads as something learned rather than something feared, and the diagnosis stays out of sight.
- Fear of CrowdsThree Greek names, no article, no study and no figure. Every reference resolves it to agoraphobia or claustrophobia, both of which claim the crowd as their own.
- Fear of DrivingBetween a quarter and three quarters of people injured in a serious crash develop it. It also has a symptom nothing else does: the passenger's phantom brake.
- Fear of Empty RoomsPanic, dread and a racing heart at the sight of a near-empty room. That symptom list comes from a 2009 art review, and it is the fullest account the word has.
- Fear of FlyingAerophobia also names a feature of rabies. Where flight phobia stops being ordinary nerves, and why the prevalence estimates run from 2.5 to 40 per cent.
- Fear of Going to SchoolA child in genuine morning agony returns to a stable mood the instant it is settled they are not going. That recovery, not the stomach ache, is the tell.
- Fear of HospitalsThe fear and the thing feared are built from one Greek word: nosokomeion gives both the phobia and the adjective for an infection caught in hospital.
- Fear of Open High PlacesTwo roots welded together to make a word no dictionary can find in use. The useful part of its entry is the line separating it from airsickness.
- Fear of Returning HomeNostalgia and nostophobia divide one Greek root between them: the pain of not returning home and the fear of doing it. Only one was ever a diagnosis.
- Fear of Roller CoastersThe ride works as pleasure only while the negative emotion stays tolerable. Past that line the same track delivers a cortisol dose.
- Fear of StandingIn the conversion-disorder form the sway is wild and the recovery is always at the last moment, which no neurological lesion arranges.
- Fear of the BathroomFalling in, something coming out, infection, being overheard. Four fears in one room, and the reference entry admits nobody has ever asked how many people have them.
- Fear of TrainsEisenbahnangst translated piece by piece into Greek. Freud had the fear, called it Reiseangst, and travelled constantly anyway. What the record actually holds.
- Fear of TravelFlying, driving, trains, sea travel and agoraphobia are all listed as related. What is left is anticipation, over-planning, and Freud's anxiety that ended on departure.
- Fear of TunnelsGephyrophobia covers bridges and tunnels, but its name means bridge and its article has admitted since 2021 that the tunnel half is missing.
- Kayak AngstA panic condition triggered by a mirror-calm sea reflecting cloud, so up cannot be told from down. Up to a fifth of Greenlandic seal hunters were said to have it.
Keep going
The other categories
- Social & InterpersonalFears whose object is other people: being judged by them, being among them, or being without them.
- The Body, Illness & DeathDeath, dying, disease, contamination, ageing and the body itself.
- Abstract & ExistentialFailure, the future, change, infinity, being forgotten.
- Animals & CreaturesThe largest group in the catalogue and the oldest.
Common questions
Questions about situational phobias
What is the most common situational phobia?
Claustrophobia, and it is the one with the firmest number attached: 3.3 per cent receive a diagnosis, from Depla, ten Have, van Balkom and de Graaf in 2008. Fear of flying is the more visible one, because avoiding it is easy to arrange and costs a great deal to keep arranging.
Is agoraphobia a fear of open spaces?
No, and the word misleads because it comes from agora, the marketplace. Westphal coined it in 1871, and what the situations share is that leaving them would be difficult or embarrassing rather than that they are open. DSM-5 separated agoraphobia from panic disorder and gave it criteria of its own.
Why can somebody fear a bridge but not a mountain?
Because the fear attaches to the setting rather than to the height. Gephyrophobia is a fear of the crossing, which is a place a person is committed to until they reach the other side, and that commitment is the same property claustrophobia turns on. A mountainside offers a way back at every step.
What counts as a situational phobia?
The built or human setting: lifts, tunnels, bridges, aircraft, enclosed rooms, crowds. If the fear is of other people's judgement rather than of the place, it is a social fear and files there instead, and if the feared thing is a natural element rather than a built one, it files with nature.