Worst Phobia to Have

The question here is not which fear is most irrational. It is how much of an ordinary life the fear quietly takes away from you.

Measured that way the ranking looks very different from the usual list. Fear of spiders is extremely common and, in most of the world, costs almost nothing day to day. Fear of enclosed spaces removes lifts, tunnels and full trains, which in a city amounts to a substantial portion of getting anywhere at all. Fear of public speaking limits careers in a way that never looks frightening from the outside. Fear of germs and fear of being alone are the two that expand quietly to fill whatever space they are given, and both are far harder to live around than they sound.

That comes to thirty-two phobias, judged on cost rather than intensity of feeling. The bracket asks people to weigh something most of them have observed rather than experienced, which is worth keeping in mind. The entries that look trivial from outside are usually the ones nobody voting has had to live with for ten years.