Neil Diamond
Possibly the Only Man in the World
Who Could Have a Hit Song All About
Agoraphobia!

In case you don’t know, agoraphobia literally means “fear” (phobia) of the “agora” (the marketplace.) This is a very real phobia which generally means if you have it, you do not like to leave the safety of your own home, to go to the market or anywhere else.

I’ve been thinking about phobias a lot lately, and how they could be used in our books in very interesting ways, from frightening to funny, depending on characters and situations. Agoraphobia is a case in point. I’ve always been agoraphobic to one degree or another, depending on my age and the situation at hand. I’ve usually been able to work around it to some extent in order to live a halfway normal life, which included raising two children. But it hasn’t always been easy for me, and there have been times when I simply couldn’t make myself go out into the world at large, no matter how hard I tried.

I’m thinking about this today, because I’ve noticed that since I quit giving my nature talks locally, I’ve become more and more housebound. This is worrisome because the longer I stay at home, the less I want to leave. Let’s call it Creeping Agoraphobia.  😀 Mark started doing our grocery shopping and errand running when I was sick, and I’m happy to let him continue with both, even though I’m certainly well enough to go myself. Yep. This is Fear of the Marketplace in action.

I don’t know what I’ll do about this going forward, but it will probably be a case of getting out to various appointments that I can’t ignore (doctors and the like) and then gradually getting back to something more akin to normal (for me) behavior. This doesn’t mean I’ll be gadding about town or anything, but just that I’ll resume enough  activities to avoid becoming a true hermit.

The reason I’m writing about this today is because it occurred to me that one could create some very interesting or entertaining characters by giving them an extreme phobia or two. Not just typical  personality traits that we would usually endow our characters with, but actual, full-blown phobias.  Have any of you done this in your books? I’d be interested in knowing if you have, and if so, have your readers enjoyed meeting these characters?

If you’ve never used phobias in your writing, here are a few fairly common ones you might give some thought to:

• Arachnophobia (Fear of spiders)
• Ophidiophobia (Fear of snakes)
• Acrophobia (Fear of heights)
• Aerophobia (Fear of flying)
• Cynophobia (Fear of dogs)
• Astraphobia (Fear of thunder and lightning)
• Trypanophobia (Fear of injections)

What do you think? Any of your characters ever suffered from one of these? If not, are you considering using any of them now?  Feel free to share your ideas below. (Inquiring minds–like mine–wanna know.) 😀