Hello! I’m a sixteen year old teen girl who has recently entered the world of phobias. It has been very helpful for me to understand what phobias I have. Talking with other people that have them and learning how to avoid triggering them has kinda been my quarantine pastime. I have found out that I have mild Trypophobia (holes) and extreme Submechanophobia (hard to explain, but basically fear of man-made objects that are partially or completely submerged in water, especially animatronics) plus a few random fears which aren’t potent enough to be considered phobias.
Since it has helped me so much I wanted to see if it could do the same for my friends, so I did a couple impromptu interviews with my friends who were interested and helped many of them out. One of which didn’t realize that not being able to sleep at night due to the idea that a spider might be in her room is not normal and definitely qualifies as extreme Arachnophobia. This website has been invaluable to learning new phobias.
One of my friends has a pretty rough home life. Her parents divorced a few years back due to verbal, physical, and mental abuse from her dad. But, in the trial her dad somehow scraped by with a large sum of money and partial custody. For one weekend each month she is legally obligated to live with her dad. From what I’ve heard and seen, it’s absolute torture for her. She fears her dad more than anything or anyone on this planet. Once when I was at her house, she heard her dad’s car pull up to pick up her little sister for the weekend. Her face turned whiter than snow and she stopped breathing for a couple seconds before rushing to her door locking it, grabbing my arm, pulling us into the bathroom and locking that door, before pulling us both into the bathroom closet. She huddled on the floor in terror and began hyperventilating. Being 12 at the time I had no idea that this was a phobia at work.
It is beyond obvious that she has a serious phobia of her father, even though I know for a fact that all of the abuse was aimed towards her mother and never directly hurt any of his children. Her dad does love her, but she could not be further away from loving her dad. I tried to research what the fear of your own father is and found zero results. I’ve spent hours looking into it and I can’t find anything! Do any of you know if there is an official name for this phobia? I mean, if there’s a name for the fear of underwater animatronics, there’s gotta be a name for the fear of your dad, right? Please help in any way you can! I really want to help my friend overcome this fear as it’s really affecting her life.
Alex says
That doesn’t sound like a phobia, as phobias are generally irrational. That sounds more like a trauma disorder, such as PTSD or cPTSD. It is possible that he is abusive towards her, whether physically, mentally, verbally, or sexually. Often abuse isn’t obvious or visible. Even if she wasn’t directly abused, people can develop trauma disorders simply from witnessing abuse, especially repeatedly. Either way, almost certainly not a phobia.