Usually I stay away from phobias. Not because I have a phobia of phobias, but because labels bother me. I have actually only looked up a few phobias years ago due to someone either labeling me or bringing it up in conversation and I was too embarrassed to asked for the meaning. In the short-lived times I’ve researched phobias I found that there are a shit ton of phobias and I refused to live life thinking about all of the possible fears that others have (I mean these phobia words come from somewhere right). Glossophobia is the only phobia I can relate thought I related to until recently.

And by recently I mean a couple minutes ago. After reading Solange Knowles’ birthday post – which legitimately gave me life. I of course looked up the phobia that was mentioned out of curiosity. Curious about what this phobia was and getting to know more about a dope artist by “researching” this.

Agoraphobia

In short it’s often a fear of being out in uncontrollable public places. It is also noted that those who have this phobia experience sudden panic attacks when traveling to places they are out of control. Hmm…

Elsewhere it says that it comes from Greek words that directly translate to “fear of the marketplace.” Again hmm…

It was there that I could relate. I literally cannot stand being in large stores or over-crowded places and at times uncontrollable social situations make me VERY uneasy. Numerous times I’ve abandoned full shopping carts in the middle of a supermarket and made a mad dash for the car. Other times I’ve felt a surge of uncontrollable (and unexplainable) emotions and ran to one of many comfort zones (i.e. home, the beach, etc).

I asked my sister Jay (because she and my Uncle are bio/medical people in the family so they should know everything) about this before she witnessed it firsthand and she still is clueless as to why anxiety kicks in for me like that…

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It was just nice to know that I am not the only person who deals with these random, unexplainable feelings. I read comment after comment after comment of people saying they too deal with this. I’m not sure what to refer to it as now that I reread that last sentence, but I refuse to say I suffer from this phobia.

No labels.

No attachments.

Not speaking it into existence.

It’s simply one minor thing that I occasionally deal with.