Anatidaephobia - The New Experience of Fear and Anxiety
Have you ever made a stroll at the lake, the wind blew in your hair, the sun patted your skin… and suddenly, without any warning, you saw a rare resident of this lake: A duck! The duck wasn’t walking there, wasn’t minding his own business… the duck was watching you, as seems to plan an attack on you.
To most of us it would be a funny incident. But not to the anatidaephobic among us. A spreading phenomenon is the fear of stocking ducks. There is no information regarding the sources of this phenomenon, or the situations that may cause this fear. But one thing is for sure – to those who suffer from anatidaephobia, this fear is penetrating their everyday life, and makes it difficult to run a normal routine.
We talked to a person that has this fear:
We: Hello John.
John: Hey! Please, I want to stay anonymous.
We: Oh, sorry. So how to call you?
John: You can call me Fabricio.
We: OK Fabricio. Tell us about your fears. When did they start?
Fabricio: It happened a long time ago… I can barely remember. It was about 2 moths ago. I was helping my little son to bathe. And suddenly, my wife came in and handed my son a yellow duck! It was horror fide!
We: But, Fabricio, isn’t that was a rubber duck?
Fabricio: Yeah.. so?? You had to see its eyes! It was like it was reading my mind! I was panicked, running outside as fast as I can. And on the same night, the nightmares began.
As you can all understand, the Anatidaephobia can strike you without any warning, out of the blue, filling your life with fears and emotions.
With the first cases of fear of stocking ducks, the psychological and psychiatric community believed this phobia belongs to a known general phobia of birds.