• Agoraphobia: Irrational anxiety about being in places from which escape might be difficult or embarrassing.
• Social phobia: Irrational anxiety elicited by exposure to certain types of social or performance situations, also leading to avoidance behavior.
• Specific phobia: Persistent and irrational fear in the presence of some specific stimulus which commonly elicits avoidance of that stimulus, i.e., withdrawal.

• animal type - set off by animals or insects
• natural environment type - set off by objects in the environment (i.e. storms, heights, water, ect.)
• blood/injection/injury type - set off by witnessing or the posibility of undergoing some invasive medical procedure
• situational type - set off by a specific situation (i.e. public transportation, tunnels, bridges, elevators, flying, driving, enclosed spaces, ect.)
• other type - set off by other stimuli than of the above (i.e. choking, vomiting, contracting illness, ect.)

Phobias are irrational by definition and interefere with daily life. When a fear preoccupies your thoughts and prevents you from doing certain things you might enjoy, then it becomes irrational. The key to diagnosing a phobic disorder is that the fear must be excessive and inappropriate for the situation.The phobia of cats, or Ailurophobia, may cause a person to have panic attacks even thinking about them. They would avoid the animals at all cost and possibly scream and cry, looking for any possible escape if one came into the room. Aperson who merely disliked cats or had a fear would probably just keep an eye on the cat and stay to their side of the room. It's not only fear that indicates phobia; both fear and avoidance must be evident.

Most people who have a phobia are so preoccupied with it that they can apply it to anything, for instance, a few of the phobias that could be applied to this picture...

• Anemophobia- Fear of air drafts
• Antlophobia- Fear of flood
• Arachnephobia- Fear of spiders
• Autophobia- Fear of being alone
• Bacteriophobia- Fear of bacteria
• Bathophobia- Fear of depth
• Botanophobia- Fear of plants
• Dendrophobia- Fear of trees
• Dinophobia- Fear of whirlpools
• Entomophobia- Fear of insects
• Heliophobia- Fear of the sun
• Hydrophobia- Fear of water
• Ichthyophobia- Fear of fish
• Kymophobia- Fear of waves
• Limnophobia- Fear of lakes
• Nephophobia- Fear of clouds
• Ombrophobia- Fear of rain or of being rained on
• Ranidaphobia- Fear of frogs
• Xylophobia- 1) Fear of wooden objects 2) Forests

There are many people in the world that suffer from polyphobia, which simply means to have more than one phobia. And sometimes there are even people who suffer from antinomial phobias, or contridicting phobias. For example, there are some people that live with Vestiophobia (fear of clothes) and gymnophobia (fear of nudity) at the same time. Also some people have achluophobia (fear of darkness) and photophobia (fear of light). Another example would be those suffering from from both Sociophobia (Fear of society or people in general) and Autophobia (Fear of being alone or of oneself)