Me and my embarrassing, irrational phobia.

“They make me feel sick and anxious. I get quite worked up worrying if I’m going to have to touch or be near one. It’s very scary”.

You might think Megan is talking about spiders, or clowns, or even those gross weird holes you see shared on Facebook all the time. But no. Megan, like many other people in the world, has a totally irrational fear that plagues her everyday life. Her phobia? Bananas.

When discussing why she hated bananas so much she couldn’t help herself from gagging at the thought. “It’s more what’s inside: The texture, the gooeyness, the thought of it in someone’s mouth…” At first, we both laughed at the conversation, as Megan knows that her phobia is unusual and funny, but thinking that she was so worried about bananas that she becomes anxious and panicky is something I thought posed an interesting question.

It’s easy to see why someone would have a phobia of something more common, like a fear of spiders, clowns or heights, because they all present a sense of danger described as rational fears. But how in the hell do you become so scared of bananas that it causes such a deep reaction of anxiety and fear?

"It was so busy and everyone was around me and I had to think to myself 'How can I avoid going to that place?"

She claims that her phobia started from a young age, telling people she was scared of bananas to get attention. “When I was younger, I was attention seeking. [I thought] ‘Oh I’m just going to make this up and get attention, but now it’s just manifested so much."

Megan's phobia is so distressing that the last time she came across a banana in her local shop in Cardiff, she had to go up a different aisle and back down the one she was in to get her spinach, which was unfortunately placed right next to the offending fruit. "I know it's irrational because it was so busy, I kind of had to think to myself, what are you gonna do, how can I avoid going so close to them [...] I had to reroute myself, there was a bit of anxiety as I know it looks ridiculous."

Speaking to Emma Brand, a counsellor from Kent who specialises in phobia therapy, she defines phobias as “a strong reaction/fear towards something - object, person, event caused by a trauma or negative experience/memory." Emma said that childhood memories were a big player in adult, irrational fears. “For example, someone felt trapped in a room because they felt anxiety in the room, therefore the phobia becomes attached to being in a room where someone feels trapped."

However, Emma also mentioned that in some cases, it can be inherited from someone not being sure of themselves or their identity, leading to copying or mimicking a phobia. This could explain why Megan’s childhood, self-proclaimed attention-seeking fear of bananas still freaks her out to this day and is completely ingrained in her subconscious.

Working in the field of fear, Emma sees a number of people with irrational phobias, including buttons, zips and crates. Emma herself discussed her fear of rollercoasters and vomiting following a traumatic childhood memory. Differing from more rational fears, these intrusive, irrational phobias are more personal than rational fears.

Sometimes, irrational thoughts are so embedded that even though someone knows it's embarrassing, they cannot stop their fear - explaining how Meg feels about her phobia being ingrained in her subconscious.

Combatting these fears can be helped most commonly within therapy. Emma works with people suffering from phobias in “a safe, calm way to unpick and explore the memory or phobia in a safe space." She also discussed the idea of exposure therapy- challenging people to face their fears through pictures first, then seeing the item in a box locked where they know it can’t hurt them, leading to touching or holding the item.

"It's something that I'm not even gonna attempt to try [...] that's just not a situation I'm gonna put myself in"

As a psychology student, Megan explained she was aware already of this type of exposure therapy, but she saw it less as a slow build up to being able to overcome her fear, but instead “getting bananas thrown at you” and isn’t something she can see herself doing in the near future.

However, combatting her own fear of rollercoasters, Emma explored the phobia in therapy and watched YouTube videos to learn from people’s experiences, which has helped her feel a lot calmer, saying that this can give anyone easy access to phobia help. This method of therapy for rational and irrational phobias is designed for people like Meg, who can’t think of anything worse than “getting bananas thrown” at her in a bid to control her fear.

So to anyone suffering from a severe phobia, therapy and trusted friends or family to confide in definitely help in a way where you can understand that what you're afraid of is irrational and can overcome any intense feelings of fear and anxiety.