Aversion to happiness, also called cherophobia or fear of happiness, is an attitude towards happiness in which individuals may deliberately avoid experiences that invoke positive emotions or happiness.

One of several reasons that cherophobia may develop is the belief that when one becomes happy, a negative event will soon occur that will taint their happiness, as if that individual is being punished for satisfaction. This belief is thought to be more prevalent in non-Western cultures. In Western cultures, such as American culture, "it is almost taken for granted that happiness is one of the most important values guiding people’s lives." Western cultures are more driven by an urge to maximize happiness and minimize sadness. Failing to appear happy is often a cause for concern. Its value is echoed through Western positive psychology and research on subjective well-being.. Fear of happiness is associated with fragility of happiness beliefs, suggesting that one of the causes of aversion to happiness may be the belief that happiness is unstable and fragile . Fear of happiness has also been linked to avoidant and anxious attachment styles.

Research shows that opposition to attitudinal change can gradually give way to acceptance with the passage of time. Attitudinal change towards acceptance may be a slow and even tedious experience for some teachers.

The terms "distress" and "impairment" as defined by the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition" (DSM-IV-TR) should also take into account the context of the person's environment if attempting a diagnosis. The DSM-IV-TR states that if a feared stimulus, whether it be an object or a social situation, is absent entirely in an environment, a diagnosis cannot be made. An example of this situation would be an individual who has a fear of mice but lives in an area devoid of mice. Even though the concept of mice causes marked distress and impairment within the individual, because the individual does not usually encounter mice, no actual distress or impairment is ever experienced. Proximity to, and ability to escape from, the stimulus should also be considered. As the phobic person approaches a feared stimulus, anxiety levels increase, and the degree to which the person perceives they might escape from the stimulus affects the intensity of fear in instances such as riding an elevator (e.g. anxiety increases at the midway point between floors and decreases when the floor is reached and the doors open).

Phobias are a common form of anxiety disorders and distributions are heterogeneous by age and gender. An American study by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) found that between 8.7 percent and 18.1 percent of Americans suffer from phobias, making it the most common mental illness among women in all age groups and the second most common illness among men older than 25. Between 4 percent and 10 percent of all children experience specific phobias during their lives, and social phobias occur in one percent to three percent of children and adolescents.

A Swedish study found that females have a higher incidence than males (26.5 percent for females and 12.4 percent for males). Among adults, 21.2 percent of women and 10.9 percent of men have a single specific phobia, while multiple phobias occur in 5.4 percent of females and 1.5 percent of males. Women are nearly four times as likely as men to have a fear of animals (12.1 percent in women and 3.3 percent in men) — a higher dimorphic than with all specific or generalized phobias or social phobias. Social phobias are more common in girls than in boys, while situational phobia occurs in 17.4 percent of women and 8.5 percent of men.

Currently, scholarly accepted and empirically proven treatments are very limited due to its relatively new concept. However, promising treatments include cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy and combined with pharmacological interventions. Treatments using tranylcypromine and clonazepam were successful in reducing the effects of nomophobia.

Cognitive behavioral therapy seems to be effective by reinforcing autonomous behavior independent from technological influences, however, this form of treatment lacks randomized trails. Another possible treatment is "Reality Approach," or Reality therapy asking patient to focus behaviors away from cell phones. In extreme or severe cases, neuropsychopharmacology may be advantageous, ranging from benzodiazepines to antidepressants in usual doses. Patients were also successfully treated using tranylcypromine combined with clonazepam. However, it is important to note that these medications were designed to treat social anxiety disorder and not nomophobia directly. It may be rather difficult to treat nomophobia directly, but more plausible to investigate, identify, and treat any underlying mental disorders if any exist.

Even though nomophobia is a fairly new concept, there are validated psychometric scales available to help in the diagnostic, an example of one of these scales is the "Questionnaire of Dependence of Mobile Phone/Test of Mobile Phone Dependence (QDMP/TMPD)".

Cyberphobia is a concept introduced in 1980, described as a specific phobia expressed as "an irrational fear of or aversion to computers" or more generally, a fear and/or inability to learn about new technologies.

Some forms of cyberphobia may range from the more passive forms of technophobia of those who are indifferent toward cyberspace to the responses of those who see digital technology as a medium of intrusive surveillance; more extreme responses may involve anti-technological paranoia expressed by social movements that radically oppose ‘technological society’ and ‘the New World Order’.

There are different ways that someone could experience cyberphobia. Teachers may experience a form of cyberphobia if they are forced to change their way of teaching. Another way people may experience cyberphobia is if they feel that they are incompetent, or that the new technology is not needed to advance in life, or that they feel that they lack skills for the new age of technology. Another way people may experience cyberphobia is if they feel like they are going to lose control, or the new technology will affect their status in life.

There are four major reasons why cherophobes avoid happiness: "believing that being happy will provoke bad things to happen; that happiness will make you a worse person; that expressing happiness is bad for you and others; and that pursuing happiness is bad for you and others". For example, "some people—in Western and Eastern cultures—are wary of happiness because they believe that bad things, such as unhappiness, suffering, and death, tend to happen to happy people."

These findings "call into question the notion that happiness is the ultimate goal, a belief echoed in any number of articles and self-help publications about whether certain choices are likely to make you happy". Also, "in cultures that believe worldly happiness to be associated with sin, shallowness, and moral decline will actually feel less satisfied when their lives are (by other standards) going well", so measures of personal happiness cannot simply be considered a yardstick for satisfaction with one's life, and attitudes such as aversion to happiness have important implications for measuring happiness across cultures and ranking nations on happiness scores.

There are no documented treatments for trypophobia, but exposure therapy, which has been used to treat phobias, is likely to be effective for treating trypophobia.

Hedonophobia is an excessive fear or aversion to obtaining pleasure. The purported background of some such associated feelings may be due to an egalitarian-related sentiment, whereby one feels a sense of solidarity with individuals in the lowest Human Development Index countries. For others, a recurring thought that some things are too good to be true has resulted in an ingrainedness that they are not entitled to feel too good. The condition is relatively rare. Sometimes, it can be triggered by a religious upbringing wherein asceticism is propounded.

Hedonophobia is formally defined as the fear of experiencing pleasure. 'Hedon' or 'hedone' comes from ancient Greek, meaning 'pleasure' + fear: 'phobia'. Hedonophobia is the inability to enjoy pleasurable experiences, and is often a persistent malady. Diagnosis of the condition is usually related to the age of 'maturity' in each country where the syndrome exists. For instance, in the US a person must be 18 years old to be considered an adult, whereas in Canada he or she must be 18 or 19 years old, depending on the province of residence. Globally, the ages range from (+/-) 12 to 24 years and are mainly determined by traditional ethical practices from previous societies. High anxiety, panic attacks, and extreme fear are symptoms that can result from anticipating pleasure of any kind. Expecting or anticipating pleasure at some point in the future can also trigger an attack.

Hedonophobics have a type of guilt about feeling pleasure or experiencing pleasurable sensations, due to a cultural background or training (either religious or cultural) that eschews pleasurable pursuits as frivolous or inappropriate. Oftentimes, social guilt is connected to having fun while others are suffering, and is common for those who feel undeserving or have self-worth issues to work through. Also, there is a sense that they shouldn't be given pleasures due to their lack of performance in life, and because they have done things that are deemed "wrong" or "undeserving."

To determine the depth of the diagnosis for those who suffer from hedonophobia, background is crucial. For example, when a child is taught that a strong work ethic is all that makes them worthy of the good things in life, guilt becomes a motivator to move away from pleasure when they begin to experience it. The individual learns that pleasures are bad, and feeling good is not as sanctified as being empathetic towards those who suffer.

C.B.T. (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is an effective approach to the resolution of past beliefs that infiltrate and affect the sufferer's current responses to various situations. Medication is only necessary when there is an interference in the person's normal daily functioning. Various techniques are used by those afflicted with the condition to hide, camouflage or mask their aversion to pleasure.

Any relationship that includes things that are pleasurable is re-established when the sufferer learns that he is not worthy of anything pleasurable, or that he only deserves the opposite of those things which are pleasurable. A disconnect is necessary to determine the sufferer's lack of ability to intervene in the overall process.

A pseudophobia is a purported irrational aversion or fear whose existence is as yet unproven. Examples of this type of condition include schoolphobia and separation anxiety. The term has also been applied to first time fathers and mothers who have an exorbitant fear of hurting their own infant child due to an exaggerated perception of their fragility. John Bowlby has described the agoraphobic condition as a pseudophobia. These features may in actuality encompass a reaction to a lack of a secure refuge or other underlying pathological processes. Its origin typically derives from some dreaded memory.

Women's fear of crime refers to women's fear of being a victim of crime, independent of actual victimization. Although fear of crime is a concern for people of all genders, studies consistently find that women around the world tend to have much higher levels of fear of crime than men, despite the fact that in many places, and for most offenses, men's actual victimization rates are higher. Fear of crime is related to perceived risk of victimization, but is not the same; fear of crime may be generalized instead of referring to specific offenses, and perceived risk may also be considered a demographic factor that contributes to fear of crime. Women tend to have higher levels for both perceived risk and fear of crime.

In women's everyday lives, fear of crime can have negative effects, such as reducing their environmental mobility. Studies have shown that women tend to avoid certain behaviors, such as walking alone at night, because they are fearful of crime, and would feel more comfortable with these behaviors if they felt safer.

Although on blogs and in Internet forums, thousands of people say they have trypophobia, it is not recognized by name as a mental disorder, and subsequently is not a specific diagnosis in the American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual", Fifth Edition (DSM-5). Jennifer Abbasi of "Popular Science" said that it is rarely referenced in scientific literature, but also that "professionals who study and treat phobias tend not to use all the Latin and Greek names that get tossed around on message boards and in the press." If the fear is excessive, persistent, and associated with significant distress or impairment, trypophobia could fall under the broad category of specific phobia.

Author Kathleen McAuliffe suggested that trypophobia is yet to be extensively studied because researchers have not given as much attention to topics of disgust as they have to other areas of research, and because of the revulsion viewing the images could incite in researchers. Psychiatrist Carol Mathews said, "There might really be people out there with phobias to holes, because people can really have a phobia to anything, but just reading what's on the Internet, that doesn't seem to be what people actually have." Mathews felt that most people writing online are likely disgusted by these types of images without meeting criteria for a real phobia. By contrast, researcher Tom Kupfer said, "I wouldn't be surprised if this is actually a disorder based on disgust and disease avoidance."

Nomophobia is a proposed name for the phobia of being out of cellular phone contact. It is, however, arguable that the word "phobia" is misused and that in the majority of cases it is another form of anxiety disorder.

Although nomophobia does not appear in the current "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", Fifth Edition (DSM-5), it has been proposed as a "specific phobia", based on definitions given in the DSM-IV. According to Bianchi and Philips (2005) psychological factors are involved in the overuse of a mobile phone. These could include low self-esteem (when individuals looking for reassurance use the mobile phone in inappropriate ways) and extroverted personality (when naturally social individuals use the mobile phone to excess). It is also highly possible that nomophobic symptoms may be caused by other underlying and preexisting mental disorders, with likely candidates including social phobia or social anxiety disorder, social anxiety, and panic disorder.

The term, an abbreviation for "no-mobile-phone phobia", was coined during a 2008 study by the UK Post Office who commissioned YouGov, a UK-based research organization evaluating anxieties suffered by mobile phone users. The study found that nearly 53% of mobile phone users in Britain tend to be anxious when they "lose their mobile phone, run out of battery or credit, or have no network coverage". The study, sampled 2,163 people, found that about 58% of men and 47% of women suffer from the phobia, and an additional 9% feel stressed when their mobile phones are off. 55% of those surveyed cited keeping in touch with friends or family as the main reason that they got anxious when they could not use their mobile phones. The study compared stress levels induced by the average case of nomophobia to be on-par with those of "wedding day jitters" and trips to the dentist.

Another study found that out of 547 male, undergraduate students in Health Services, 23% of the students were classified as nomophobic, while an additional 64% were at risk of developing nomophobia. Of these students, approximately 77% checked their mobile phones 35 or more times a day.

More than one in two nomophobes never switch off their mobile phones. The study and subsequent coverage of the phobia resulted in two editorial columns authored by individuals who minimized their mobile phone use or chose not to own one at all. These authors appeared to treat the condition with light undertones of mockery, or outright disbelief and amusement.

Language classicists do not like this word or approve of it, because of its inherent confusion with the existing, though rare, nomophobia, a fear of laws, rules or regulations. The latter derives from the Greek "nomos" (a law, rule or regulation) seen in such other words as astronomy (rules about the stars), gastronomy (rules about food and eating), autonomy (ruling oneself), economy (rules governing the finances of the state or household), antinomy (a law contrary to another law), metronome (a device to regulate metre or beat), nomocracy (the rule of law in society), nomography (the law in written form), nomology (the study or science of law), nomothete (a lawgiver), and the archaic anomy (lawlessness). The neologistic meaning referred to in this article, relating to mobile phones, seems to have been adopted by the younger generations, and by those without a deeper understanding of the Oxford guidelines on word construction, in which typically Greek words are attached to Greek words (and Latin to Latin, etc.).

Fear of fish or ichthyophobia ranges from cultural phenomena such as fear of eating fish, fear of touching raw fish, or fear of dead fish, up to irrational fear (specific phobia). Galeophobia is the fear specifically of sharks.

Blood phobia (also AE: hemophobia or BE: haemophobia) is the extreme and irrational fear of blood, a type of specific phobia. Severe cases of this fear can cause physical reactions that are uncommon in most other fears, specifically vasovagal syncope (fainting). Similar reactions can also occur with trypanophobia and traumatophobia. For this reason, these phobias are categorized as "blood-injection-injury phobia" by the DSM-IV. Some early texts refer to this category as "blood-injury-illness phobia."

The standard approach to treatment is the same as with other phobias - cognitive-behavioral therapy, desensitization, and possibly medications to help with the anxiety and discomfort. In recent years, the technique known as "applied tension", applying tension to the muscles in an effort to increase blood pressure, has increasingly gained favor as an often effective treatment for blood phobia associated with drops in blood pressure and fainting.

Because the fear of blood is extremely common, it is frequently exploited in popular culture. Horror movies and Halloween events prey on our natural aversion to blood, often featuring large quantities of fake blood.

For a long time, the fear of falling was merely believed to be a result of the psychological trauma of a fall, also called "post-fall syndrome". This syndrome was first mentioned in 1982 by Murphy and Isaacs, who noticed that after a fall, ambulatory persons developed intense fear and walking disorders. Fear of falling has been identified as one of the key symptoms of this syndrome. Since that time, FOF has gained recognition as a specific health problem among older adults. However, FOF was also commonly found among elderly persons who had not yet experienced a fall.

Prevalence of FOF appears to increase with age and to be higher in women. Age remains significant in multiple logistic regression analyses. The results of different studies have reported gender as a somewhat significant risk factor for fear of falling. Other risk factors of fear of falling in the elderly include dizziness, self-rated health status, depression, and problems with gait and balance.

Studies done by psychologists Eleanor J. Gibson and Richard D. Walk have further explained the nature of this fear. One of their more famous studies is the "visual cliff. Below is their description of the cliff:

Thirty-six infants were tested in their experiments, ranging from six to fourteen months. Gibson and Walk found that when placed on the board, 27 of the infants would crawl on the shallow side when called by their mothers; only three ventured off the "edge" of the cliff. Many infants would crawl away from their mothers who were calling from the deep end, and some would cry because they couldn’t reach their mothers without crossing an apparent chasm. Some would pat the glass on the deep end, but even with this assurance would not crawl on the glass. These results, although unable to prove that this fear is innate, indicate that most human infants have well developed depth perception and are able to make the connection between depth and the danger that accompanies falling.

Hoplophobia is a political neologism coined by retired American military officer Jeff Cooper as a pejorative to describe an "irrational aversion to weapons." It is also used to describe the "fear of firearms" or the "fear of armed citizens." Hoplophobia is a political term and not a recognized medical phobia.

Ichthyophobia is described in "Psychology: An International Perspective" as an "unusual" specific phobia. Both symptoms and remedies of ichthyophobia are common to most specific phobias.

John B. Watson, a renowned name of behaviorism, describes an example, quoted in many books in psychology, of conditioned fear of a goldfish in an infant and a way of unconditioning of the fear by what is called now graduated exposure therapy:

In contrast, radical exposure therapy was used successfully to cure a man with a "life affecting" fish phobia on the 2007 documentary series, "The Panic Room".

Travel aversion, not to be confused with "hodophobia", is a condition experienced by people that dislike or disapprove traveling. People who abstain from travel may see traveling more as a chore than as a leisure.

Travel-averse people feel well enough at home, and do not see the point in traveling. The reason may be that the effort required to organize a trip is too demanding to them, especially since they are not prepared, and the stress included in traveling and orienting oneself in an unknown environment may prevent any enjoyment during the travel. A travel aversive will typically not enjoy his staying abroad, especially if he is traveling alone for a short period.

Most of the reasons motivating people to travel seems futile to travel aversives. Their main considerations include the high resource consumption induced by traveling, which entails that traveling should be reserved to necessary cases, and should be avoided otherwise. Traveling is advanced as a non-ecological lifestyle, and such people enjoy simple living, in which one individual seeks to satisfy only its needs, and heavily considers the reasons for satisfying his wants. Traveling appears to them as another facet of consumerism.

Travel aversives do not experience post-vacation blues. They feel rather happy about being back into their usual habits. Travel aversives tend to look for a stable lifestyle devoid of any unforeseen events, so as to feel comfortable about the near future. Traveling does not fit in this lifestyle, since many contingencies can happen, with sometimes highly displeasing consequences.

In psychiatry, oikophobia (synonymous with domatophobia and ecophobia) is an aversion to home surroundings. It can also be used more generally to mean an abnormal fear (a phobia) of the home, or of the contents of a house ("fear of household appliances, equipment, bathtubs, household chemicals, and other common objects in the home"). The term derives from the Greek words "oikos", meaning household, house, or family, and "phobia", meaning "fear".

In 1808 the poet and essayist Robert Southey used the word to describe a desire (particularly by the English) to leave home and travel. Southey's usage as a synonym for wanderlust was picked up by other nineteenth century writers.

The term has also been used in political contexts to refer critically to political ideologies that repudiate one's own culture and laud others. The first such usage was by Roger Scruton in a 2004 book.

The mental health community does not recognize work aversion as an illness or disease and therefore no medically recognized treatments exist. Those attempting to treat work aversion as an illness may use psychotherapy, counseling, medication, or some more unusual forms of treatment.

In the case where the person has not worked for a while due to a workplace injury, work-hardening can be used to build strength. The person works for a brief period of time in the first week, such as two hours per day and increases the amount of work each week until full-time hours are reached.

In addition to celibacy, the theory cites declining numbers of marriages and declining birthrates in Japan. According to surveys conducted by the Japan Association for Sex Education, between 2011 and 2013, the number of female college students reporting to be virgins increased. Additionally, surveys conducted by the Japanese Family Planning Association (JFPA) indicated a high number of Japanese women who reported that they "were not interested in or despised sexual contact". Meanwhile, surveys conducted by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Japan in 2008 and 2013, revealed that the number of Japanese men and women reporting to not be in any kind of romantic relationship grew by 10%.

The theory attributes two possible causes for these reports: the past two decades of economic stagnation as well as high gender inequality in Japan.

Chromophobia (also known as chromatophobia or chrematophobia) is a persistent, irrational fear of, or aversion to, colors and is usually a conditioned response. While actual clinical phobias to color are rare, colors can elicit hormonal responses and psychological reactions.

Chromophobia may also refer to an aversion of use of color in products or design. Within cellular biology, "chromophobic" cells are a classification of cells that do not attract hematoxylin, and is related to chromatolysis.