Nameless dread has been around for centuries, and it’s time we put an end to it. It’s impractical, it’s expensive, it’s contagious, and it’s getting worse.

Actual threats, at least, were once straightforward: apocalyptic flooding, stampeding bison, people running at you with knives. And of course eternal damnation. Those things still exist today, but now our worrying must expand to include everything from chlorine tanker spills to airborne nail clippers. Our psyches are being strip-mined.

Things that look innocent are not: hand-addressed letters, gum-machine jewelry, children. Things that start off innocent turn sinister: chow puppies, romantic attachments, silicone breast implants. The media do a heroic job of trying to warn us, but how can we hope to watch enough TV or buy enough magazines to be aware of every lurking danger?

That’s why we need to harness and direct our own power by focusing our fears into phobias.

For instance, when countless contradictory nutrition studies told us to change our diet before we even managed to master the last one, we took refuge in carbophobia—it gave us both a solid enemy and a reassuring new influx of grocery packaging¹. That seems like the good old days, now that we know that apple pie, of all things, is harboring trans fats like Commies in our midst!

The fear of losing your youth, sagophobia, can set in as early as nineteen, and it can be hurtful when your parents don’t take it seriously—but keep in mind that they’re probably undergoing the trauma of aarpophobia.

Understand that it’s normal for your phobias to change in the course of life. Take, for instance, the common childhood dread of insects and spiders. Advances in television therapy that involve contestants forced to eat cockroaches can be a healthy way for us to get beyond those things that appalled and dismayed us as children.

At the same time, reality shows have pinpointed a deeper fear, one they ruthlessly exploit: the fear of never being famous, or obscurophobia. Thus the greater, more mature fear replaces the lesser one.

An ascendant form of paranoia is cyberintestinalparasitophobia, the fear that bad guys will worm into the guts of your computer and send random private files to strangers and your boss, or at the very least steal your identity. This is a tough one, because this will actually happen to you. No space is private enough to be safe—which brings me to psychiaphobia, the fear of revealing yourself to your therapist.

Sexual anxieties have always been with us—no doubt you can think of ten or twelve offhand. Growing numbers of men report the fear that their partner will assume their home-grown erection is due to Viagra, and they won’t get credit for it; this is known as corkabatophobia. Women, meanwhile, have begun to develop syndicated-Sexophobia, the fear that “Sex in the City” has forever robbed them of the ability to have original sex and that their shoes are pathetically inadequate.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. If those words give you an irritating rash, you may have one of the classics: xenophobia. A new American variety is reflective xenophobia, the fear that the foreigner may hate you even more than you hate him.

It is sure that phobias in some form will always be with us. Since 1999 researchers have been tracing Dubyaphobia, which is spawning such babies as defaultophobia, the fear of wholesale U.S. insolvency, and infidelophobia, the fear that after being killed by terrorists, you will learn that heaven really is reserved for Islamist martyrs and black-eyed virgins.

So—while we’re on the subject—next time you’re seized with the crazy idea that you or your loved ones could be horrifically maimed or killed at any moment as you go about your daily lives, no matter what your beliefs, your nationality, or your years of therapy—take a deep breath. Calmly survey the array of phobias available, select a whopper, and commit yourself.

You may be asking: What if I tire of my phobias? Is there a cure? Could I please just get rid of them for once and for all? I would advise you not to try. Your phobias are the sum of who you are. If you let them go, what’s to stop you from being sucked into a void? What’s to stop you from spiraling into an endless, featureless abyss, a gaping black hole of nothingness, a spiritual vacuum of agonizing despair for all eternity? What’s to stop you but those very phobias you think you’d “rather do without”?

The occasional protein overdose, act of war, or ruined date is a small price to pay.