Banana phobia: Swedish politician is afraid of the fruit

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Anyone who googles the word “banana phobia” will currently see a whole series of articles about Paulina Brandberg. Brandberg is a lawyer, Liberal politician in Sweden and Minister for Equality. So in summary: educated and so popular with voters that she made it into the cabinet of the current government in Stockholm.

But the 41-year-old is currently being reported on mainly because she has a strange fear – she is afraid of bananas.

“Fear” sounds more harmless than it is, because it is probably a downright phobia. And so Brandberg made her strong fear of the yellow tropical fruits an issue herself. She explained that it was like a “violent allergy” and that’s why she sought professional help. Your employees try to keep their environment banana-free.

Because of her banana phobia, she now receives a lot of public support – but also malice, for example recently in a Swedish satirical program that began a report about her with a banana photo, as several media reports.

The term banana phobia actually exists. Such extreme fear of this fruit is rare, but Brandberg is not the only person in the world who suffers from it.

In Britain, the Daily Mail reported a few years ago about a woman who could hardly stand the fruit – she couldn’t touch it with her bare hands, didn’t want to see it or walk past it on the fruit shelf in the supermarket and was even afraid of bananas in children’s books mentioned, which she read to her little son. The trigger is said to have been that her brother put a banana in her bed as a child. It felt so disgusting that it left a lasting impression, according to the British newspaper.

It is not publicly known how the Swedish politician’s phobia came about. She also did not describe exactly how these anxiety states manifested themselves in her.

Phobias are a serious thing. Those affected can be severely restricted in their everyday lives – for example because they constantly try to avoid the triggers of their anxiety or because they get real panic attacks when they come into contact.

I remember my extreme fear of balloons as a child – as soon as one flew around somewhere, for example at a child’s birthday party, I became terrified that it would burst and was sometimes difficult to calm down. A horror idea back then. As I grew older, the fear disappeared.

But there are also phobias that accompany people for many years or even their entire lives, such as the fear of spiders or even enclosed spaces.

Paulina Brandberg’s banana phobia seems so exotic to many people that this phenomenon currently dominates reporting about the politician. Foreign media also write about it, including German and British media.

Their fear is getting so much attention that Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson felt compelled to make a statement this week: That phobia does not affect the work of his cabinet member, he was quoted in several articles. He is surprised when a hard-working minister is reduced to a phobia and people make fun of it. “I think we should be better than this.”

Anyone who can relate to what anxiety feels like would probably agree. Because “banana phobia” sounds really strange at first – but the person affected certainly can’t laugh about it.