Trypophobia: Do Clusters Of Small Holes Freak You Out?

Jun 20, 2018 by apost team

Can you eat a pomegranate or does the very sight of it after it is cut open make you sick to your stomach? If this describes you, then you might be suffering from a disorder called "trypophobia". This affliction is defined as someone who has an irrational fear of holes or bumpy surfaces that are arranged in a patterned group.

As many as 15% of the world population suffers from trypophobia with possibly many more since this is not something that is recognized by the medical profession, so it goes undiagnosed as well as untreated. The actual term, trypophobia, which can also be spelled as tropophobia, is not designated as medical terminology. In fact, the origin of the coined term can be traced back to a message board from approximately 13 years ago of a person who appeared to be suffering from some of the following symptoms when they were exposed to hole patterns or bumps:

• Nausea
• Goosebumps
• Panic attack
• Revulsion 
• Body Shakes 
• Sweating

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This post caught on and the term became somewhat of a meme on social media once more people started to share the same symptoms when they were exposed to pattern holes and bumpy surfaces in certain foods or objects. They shared their triggers to some of the following items:

• Pomegranates
• Strawberries
• Rain condensation on windows and other objects
• Soap bubbles
• Clusters of exact same objects like eyes, polka-dots, marbles, etc…
• Coral reefs
• Sponges
• Skin rashes with predominant bump patterns
• Seafoam or general foam formations

People who have this affliction have shared online some of their feelings when they see any of these things and how it makes them feel including the following excerpts:

• “It makes me feel itchy and I get shivers up and down my spine”
• “I get disgusted instantly, and my skin feels like it’s crawling.”
• “I want to immediately find something I can rip up.”
• “I don’t think about it, and then I see something with bubbles in it, and I feel sick all of a sudden.”

If you think you have this affliction, then you can test yourself and Google some images that may trigger some of the symptoms that these individuals have shared that they have experienced when they are exposed to hole or bumpy patterns. If you find that certain advertisements such as soap commercials where the bubbles will make you feel weird or queasy, or a pattern in your daily life either at work or at home on wallpaper or at your desk might consistently give you a strange feeling, even dizziness, then you might be a victim of trypophobia.

If you work in the medical field, this might include certain visuals or body organs that contain hole patterns including blood cells. Sometimes, if not put in check, the images that you see either online or in your daily life can become obsessive and you are unable to get them out of your mind for extended periods of time.

Without a recognized medical diagnosis, there is scant medical information on this affliction. There have been several researchers in recent years that have taken up the scientific call to look into what may be causing trypophobia to occur. Two British scientists, Arnold Wilkins and Geoff Cole, are hoping to change the mind of medical professionals about trypophobia as a mental disorder.

In 2009, Wilkins introduced the idea of trypophobia to his psychology students during one of his classes. He did an experiment in which he put two separate images on a screen at the same time—one of a wooded landscape and the other of a lotus flower patterned with small holes on its surface. He asked the students to comment on the images with most apathetic to the generic photographs. One student, however, said she was actually disgusted to the point of being physically ill from the lotus-flower image. Wilkins, who is an expert on the subject of visual stress, shared his findings with his colleague, Geoff Cole, who both embarked on their own scientific investigation of the visual constructs behind the phobia of hole patterns and bumpy surfaces. This resulted in a 2013 article entitled, “Fear of Holes." In this article, Wilkins and Cole share that during the research process, one of their lab assistants exhibited disgust at one of the images used in the experiment of a blue octopus. This happens to be a poisonous variety of the species, especially to humans.

They contended that other poisonous species such as certain spiders, snakes, snails, fish, and amphibians all have in common that they appear to have hole patterns or bumps in common as part of their aesthetic makeup. Wilkins and Cole came to the scientific conclusion that people who suffer from trypophobia carry a heightened instinct to these poisonous creatures; therefore, their brain is signaling them to have an adverse reaction to these type of patterns whenever they come in contact with them.

Wilkins and Cole also warn that it is probably not accurate to say that trypophobia is, in fact, an actual phobia. What is more than likely is instead a rare group of people who are more intuitive when it comes to recognizing the evolutionary element in humans that can sense dangerous species and elicit a natural danger-response to them as opposed to the rest of us that have lost that ability over thousands of years. Are you that rare human being?

If you are someone who has experienced this or know of someone how had, let us know about your experience and show this article to your friends and family!