Ever gag at looking at some swiss cheese?
What about honeycombs?
Maybe some coral polyps?
If you answered yes to any of the previous questions, and or scratched, shuttered, and gagged subsequently, then you might have Trypophobia. Trypophobia is just one of a list countless phobias (at least it hopes to be) including the fear of the color yellow, of beards, and even the fear of the pope. Who’s afraid of the pope? For God’s sake (see what I did there) he drops gospel bombs on twitter all the time. But that’s besides the point. In short, Trypophobia’s the intense or irrational fear of clusters of small holes or bumps. Why would someone be afraid of this, you ask? How bad could it be? It only causes nausea, excessive sweating, high heart rates, extreme discomfort, and shortness of breath. Hell if I know, I mean, I had to call my friend to give me a topic because I’m not creative enough
Anyways the fascination of trypophobia has grown in recent years. Trypophobes were always seen as essentially some weird “cult” of people with a weird aversion to hole-y things on the internet, but were never recognized as having a true phobia even though approximately 15% of people feel irked by holes to some degree. That is until scientists Arnold Wilkins and Geoff Cole of the University of Essex’s decided to put this to this “phobia” to the test. The reports all shared something in common: the most offending images had small, but highly contrasting details. However, they’re still unsure if this is a phobia or merely a lingering evolutionary trait lying in our subconscious’ telling us to stray away venomous things, as their patterns are similar to trypophobia characteristics. Take the lotus pod for example, the first image of this post. It has a relatively light surface but dark, deep holes.
This brings up the question, how do fears and phobias develop? Phobias having the ability to bring us down into these dark worlds with anxiety at every corner, but how? We all have them. There’s no fear gene linked to it, the most we’ve come up with was they’re linked to trauma and the amygdala. To be honest, I become a little Nervous Nellie when it comes to insects if you know what I’m saying. Osmosis has great video briefly covering phobias and how they can detract the lives that phobias inhabit.
BORING, sorry but I know this could cheer you up:
What a guy, always making me smile. Just goes to show even the old now how to party.
An Unplanned Omelet: Unsystematic, Undirected, Unmethodical Thoughts 