Trypo- What?

Have you ever looked at a series of holes and felt chills down your spine? Does the look of things clustered together bother you so much that you cringe and feel as though your skin is crawling? Are you bothered just reading this? There’s a name for that, it’s called Trypophobia, and it is literally the “fear of holes.” The site of holes and various naturally occurring things in nature can cause fear and anxiety in a trypophobe. SImply seeing images can cause the same reactions.

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I had seen a picture of a lotus flower pod once and I have never been so disgusted by anything, so I looked up “Fear of holes” and Trypohpobia was exactly what I found. I have never heard of it a day in my life, but I asked a few people what they thought of it and got the same reactions. It was never a huge concern of the scientific world, but recently some scientist have been looking into the matter and more research can be found documented on the web as the phobia becomes more known.

Although many have never heard it, there are plenty of people who suffer from this phobia. A study conducted by a psychological scientist named Geoff Cole referred to Trypophobia as the most common phobia you’ve likely never heard of, and that sounds about right to me. There is no clear cut reason out there as to why people have such reactions to to holes, but in Cole’s case, he met a man who had reported having a reactions to a picture of a Blue-Ringed Octopus (a high venomous animal). In showing the man more pictures of venomous animals, it was found that he had the same reactions! Cole came to the conclusion that maybe our fear of holes is simply due to evolutionary adaption, in which we fear the animals who look as if they are dangerous and pose a threat. In that case, the phobia makes total sense as a result of humans simply expressing a natural reaction to things that could be dangerous. However, this explanation hasn’t been proven and there is still much research to be done to find a true answer.

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Sources:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/understanding-trypophobia-why-some-people-fear-holes/

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/fear-of-holes-may-stem-from-evolutionary-survival-response.html

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/09/04/218958362/the-inside-story-on-the-fear-of-holes

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