The first time I remembered, I thought I was dying. Since then I’ve realised: this is a memory of How did I forget the worst thing that’s ever happened to me? And how do I try and put it right? And all because of a glimpse of a face I hadn’t seen in years. I couldn’t breathe – something was crushing my chest – all I could see was darkness. If ever the image is in front me for more than just a split second, or if I do the stupid thing of trying to “power through” looking at it, the feeling intensifies so quickly.How did I forget the worst thing that’s ever happened to me? And how do I try and put it right? The first time I remembered, I thought I was dying. Someone said their skull tingles – I feel that too! When I’m going about my day, or scrolling through the internet and something pops up out of no where, it catches me so off guard I’ve gagged, or thrown my phone.
I feel like I want to turn myself inside out and hold my skin close like a protective hoodie. It takes days to wash away and try to remove the bone scratching willies caused by a trigger image.
A few years ago, when it seemed that the first batch of these photoshopped images were ciruclating of that particular plant (that haunts my dreams!), I discovered that there is a word to describe how I feel, and that trypophobia is a real thing, and that I’m not alone. News > Latest Research News > Fear of Holes May Stem From Evolutionary Survival Responseįor as long as I can remember, I’ve always had the repulsed, itchy, nauseated feeling when triggered by an image or something in the real world. They believe these experiments will shed light on just how ingrained trypophobic tendencies might be. In studies currently under way, Cole and Wilkins are exploring whether manipulating the spectral characteristics of images of everyday objects, like watches, leads people to prefer one object over another. “We found that people who don’t have the phobia still rate trypophobic images as less comfortable to look at than other images.” “We think that everyone has trypophobic tendencies even though they may not be aware of it,” says Cole. In light of this, the researchers speculate that trypophobia may have an evolutionary basis - clusters of holes may be aversive because they happen to share a visual feature with animals that humans have learned to avoid as a matter of survival. He and Wilkins analyzed images of various poisonous animals - including the blue-ringed octopus, deathstalker scorpion, king cobra snake, and other poisonous snakes and spiders - and found that they, too, tended to have relatively high contrast at midrange spatial frequencies. The animal in question, the blue-ringed octopus, is one of the most poisonous animals in the world, which led Cole to a “bit of a Eureka moment.” Why might this unique visual feature lead to such aversive reactions? One trypophobia sufferer provided Cole with a clue: He had seen an animal that caused him to experience a trypophobic reaction. After standardizing various features of the images, the researchers found that the trypophobic objects had relatively high contrast energy at midrange spatial frequencies in comparison to the control images. They compared 76 images of trypophobic objects (obtained from a trypophobia website) with 76 control images of holes not associated with trypophobia. Despite this, there has been little scientific investigation of the phenomenon, leading Cole to refer to trypophobia as “the most common phobia you have never heard of.”Ĭole and Wilkins, both vision scientists, wondered whether there might be a specific visual feature common to trypophobic objects. Trypophobia is widely documented by sufferers on the Internet and, in one study, Cole and Wilkins found that about 16% of participants reported trypophobic reactions. “These findings suggest that there may be an ancient evolutionary part of the brain telling people that they are looking at a poisonous animal,” says Cole. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. New research from psychological scientists Geoff Cole and Arnold Wilkins of the University of Essex suggests that trypophobia may occur as a result of a specific visual feature also found among various poisonous animals. For trypophobes, the sight of clusters of holes in various formations can cause intensely unpleasant visceral reactions. What do lotus flowers, soap bubbles, and aerated chocolate have in common? They may seem innocuous, even pleasant, but each of these items is a trigger for people who report suffering from trypophobia, or the fear of holes.