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DragonKami

Trypohobia

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Though it sound pretty dumb, it is a real phobia. Basically the fear of, um small holes? I don't know for me it makes my crawl, I don't run away or cry like most people but I do feel highly disgusted by it. I WAS going to cure myself by being exposed to it constantly for a month. But my brother told me it was not a good idea and I should stop looking at pictures of it. I haven't seen any thing like it in a few weeks or so until this morning when I was making a pancake. So If you want to see what I mean go Google Trypophobia and tell me what you feel about it. That's all! smile.gif

 

 

(They say getting other people's opinions on it helps, So thanks in advance! biggrin.gif )

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This. This is me. Clusters of holes give me the heebie jeebies.

 

I think I first discovered this when I was younger when I stabbed some modelling clay with a pack of toothpicks, and the resulting holes made me highly uncomfortable. Kind of reminds me of wasp nests (I was also afraid of the wasp nests on Animal Crossing because of the hole pattern, lol).

 

 

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Heh yea, I made a pancake a few minutes ago and it had a bunch of deep holes in it. When I was five I used to call it Crigaly, a made up word, I tried to destroy whatever had the hole patterns (Kinda still do.. rolleyes.gif ) But yea, it's kinda annoying sometimes.

 

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Unpopular opinion, but...

I think while it's a genuine phobia, a lot of people are probably jumping on the bandwagon recently as there are a lot of very creepy photoshopped images when you google 'trypophobia'. If you see people with massive pits in their skin, it's going to look odd/unnatural, regardless of whether or not you have a phobia. I can guarantee that a lot of the people that have this supposed blanket fear of all holes won't have the same reaction to sponges or aerated chocolate bars, for example.

I'm not targeting this at anyone, though, and I'm not trying to sound insulting to people who have it, but I dislike people self diagnosing themselves with phobias when they are exposed to an image intended to be shocking.

 

To clarify; I'm not trying to sound rude to the people who are genuinely affected by this, and this is a bit of a rant about how people trivialise phobias because it's the trendy thing to do.

over and out.

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I am only mildly creeped out and I get shudders if I see multiple holes in things. I've always gotten a sinking feeling when I am around deep holes too. I think that might just be instinct.

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Unpopular opinion, but...

I think while it's a genuine phobia, a lot of people are probably jumping on the bandwagon recently as there are a lot of very creepy photoshopped images when you google 'trypophobia'. If you see people with massive pits in their skin, it's going to look odd/unnatural, regardless of whether or not you have a phobia. I can guarantee that a lot of the people that have this supposed blanket fear of all holes won't have the same reaction to sponges or aerated chocolate bars, for example.

I'm not targeting this at anyone, though, and I'm not trying to sound insulting to people who have it, but I dislike people self diagnosing themselves with phobias when they are exposed to an image intended to be shocking.

 

To clarify; I'm not trying to sound rude to the people who are genuinely affected by this, and this is a bit of a rant about how people trivialise phobias because it's the trendy thing to do.

over and out.

I agree with this, though I can't say I've ever been clinically diagnosed with trypophobia - however, I once had a full on panic attack in class when peers of mine thought it would be funny to text me images of dried lotus pods. Ever since I was little, clusters of holes - or really anything that had been seemingly gouged out, not necessarily little circular holes, but some of the gouge-y markings in the wooden tables my parents used to have - would make me tense up and feel very ill, to the point where I physically couldn't be near them because my heart was pounding and my skin was crawling and just...no no no no no. Not fun. And after I told a few people that I had trypophobia (again, I'm tentative to say that I "have" a phobia when I've not been diagnosed but it's the quickest way to explain to people that I reallly don't want to be shown clusters of holes), some of my friends googled it and looked at some of those pictures you were talking about, and one of them said "ew, I think I have trypophobia now!" and I was just like... lol no

 

Also speaking of aerated chocolate bars, I dread walking down the grocery store aisle where they keep the "special" British chocolates because they always have a bunch of Aero chocolate bars. It's terrifying like why does that chocolate need to exist, who wants to eat a bunch of little holes aahhh

 

omggg and wasp's nests and honeycombs and any food with lots of air bubbles... like the thought of touching that?? noooo lmao i have to leave this thread for a bit now D:

Edited by glamoursea2

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Trust me, for me it's not just the photo shopped pictures of people have lotus pod holes on thier skin that makes me uncomfortable. It all went back when I was four, but I can't really give the story at THIS exact moment because I'm my Wii U but i'll get it here. Basically I've been experiencing it for years but I never knew the name for it, I even made my own word for it at the time. But, yea..

 

(Also for me if I see a piece of chocolate with a bunch of holes in it, I want to crush it, Chew and spit it out, or just melt it. I feel the need to destroy the object which is why rocks and other hard things, I just turn away and try calm myself down.)

Edited by DragonKami

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I haven't diagnosed myself with trypophobia but I really can't stand things with clustered holes.

It started when I was younger and watching a wildlife documentary on these toads that keep their babies in holes on it's back. I cried and wouldn't watch Animal planet for a while after that.

But anything with clustered holes still makes me panic. I once had a pretty bad patch of blackheads and had a panic attack from looking at them. I still feel the need to get rid of any unnatural holes in my body

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I WAS going to cure myself by being exposed to it constantly for a month. But my brother told me it was not a good idea and I should stop looking at pictures of it.

Just to note, this is exposure therapy and it can and does work.

 

~~

 

I don't doubt it can be a phobia as there are any number of things of which to be phobic. However, I do not think many claims are sincere; I think many people say they are phobic when in fact it's just unnerving or gross. Being unnerved/grossed out is not the same as being phobic, and it hurts those who truly are phobic.

 

I get unnerved by wasp/hornet nest holes, but that is almost certainly because of an ingrained and deep-seated fear of the wasps/hornets themselves - a "what if they're still in there, dormant, waiting to attack me?!" situation. I think the only holes I over which I experience some anxiety/fear is holes in people, like from needles or stings, because that it fully unnatural and unnatural things are frightening for me in many cases.

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Unpopular opinion, but...

I think while it's a genuine phobia, a lot of people are probably jumping on the bandwagon recently as there are a lot of very creepy photoshopped images when you google 'trypophobia'. If you see people with massive pits in their skin, it's going to look odd/unnatural, regardless of whether or not you have a phobia. I can guarantee that a lot of the people that have this supposed blanket fear of all holes won't have the same reaction to sponges or aerated chocolate bars, for example.

I'm not targeting this at anyone, though, and I'm not trying to sound insulting to people who have it, but I dislike people self diagnosing themselves with phobias when they are exposed to an image intended to be shocking.

 

To clarify; I'm not trying to sound rude to the people who are genuinely affected by this, and this is a bit of a rant about how people trivialise phobias because it's the trendy thing to do.

over and out.

Of course anyone would be disgusted by a bunch of holes in someone's flesh. I've seen those edited images and no, those are not a way to test for trypophobia. Those images are made with shock value and are intended to freak out anyone and everyone. Being grossed out is not at all the same as having a phobia.

 

I have trypophobia. It goes way beyond photoshopped photos of hole-filled skin. I remember back in I think 4th grade, at school I was outside with a friend and it was in spring, when the ground was just starting to thaw from being frozen. There with little "thaw pockets" in the dirt, basically small bunches of holes in thawed parts of the ground. I FREAKED out. I was close to tears as I grabbed a stick to try to destroy the holes. I told my friend she had to help and she agreed very slowly, giving me an "um what is wrong with you" look. That was long before I knew about 'trypophobia' or even that it wasn't normal to have that fear.

 

Honeycomb, lotus pods, aerated chocolate... all things that genuinly scare me.

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Not at all. Even those photoshopped pictures don't scare me.

Guess I'm one of the weird ones but nothing I can clearly see scares me.

Edited by kitsune93

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I'm in a floral management class. Those trypophobia pictures used to scare me when I was younger, but I thought I got over it. Until I started using leather leaf ferns in my floral designs... they grow spores. I took one look at a leather leaf fern covered in spores and I threw up. I couldn't even look at them.

 

 

Picture of the Spores [Do not view if you have trypophobia.]

 

 

I don't know if this means I'm phobic, but I can't go near them or handle them. (You're not supposed to use the ones with spores in your designs anyway). But I can look at a picture.

I also have problems with aerated chocolate.

 

I don't have problems with honeycombs and stuff like that.

 

 

 

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I have this.. Clustered holes make me itchy. Even thinking of them makes me extremely uncomfortable. It depends on the thing though, honeycomb doesn't affect me at all, but the Surinam toad or lotus pads freak me out.

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Oh yeah! I have this too, most acutely with honeycombs and wasp nests. Structured things like that makes my skin crawl the most. My parent and sister don't believe me though, they say I'm just psyching myself out... So I dunno maybe I don't have it. I took a test online though, if that means anything xd.png

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I haven't diagnosed myself with trypophobia but I really can't stand things with clustered holes.

It started when I was younger and watching a wildlife documentary on these toads that keep their babies in holes on it's back. I cried and wouldn't watch Animal planet for a while after that.

But anything with clustered holes still makes me panic. I once had a pretty bad patch of blackheads and had a panic attack from looking at them. I still feel the need to get rid of any unnatural holes in my body

THOSE FROGS ARE MY WORST NIGHTMARE

 

You also reminded me of how much I dislike blackheads or when people have lots of large pores on their face. The first time I ever noticed blackheads on myself, I frantically tried to get rid of them by squeezing and washing and over-exfoliating. My skin was not happy with me. Nowadays when I get them, I try to ignore them or put makeup over them.

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Don't have it; if anything, I am more likely to be fascinated by the pattern (things which are shopped to look like a disease will still look like disease, but while they're not pretty they don't really bother me, either). Furthermore, with many of the things mentioned here, it wouldn't even occur to me that they could induce tryphophobia since they don't even resemble holes to me. (Fern spore beds? Aerated chocolate? blink.gif )

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Not a phobia, but yes, grossed out by some, especially really small ones.

Ripped the top off a small wart on my hand when I was much younger and it made me feel ill to look at the spongy looking remains, even though I couldn't feel it at all.

I have this gorgeous picture of some natural hot springs set as my screensaver and the other day I noticed there were 'holes' in it. I think I will have to change pictures because now all I can see are the holes, and it grosses me out.

http://api.ning.com/files/DtcI2O2Ry7B07BNu...1082134102.jpeg

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Trypophobia is just another situation of people using the word "phobia" as a synonym for "uncomfortable, grossed out, revulsion, disgust, dislike, panic" and so on. I'm sure looking at footage of medical maggots crawling around inside a living person's gaping wound would make people feel the same thing, but it doesn't necessarily mean they have a phobia of maggots.

 

Certain things cause very primitive, very real emotional reactions for us, probably a result of the evolutionary struggle for survival and the success of instinctual fear. I find the reasons of 'why' a lot more interesting than the prospect of Trypophobia itself (which could very well exist in a very small number of people). Maybe it's because we're programmed to fear anything that looks like a disease, and clustered holes remind our brains of infected flesh, rashes, or pox. Maybe lots of holes remind us of rotted food, like fruit or meat, and we instinctually revile it in turn. Perhaps it's a reaction to the nests of aggressive insects, which we may have developed a fear of back when we were all barefoot in the wilds.

 

What's cool is that a lot of makeup and special effects in horror movies subtly (or not) add this revulsion to holes to their work. Rotting zombie flesh, creatures with tons of eyes, pock-marked skin. It's neat that we can identify a lot of things that scare many people, but we don't always know why. Trypophobia could be something as basic as an instinctual fear of rats, spiders, snakes, deep water, heights, deformity, the color red, so on.

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Of course anyone would be disgusted by a bunch of holes in someone's flesh. I've seen those edited images and no, those are not a way to test for trypophobia. Those images are made with shock value and are intended to freak out anyone and everyone.

Yes, this is what I was trying to get at. Because googling the word results in the 'gross' pictures coming up, people see them and go "AHA, I got really grossed out so I must have it".

I really want to be 100% clear that I wasn't trying to offend you, or anyone else who finds it genuinely distressing. The experience that you described later in your post shows how much phobias can affect people's lives, which is exactly why I dislike trivialisation of them so much, which is the point I was trying to make. (although I'm terrible at wording things, so I apologize if I came across any other way!)

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Trypophobia is just another situation of people using the word "phobia" as a synonym for "uncomfortable, grossed out, revulsion, disgust, dislike, panic" and so on. I'm sure looking at footage of medical maggots crawling around inside a living person's gaping wound would make people feel the same thing, but it doesn't necessarily mean they have a phobia of maggots.

 

Certain things cause very primitive, very real emotional reactions for us, probably a result of the evolutionary struggle for survival and the success of instinctual fear. I find the reasons of 'why' a lot more interesting than the prospect of Trypophobia itself (which could very well exist in a very small number of people). Maybe it's because we're programmed to fear anything that looks like a disease, and clustered holes remind our brains of infected flesh, rashes, or pox. Maybe lots of holes remind us of rotted food, like fruit or meat, and we instinctually revile it in turn. Perhaps it's a reaction to the nests of aggressive insects, which we may have developed a fear of back when we were all barefoot in the wilds.

 

What's cool is that a lot of makeup and special effects in horror movies subtly (or not) add this revulsion to holes to their work. Rotting zombie flesh, creatures with tons of eyes, pock-marked skin. It's neat that we can identify a lot of things that scare many people, but we don't always know why. Trypophobia could be something as basic as an instinctual fear of rats, spiders, snakes, deep water, heights, deformity, the color red, so on.

This is why I don't think I have trypophobia. I'm just extremely grossed out by them.

 

I know this because I have a real phobia that effects my life pretty negatively. I have an extreme phobia of submerged man-made objects. It seems so stupid to me because they can't do anything to me. I don't know if it's because I think I may get trapped underneath them or something... but I can't get into water by myself. I knew there was something wrong when I was in a perfectly clear swimming pool and the pole that held the flags up fell into the water and I had a severe panic attack. This is a really hard phobia for me because my whole family are lake rats and there's nothing I love more than Lake Cumberland in Kentucky... but I can't get in the water by myself. And it's embarrassing. I'm talking about severe panic and sobbing. It's not okay.

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Yes, clusters of holes on living things are pretty much the worst. I'm not as trypophobic as some people, however, as evidenced by the fact that just yesterday my avatar was literally a gif of Swiss cheese until I started reading the Triggers thread and there was someone with severe trypophobia. The More You Know... ninja.gif

Edited by wingedcat

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While my theory may not always be the case, it could be so for some; I believe that Trypophobia can relate itself to Xenophobia, known as the 'fear of the unknown', in the idea that people do not fear a specific hole itself, but rather fear what mysterious thing may linger inside of the hole. This sense of mystery can blend with curiosity and risk, which is a major portion of the media form of "horror", which is effective in books and movies. The concept can, once again, lead up to holes.

 

For example, the hole within of thin pipe may be a safe-haven for a small toad that can fit inside to avoid being eaten by a roaming snake. When someone looks at the hole in the pipe, they will not know that there is a toad inside instead of a rat that can bite them. For all we know, there is the same possibility of a toad or a rat being inside the pipe, as with anything else that can fit inside. This factor of possibility and the unknown ultimately prevents us from viewing this pipe as safe to look or poke into. Without knowing can even lead into the value of risk-assessment as we attempt to determine the risks related to the unknown, which we may end up predicting inaccurately or altering in a quick over-exaggeration.

 

As far as I know, Trypophobia can lend itself to multiple other fears. Yet, then again, it may not. The first step in overcoming this would be to determine what is the single, most prominent part of a hole that one fears. Is it...

The shape of the hole?

What can be inside of the hole?

The location of the hole?

Once that is determined, you can rest assured that you have narrowed your options to only the most beneficial ones. Of course you can take the easiest route which is to simply ignore the problem and focus on other tasks at hand, but the prime option would be to confront the issue. If a certain object interferes with your daily activities, it should be taken care of or inspected and handled safely and properly. All in all, it mostly relies on your course of action.

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I have it and my mom also have(or had) it. She said she feels uncomfortable even looking at strawberries or raw noodles. She said she was cured when her eyesight gotten bad.

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I hadn't heard of it, or knew it was a condition until now. I suppose if you really want to be comfortable with you, you would need to expose it to yourself as often as possible, until you're okay with it. Only you can know if you're ready to do that though, but good luck with it whichever way you decide to go with it smile.gif

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