Your weird may be my woe: on trypophobia

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I was so excited about the mushrooms. I love mushrooms and now, at last, here they were, growing in the damp, shaded part of the garden.

This, by the way, is part of the great excitement: I already live in a place that is conducive to mushroom propagation. So my effort was zero, and my reward, the bounty of mushrooms.

They are growing from a kit. More precisely, they are growing from what appears to be a sealed paint bucket with a hole in the side. It was a gift from a friend who knows how much I like gardening experiments (not so much successful gardening) and mushrooms. Win-win.

I took a very serious, well-nigh-on scientific picture of the shrooms, now cascading down the side of the bucket and sent it to my friend.

“Eeew,” she responded.

“Eeew?” But why? But how? She had, after all, got one for herself too.

“I think I have that thing,” she says, “I can’t look at clusters of things. It’s blood-crawling.”

“Trypophobia?” I volunteered.

“Probably,” she said, deflatedly.

Trypophobia is associated with patterns of holes or bumps. Things like honeycombs, spotted animals, shower heads, air pockets in baked goods and some skin conditions can trigger the trypophobic.

These mushrooms are neither holey nor bumpy, but since trypophobia may include other kinds of cluster patterns, I’ll go with that.

And wait. Wait, wait, wait. To be clear, my friend does not have a fear of mushrooms in general – mycophobia – which apparently is quite common.

I was quick on the draw with my trypophobia suggestion because I’d heard this story about a girl whom we’ll call Beatrice. When she was about nine or ten, Beatrice was watching TV when she was suddenly assailed by images of spores and bacteria, blown up to screen-size, but with microscopic clarity. She ran screaming to the corner of the room, where she hid until her parents found her still screaming and weeping half an hour later.

They did what parents do when something harmless scares their child. They tried sitting with her while she looked at the images. No help.

They asked her if it was related to something else – did it remind her of something that was actually harmful? No.

They showed her different but similar pictures. Of fruit (more screaming). Of a tiger (no screaming). Of a leopard (screaming). Of the inside of a pawpaw (hysteria). Of a clown (now I’m the one screaming, sorry, different story).

This was bigger than them. They took her to the doctor.

Beatrice got a swift diagnosis, but no help.

Trypophobia is considered a harmless fear. It is not in the DSM-5. But if it were, researchers believe it would fall under the section on specific phobias (and so hopefully be seriously treated, like the listed ones) and not something else, like obsessive-compulsive disorder. Some work suggests it’s more revulsion than fear.

Even when something gets written up as a “harmless fear” it can become quite serious if it begins to affect our behaviour.

In the case of trypophobia, the trigger might come in the form of a wallpaper pattern. Fear of running into this situation can cause someone like Beatrice to stop going to particular restaurants or other places where the décor is unknown to her.

I know it sounds almost absurd. I can hear it

“You won’t go out with me because you’re afraid of wallpaper? If you don’t like me, just say so.”

Look at how quickly we go from harmless to life-altering.

Most people understand the fear of spiders. Or heights. Or flying, drowning, suffocation – all the big ones.

But how to explain seemingly trifling fears?

Trypophobia may have survival at its core. One popular theory suggests it’s an evolutionary response that picks up on the threat of disease or danger. Some infectious diseases are characterised by skin markings – spots or bumps.

If your instinct is to flee from such a sight, that makes sense. Some wonderfully lethal animals, like king cobras, also have the kind of patterns that trigger trypophobia. Not so silly now, huh?

It’s so easy for us to trivialise what we see as an idiosyncrasy, a quirk, a nonsense really, in people we know (we may or may not know them well). Because what we don’t know is how bad this one thing can become. `

Years ago I almost crashed my car around the Savannah because some clown had decided to put an actual clown on the QRC roundabout as part of a toy-store advertisement. I’m just saying.

Remember to talk to your doctor or therapist if you want to know more about what you read here. In many cases, there’s no single solution or diagnosis to a mental health concern. Many people suffer from more than one condition.

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"Your weird may be my woe: on trypophobia"

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