Well. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? While I didn’t intend for there to be such a long pause after my last post, as the saying goes, life happened.
And speaking of gaps….
Have you ever looked over at a cluster of small, irregularly shaped holes or circles, and recoiled in disgust? All my life, that’s been me. I never knew until fairly recently that this phenomenon is actually a thing. Like a real thing with a name!
Trypophobia:
“An aversion to the sight of irregular patterns or clusters of small holes or bumps.”
– Wikipedia
Yes, I know it’s weird!
No, I don’t know why I cringe when I see a poor, mild-mannered crepe on my plate. (Trypophobes, look away now, you’ve been warned.)
Or why the sight of small coffee-coloured bubbles on a plastic lid floating in the sink sends shivers down my spine:
Apparently trypophobia hasn’t been studied very much – and I don’t blame the scientific community, which has much bigger fish to fry.
According to the same Wikipedia article, there’s a hypothesis “that it is the result of a biological revulsion that associates trypophobic shapes with danger or disease, and may therefore have an evolutionary basis.”
I suppose that makes sense, so I’ll just keep reminding myself that the crepes are not out to attack me or make me sick, and get on with it.
Kathryn Presner 
2 replies on “Fear of Holes”
Holy cow, how strange is that… I never heard of this either! I wonder where it comes from. Any ideas? It seems that there are tons of very specific phobias out there!
My mother once told me that when I was a toddler I used to scream near the end of my bath as the water started to drain… apparently I was terrified of going down the drain with the water! You’d think that would set off a life-long fear of drain-sized holes, but it didn’t!
I never knew this was a thing until my girlfriend (who has a degree in Psychology) told me she suffers from this. At first, I thought it was all in her head (and I guess I’m right in saying that) but it really is real 🙂