Featured Fear: Trypophobia (fear of holes)

This past year or so, a very strange myth has been circulating around the internet. The basic premise of the story is that there's a rare disease which causes your face to calcify and rot in such a way (or any other part of your body) that hardened holes form all over the affected area. And if I were both naive and unaware of photoshop as well as the basic shape of a lotus flower, I might even have believed it.

In a way, I can kind of understand the fear that this concept stems from. I mean, who didn't at some point in their childhood find themselves paranoid to take a shower, because they'd somehow gotten it into their heads that they were going to get sucked down the drain? It goes to reason that you could be just as afraid of a hole in a honeycomb, a hole in a well, a hole in a pair of socks, a hole in a doughnut, a book called Holes...if you indulged in the drain fear past a certain age.

Trypophobia can even go beyond just holes, and is often connected with a fear of things grouped together. Large numbers of symmetrical shapes...bug's eggs, fly's eyes, sunflower florets...the list goes on. Which leads me to believe Trypophobia may just also be a reflection of someone's OCD getting the better of them in a much more sinister manner. Sometimes I wonder if Lewis Carroll had mild trypohobia...