what are we afraid of
Scientists argue that the feeling of fear is useful, as it can activate the instinct of self-preservation and save a person’s life. General psychologist Roman Struchaev noted that it is a natural and neurotic fear. First, it arises from a real threat that a person can defeat or escape and get rid of the feeling of fear. Neurotic fear arises from a person’s thoughts and worries when there is no real danger, but there are only assumptions about danger in the future. The expert emphasized that phobia is an obsessive fear that does not go away anyway.
The term “trypophobia” is a combination of the Greek words translated “hole, drill” and “fear” and was introduced in 2005. In 2015, a paper was published by Professors Arnold Wilkins and Jeff Cole detailing the results of a survey of people suffering from adverse reactions to the sight of small clusters of objects placed close together. In particular, they complained of feelings of discomfort, fear, or anxiety.
The researchers also studied the comments of users of one of the thematic Internet communities and identified three groups of symptoms typical of tryphophobes: cognitive (disgust, disgust, anxiety), skin (itching, dryness) and physiological (nausea, tremors, breathing difficulties).
While trypophobia is not on the official list of diseases, many people experience fear when interacting with or watching live images of objects with holes or holes. However, psychologist Struchaev believes that in some cases, patients replace concepts.
“A phobia is a more or less controlled way of coping with emotional stress. There may be both fear and any other emotion behind it, even sexual arousal that doesn’t find ejaculation. In my practice, I often ask patients “How are you feeling?”, “How are you afraid?” I ask. And most of the time it turns out to be disgust, not fear.”
“Fears look weird and pretentious”
Candidate of psychological sciences Larisa Ovcharenko, associate professor at Moscow City Pedagogical University, says phobic experiences are illogical. In the case of trypophobia, the fear may not be directly related to holes, holes, or specific patterns.
“Scientist Carl Gustav Jung spoke of the collective unconscious, that such fears are the result of an old life experience that we adopt through the upbringing system and various attitudes. People may experience fear of the unknown about what’s going on in holes in the ground or anywhere else. No one is investigating what exactly happens in such holes, it is unknown, ”says the expert.
Roman Struchaev adds that there are several approaches to justifying phobias, including anthropological ones. He recalled the existence of studies in which scientists compared injuries on the human body with holes in objects, and noted that a possible root of trypophobia is an unwillingness to inflict bodily harm, as, for example, with boils caused by bubonic plague. – this can result in an evolutionary fear of holes or wounds in a mold.
At the same time, understanding phobias is often extremely difficult, sometimes impossible.
“Rational explanations for fears do not exist in principle. Moreover, sometimes they seem strange, pretentious and incomprehensible,” emphasizes psychiatrist, psychotherapist, Alexander Fedorovich of the highest category.
The exception is a small group called fixed phobias that develop as a result of some traumatic event. For example, a person may suffer from arachnophobia after being bitten by a spider, and a fear of dogs arises after the traveler is attacked by a flock. According to the expert, trypophobia is caused by a deep relationship that provokes certain emotions in a person. It is difficult to interpret for both the person himself and the expert experts.
The doctor explained: it is impossible to be born with any phobia, it arises in the process of human development. At birth, he has only genetically determined reactions of the nervous and endocrine systems. Everything else is fixed in terms of the formation of emotions, not events.
“For example, they read scary stories to a child, do not pay attention to the fact that the intensity of fear greatly exceeds the content of the material, the child’s body begins to react and forms at that moment incomprehensible and completely inaccessible associations. analysis,” said Fedorovich.
What do tripophobes feel?
Larisa Ovcharenko noted that people may react differently to certain stimuli, depending on which system of perception (auditory, visual or kinesthetic). Sometimes it is enough for a person to see a picture depicting honeycombs or animal nests, some face negative manifestations when encountering an unpleasant object in nature or in the city, and someone just needs to hear the trigger word.
The psychologist explained the negative reaction of some trypophobes to egg-bearing insects or already born larvae by the fact that a person imagines skin contact with a living creature, that is, automatically assumes interaction with it: he feels an insect crawling on him. or bite. This causes a widespread skin itching and feeling of hostility that a person wants to get rid of, as if shaking himself.
But there are other symptoms as well.
“Often these are reactions from the autonomic nervous system: increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, bouts of nausea, dizziness, increased salivation and sweating.
Avoidance behavior is also formed, I want to leave, there is a desire to escape from the irritant, to wash away unpleasant sensations, panic attacks, a feeling of derealization and other manifestations, up to loss of consciousness, ”warned Ovcharenko.
Psychiatrist Fedorovich added that the main reactions are provoked by the nervous and endocrine systems of a person, but for each patient the symptoms of fear are unique: for some it is an increase in heart rate, tremors and stiffness in the limbs, and for some it is a phobia, the whole that can even cause hallucinations. causes an association flow.
how to deal with fear
Fedorovich calls fixed fears therapeutically appropriate, specialists have techniques for working with them: “This type of fear is real. And in the case of trypophobia, the fear is unrealistic – a person does not understand what is in these honeycombs or holes, with what he associates them. As a rule, such fear involves the search for another disease, touches on more complex processes, and the specialist solves this problem.
The specialist associates the development of such a phobia with certain features of the patient’s thinking, in particular, the presence of a schizotypal disorder or hallucinatory experiences. But the doctor believes that it is not possible to accurately determine the range of any disease in which trypophobia occurs.
The psychoanalyst helps to overcome fears that do not belong to the fixed group and are difficult to ground because of their specificity: through various stimuli they enter the patient’s deep associations and try to isolate the true cause of their experience. But often, “fancy” phobias are not an isolated reaction in themselves, they become part of deeper and more severe conditions.
Larisa Ovcharenko agrees that a phobia can be an independent diagnosis: “Treatment depends on whether there is comorbidity (the presence of two or more diseases or mental disorders in one patient), whether the phobia is of the nature of depression or panic personality disorder. ” The psychologist admitted that the patient can fully recover and get rid of his fear, for this he will need to work with a psychotherapist, in severe cases, pharmacological support is needed.