Sounds like bad fiction, but just look at the comments that almost 15,000 people leave on the website. Facebook to make sure triphobia is a reality. Tripophobes exist, and their lives run between episodes of intense disgust, fear and anxiety, which are manifested when they see bubbles in the coffee, when they are in front of the holes of a gruyere cheese or when they perceive the pattern of a sea sponge, for example. One social network user explains that the inside of the pineapples inspires fear, as does the curdled surface of strawberry seeds: “I just throw them away,” she says. Many others complain that this irrational aversion to holes and geometric groupings formed from empty spaces, this phobia of repetitive patterns, arises from contemplating what is supposed to be a coveted object of desire: the new one. iPhone specifically the 11 Pro model.
The detonator is in the three circular lenses at the back of the device, a set they interpret as a disturbing grouping. In Facebook group where those affected exchange information, there are those who regret the design of the new phone while some voice assures that it has no effect; “most man-made things don’t worry me. I get worse with natural ones,” says one user. Triphobia is not admitted as a disease by the American Psychiatric Association, nor is there a diagnostic guide in the American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – which is known as DSM-5 and that it is the reference publication to know if a mental illness is recognized as such. This is a little-studied experience, but whatever it is, structures formed by holes can even provoke anxiety attacks in some people. Why can’t they withstand these repetitive patterns?
From primitive mechanism to pure suggestion
The first investigations into triphobia were carried out by psychologists Arnold Wilkins and Geoff Cole, University of Essexin the United Kingdom. They coined the term, in 2005. Your latest studyin 2013 points out that this aversion could be a defence mechanism, an “unconscious reflex act”. The paper suggests that “there may be a primitive part of the brain that associates such images with a dangerous animal. That is, some people seem more predisposed to respond negatively to these very close geometric shapes because resemble the spots or markings shown by certain poisonous animals, such as some species of jellyfish, spiders and snakes, even certain varieties of mushrooms.
Along the same lines, researchers at the University of Kent, in the United Kingdom, discovered in 2017 that triphobia could be due to the exaggerated response caused, in some people, by parasites and infectious diseases. The studio, published in the magazine Cognition and Emotion, concluded that, rather than poisonous animals, phobia is born of that type of diseases that manifest themselves in round skin shapes, such as smallpox, rubella, and typhus. The illogical and absurd fear of seeing the seeds of a lotus flower, or the beehive of some bees, would be the result of a resource that evolution has favored to avoid a possible infectious disease.
A 2018 study led by Emory Stella Lourenco University psychologistwhich points out that aversion is produced by the fear of contagion, supports this theory. But there are other scientists who defend a possible obsession with contagion (what has happened with iPhone 11 when it is shared on social networks). To Carol Matthews, a psychiatrist specializing in anxiety disorders at the University of California, the case of triphobia is rather due to suggestion. In your opinion, if you ask us if an image makes us feel disgusted or itchy-something that happens in triphobia studies done with patients. we’re more likely to have those feelings than if they hadn’t told us anything.
So what is the most plausible hypothesis? Francisco Pérez, psychologist and director of SuperaPsychology, assures that “phobias are acquired by direct experience with the aversive stimulus; by transmission of information – someone tells us something about that stimulus – or by vicarious learning: someone has had some aversive experience with the stimulus and we have witnessed it”. For Perez, aversion to holes, in particular, is a fear that reflects a process of disease avoidance. The holes represent very similar shapes to organisms that transmit diseases or even manifestations of the disease itself,” he explains. We are faced with a phylogenetically relevant stimulus, in which the following are involved processes that reflect the transmission of sensitivity to disgust and pollution in general”.
Be that as it may, he who suffers from triphobia will feel discomfort and a visceral reaction, such as cold sweats, nausea, dizziness, itchy skin, anxiety, palpitations, and tingling in the extremities. If the fear persists and causes excessive anxiety that affects your day-to-day life, you will need help. “The treatment of choice is to expose oneself to the dreaded stimulus – preferably gradually – until anxiety levels drop on their own. So we will experience first-hand that the stimulus we fear is not really dangerous,” says Perez. He adds that, together with the “restructuring of irrational thoughts”, which can also be of help in these cases, the so-called physiological deactivation will be used. “Diaphragmatic breathing, progressive muscle relaxation or Schultz autogenic training (which helps to alleviate stress)” are ideal techniques to combat a phobia that remains a real mystery.