Hi, I'm Krista and I have trypophobia. It is a fear of clusters of small holes, circles, or bumps (trust me, it's not worth a Google) and I've suffered from it for as long as I can remember.
So, what happens when I see holes? A whole bunch of bad things. My skin starts to crawl, my stomach turns, I get shortness of breath, and even physically itchy. IT. IS. HORRIBLE.
I thought I was the only one, but then one day in high school my best friend and I saw an image of small holes and we both lost it. Something we could only explain as ~DEATH HOLES~.
And several years later, I came across this BuzzFeed post – notice the appropriate "ew" and "wtf" badges.
It was then that I realized my friend and I were not alone. It is a real, terrifying thing, it has an actual name, and lots of people have this same irrational fear.
But one thing I have always wondered is: WHY?
After doing a lot of research – and dodging the thousands of inconsiderate hole pics people put in their articles – here's what I found:
Trypophobia is a relatively new phenomenon that started getting a lot of attention on social media after a lotus seed was photoshopped into someone's skin. Currently, researchers aren't convinced it's an actual phobia (I strongly disagree). It also isn't recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). But – for real sufferers like me – it's real as hell.