14 DAY TRIAL // We hear of weird phobias every day, and the one I'm going to talk about in this article comes to contradict my theory that everybody loves bubbles, especially those you blow out of a plastic tube.
It may sound weird, but there are people who are so terrified of bubbles that they make them physically ill. That's the case of Grace Kirkby, a university student from Exeter, who suffers from trypophobia, the fear of bubbles or clusters of small holes.
The 19-year-old student says the sight of soap bubbles gives her cold chills and makes her panic, so she is often unable to participate in household activities, like washing the dishes or the car, because of her phobia.
Daily tasks like brushing her teeth and washing my hair are extremely difficult, and she runs out of the room if bubbles appear when she is cooking. Moreover, she cannot drink fizzy drinks or frothy coffee, as she has anxiety attacks if she sees the holes. When she does see them, Grace's skin becomes extremely itchy.
“It sounds so silly but bubbles and all small holes make my skin crawl. I would run away screaming all the time if I could,” Grace said, according to Metro.
The girl says she doesn't know where her phobia of bubbles comes from, but she has had it for as long as she can remember, and now she decided to study psychology at university to try to understand her condition.
University experts have conducted a research to determine why some people are scared of soap bubbles or aerated chocolate. They found out that the fear is actually logical and is based on an evolutionary fear of poisonous animals.
“There may be an ancient part of the brain telling people they are looking at a poisonous animal,” Dr. Geoff Cole, from the University of Essex, said.
Experts explain that for people who suffer from trypophobia, the sight of clusters of holes in various formations can cause intensely unpleasant reactions, such as migraines, panic attacks and increased heart rate.
“We think that everyone has trypophobic tendencies even though they may not be aware of it. We found that people who don't have the phobia still rate trypophobic images as less comfortable to look at than other images. It backs up the theory that we are set-up to be fearful of things which hurt us in our evolutionary past,” Dr. Cole added.