Ketchup Phobia Explained
And cured
Woman with rare phobia of popular condiment suffers panic attacks on sight: ‘Like being held at gunpoint’ nypost.com reports.
I wrote about phobias in a previous post. That was then, this is now. Let’s ketchup…
A woman battling mortuusequusphobia — a crippling fear of ketchup — is speaking out about her struggle, calling her tomato trouble no laughing matter…
An encounter with the dreaded dip can lead the Bristol woman to feel like she’s “having a panic attack,” she’s banned ketchup from her home, avoids looking at it if she’s aware it’s somewhere near her and would toss any “infected” crockery that comes into contact with the apparently vile, viscous stuff.
Condimentumphobia
The Post mislabeled Leigh Woodman’s fear.
In Latin, mortus means dead, equus means horse and phobia means fear. Mortuusequusphobia is the fear of dead horses.
Not to beat a dead horse, the British lass suffers from condimentumphobia. A rare condition, to be sure, but no less strange or debilitating than…
Omphalophobia (fear of belly buttons)
Eisoptrophobia (fear of mirrors)
Linonophobia (fear of string)
Pogonophobia (fear of beards)
Triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13)
Anthophobia (fear of flowers)
Coulrophobia (fear of clowns)
Using the word mortuusequusphobia to describe Ms. Woodman’s problem risks inducing hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (fear of long words). Just sayin’.
What Is a Phobia?
A phobia is commonly described as a morbid fear. Ms. Woodman’s analogy – “seeing ketchup is like being held at gunpoint” – is literally true.
When she sees ketchup, Ms. Woodman experiences rapid heartbeat, sweating, shaking, shortness of breath, nausea and dizziness. Emotionally, she’s distraught. Cognitively, she has irrational thoughts, if any.
Ms. Woodman would have the same physical, emotional and mental reactions if she was being held at gunpoint.
It’s the so-called “fight or flight response.” Which omits the most common response: freeze (physical, mental and emotional paralysis).
When Ms. Woodman encounters ketchup, her subconscious mind reacts as if America’s most popular condiment is life-threatening. She goes into survival mode.
ISR
At the risk of lexicological pedantry (as if), a phobia is more accurately called an Inappropriate Survival Response (ISR).
If ketchup were life-threatening, Ms. Woodman’s reaction would be a rational one. Same for people phobic of belly buttons, mirrors, string, beards, the number 13 or flowers.
Given serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s side hustle as Bobo the Clown, I’ve removed clowns from that list of irrational phobic stimuli.
That said, how some people become coulrophobic, and some don’t, is instructive.
What’s Evolution Got to Do With It?
Your subconscious mind doesn’t think. It reacts. For example….
You look both ways when you cross the street – without giving it a moment’s thought. You react to the situation, the stimuli of crossing a street, by looking both ways.
Once your subconscious mind is wired to react to a given stimuli with a given response, it’s difficult to change or remove the pattern. Any subconscious pattern.
Subconscious reactions to life-threatening and potentially life-threatening stimuli are particularly strong. And fast. Way faster than rational thought. Because they have to be. Had to be.
Humans who didn’t respond to saber-toothed tigers in a timely, effective manner became cat chow. Removing the unfortunate individual’s propensity to react inappropriately to life-threatening stimuli from the human gene pool.
Getting to Clowns I Swear…
Most of our subconscious stimulus –> response patterns are implanted during childhood. There are a lot of them.
In most instances, we have no conscious memory how, when or where these patterns were created. The precise origin of what we tend to call “habits.”
Do you remember exactly when you learned to look both ways before you cross the street? To resist the urge to pick your nose in public?
By the same token, Ms. Woodward doesn’t remember when she became a condimentumphobic.
“I’ve no idea how this all began, because it’s [happened for] as long as I can remember. I just remember being absolutely petrified of it and I’ve just never been able to even look at it.”
That’s not to say these weird phobias could happen to anyone. Truth be told…
Phobics Are Different Than You and Me
Some subconscious minds remain open to suggestion/programming as the individual enters adulthood.
Unless you’re a fundamentalist, blame/credit evolutionary biology. You know: natural selection.
Highly hypnotic people can do amazing things in trance, whether its banging out Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30 from “memory” or killing saber toothed tigers.
On the other hand, if everyone was highly hypnotic, slipping into trance at a moment’s notice or screaming at ketchup bottles and packets, human society wouldn’t get anything done. We’d be nothing more than a nation of brainwashed cult members. Ummm…
Could IT Happen To You?
Bottom line: phobics are statistically rare, highly-hypnotic individuals whose subconscious mind was – and still is – vulnerable to inappropriate stimulus —> response patterns.
If you’re not among their number, you can watch Stephen King’s creepy clown show and not feel nervous or freak out when you see a clown at a kid’s party. If you go into a deep trance during movies — who “loses themselves” in the flick — you will.
The coulrophobe knows their fear is irrational, just as Ms. Woodrow knows her fear of ketchup is irrational. Dumb. Embarrassing.
But try as she might, Ms. Woodrow can’t rationalize her way out of it. The pattern is too deeply embedded in the survival-related part of her subconscious mind.
The Cure
Desensitization therapy is the most common phobia treatment: repeated exposure to the dreaded stimulus in a safe, controlled environment, conducted by a calm therapist.
Eventually, the phobic’s subconscious gets the message to chill the f out. Assuming the phobic’s motivated and brave enough to continue extremely uncomfortable treatment.
There’s a hidden dynamic: desensitization therapy triggers the phobic’s fight, flight or freeze response – which is a trance state. The phobic’s subconscious mind becomes open to suggestion.
The desensitization therapist is, in fact, a hypnotist.
A good hypnotist can remove the phobic’s inappropriate stimulus –> response pattern without triggering it. He/She can put the phobic into trance and reprogram, literally command them not to react to the phobic stimulus.
If you are or know a phobic, hook them up with a proper hypnotist. Not a hypnotherapist (who will want to talk about their mother).
Meanwhile, don’t laugh at Ms. Woodrow and her fellow phobics. As John Wayne said, courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway.
Reading your article was interesting, but then I thought to myself, why isn’t it so simple to hypnotize your girlfriend, and make her into an awesome pool player? I mean, if someone can play Rachmaninoff after being hypnotized, why can’t you hypnotize her to play like the world’s best pool player?Or are there limitations on hypnosis and suggestion?
Is a phobia necessarily a subconscious thing? Arachnophobia probably exists in the subconscious for most people, because it was learned through movies, stories, etc. But it's also based on a real danger.
Or maybe the question should be: can you separate responses to the same stimulus into "phobia" and "practical"? Some people would flip out (technical term) just looking at picture of a spider, or even some non-spider thing that moves in a particularly spider-ey way. Others wouldn't get worried until it was a spider of a certain kind at a certain proximity to them. At what point do you, as a therapist, intervene? And how much tolerance do you want to "program" into someone for something that may have actual benefits for survival?