SCOPOPHOBIA IS NOT WHAT YOU ARE TAGGING IT AS

captoring:

i wanna talk about scopophobia again. scopophobia is a social phobia. this means people who suffer from it react with panic, fear and anxiety to certain social situations. in this case, to been seen, to have people looking or staring at you. some scopophobes might feel it more intensely when seen by strangers, or they might feel it only when a large group of people is looking at them. 

browsing tumblr and looking at images is not a social situation. nobody can see you or know what you are doing unless you tell them.

it is also a specific phobia in the sense that being looked at is the key point. people with generalized social anxiety disorders might feel bad when having to make a phone call for instance, but scopophobes have a fear of people looking at them, in particular.

i have done my reading, i have talked with other people who have scopohobia and i have scopophobia myself (getting better).  i have never heard anything about scopophobes being afraid of photographs or drawings. if any do, they are a rare case, but this is not what scopophobia is about. it’s about people looking at YOU.  as long as we know the people on the computer screen can’t actually see us, that is not triggering to us.

if you wanna tag ommetaphobia for the fear of eyes, be my guest. but tagging pictures of people looking towards the camera as scopophobia is ridiculous and a does a disservice to the people who suffer from it by giving people the wrong idea about what it is. no wonder it has become a point of mockery in this website. if you tag scopophobia in your blog, please make sure to tag it only when it’s something actually triggering, not every other drawing of a face or a pair of eyes.