A rare phobia: a 21-year-old Israeli woman is afraid of her own navel
Fears haunted the girl since childhood, but with age they turned into a real phobia. Now the woman is afraid to go to the beach or the pool, and when she takes a shower, she does not touch her stomach.
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A 21-year-old woman who was diagnosed with a rare phobia lives in Israel. Since childhood, Odaya Cohen has suffered from omphalophobia, which is the fear of one's navel, and in some cases, of other people's navels. This is reported by the Israeli news website Ynet.
Experts discovered that 21-year-old Cohen had a phobia after she decided to share her fears with a friend who was studying at the medical faculty and was writing a thesis on various phobias. The Israeli woman spoke about the fact that she had mixed feelings about her navel since childhood. With age, it turned into a real phobia — Odaya is afraid to go to the beach or the pool, and when she takes a shower, she does not touch her stomach.
“The navel has caused me fear for as long as I can remember. . And it's fear mixed with disgust. About the same as some people feel about mice or cockroaches. But only cockroaches can be removed, navels can't,” she admitted.
21-year-old Israeli Odaya Cohen [+–]
The woman told her parents about her fears as a child, but they did not pay attention to it, however, the older Odaya became, the more the rare phobia interfered with her everyday life. Even when she got married, her fears affected her family life – when her husband wants to scratch his belly, he goes to another room, because Odaya cannot calmly watch someone touch his belly. The man also took on the responsibility of bathing the recently born child.
At first, Odaya thought that she just had some special oddity, but then she learned about the rare phenomenon of omphalophobia on the Internet. The woman turned to psychologists, who offered her a course of treatment, but it seemed too long to her. The fact is that it takes a long time to overcome a phobia. Fears can be overcome either by regular meditation or by gradual contact with the factor that causes fear. Therefore, Odaya decided to live as before, just not to pay too much attention to her navel and the navel of other people.
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