Door Knob Phobia in COVID-time

Psychologists have noticed the emergence of a new mental illness, and wonder why it doesn't get the attention all the others do. People suffering from Door Knob Phobia need help. They need understanding. They lose the ability to work, socialize and make a living. A Foundation has formed to apply for funding to help them.

What door-knob-phobics fear is germs on door handles. As we know, coronavirus can be anywhere. It hangs in the air, it lands on surfaces, it seethes in lobbies, shops and buses … and door handles. Not only should you not touch these, you shouldn't even go near them. Shouldn't even look at them. When you go through doors that open automatically, shut your eyes. The danger though, is that you might bump into someone coming the other way. And they might have coronavirus. And you might die.

So you don't go out.

The sight of door handles is so distressing that you can't even touch the door handles inside your house, those that only you have touched before and that you've scrubbed a hundred times. You know you're being irrational but you can't help it; you're addicted to imagining germs multiplying obscenely on door handles, no matter how often you wash them. In fact, the more you wash them the germ-ier they become.

You're told by experts a hundred times a day to wash your hands (hand-washing is itself no longer obsessive-compulsive -- it's now healthy) but what's the use of washing, if you have to touch a door handle? So you're trapped inside. You have nightmares in which you're desperate to get outside -- you must go outside -- but you can't escape because going out means going through the door. Which you won't do.

People with claustrophobia are especially hard hit by this mental illness, because their knob-phobic desire to stay indoors now has to do battle with their desire to go outdoors, and the stress of keeping their phobias straight can be overwhelming. It can lead to divorce and family breakdown, especially when family members are unsympathetic.

Sufferers however just can't stand being inside and can't stand going through the door. Not if they have to open it. But when they consider not closing it in the first place, they fear being watched. They feel exposed, and then they get agoraphobia. These pan-phobic victims are ripped apart as if by a pack of wolves: claustrophobia, agoraphobia, and doorknobophobia battling across their precarious mental universe.

They are told to join self-help groups -- online of course -- but research has shown that those who fear door handles also come to fear invisible germs on computer keyboards and cellphones. Experts are studying the linkages but research is in its infancy, and is under-funded. Sufferers therefore have appealed to donors to kick-start some crowd-funding, but donors have failed to respond. They suggest sufferers have a door kick-down instead.

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