Living With Kosmemophobia: A Fear of Jewelry
From rings and necklaces to even keys and cutlery, certain metal objects can cause people to feel so physically repulsed they might even throw up.
By Jessie Schiewe
Art: Trav
When Matilda Lorné was a baby, before she could even walk or talk, she made it very clear that she hated jewelry.
Whenever a person wearing necklaces or bracelets came near or tried to touch the infant, her parents said she would scream, tears streaming down her chubby cheeks. But if that same person removed their shiny baubles and then approached her again, Matilda would cease her squawking and act completely fine.
A recent selfie of Matilda. Note the lack of rings on her fingers or necklaces around her neck.
She is now 16-years-old and able to walk and talk on her own, but one thing about her life remains the same: Matilda still loathes jewelry.
“I was born with this,” the Swedish teenager told OK Whatever.
“And I know I'm not the only one with this phobia.”
Matilda has what’s known as kosmemophobia, a condition that causes one to feel great discomfort and visceral reactions when confronted with jewelry.
Anything metal “is, like, a big no” for people with kosmemophobia, she explained, adding that for her, her phobia also extends to antique, ornate, or dirty-looking cutlery. For some, it also extends to keys and keychains.
When you have kosmemophobia, even just seeing something shiny and hard can make your “skin crawl” or trigger levels of revulsion so intense they may lead to vomiting.
“I most often get a feeling that I'm going to throw up, but a few times it has actually happened that I have vomited when touching one of the things that triggers me,” Matilda admitted.
Holding hands with someone wearing rings can be extremely uncomfortable for someone with a jewelry phobia, inducing in them an almost pathological desire to wash their hands ad infinitum afterwards. For kosmemophobes on active duty in the military, wearing dog tags can feel akin to having a hot poker hanging around their neck.
Relationships can also be tricky. An 18-year-old with kosmemophobia was stricken with fear and revulsion when his girlfriend texted him a photo of her new lip piercings.
He turned to Reddit for help, writing: “I don’t want to make her feel bad about it and I definitely don’t want her to feel obligated to remove them, but the silent suffering to myself surely can’t be healthy.”
For someone with kosmemophobia, this photo might be very triggering.
Sometimes kosmemophobia can make things awkward. When Matilda goes shopping with friends, she intentionally avoids entering jewelry shops even if all of her friends have gone inside. She’s also had to stop hanging out with at least one friend because the cutlery in their house grosses her out too much.
“It's horrible,” she said, “and I wish I could just get over it, but I can’t.”
The worst experience she’s had thus far was getting braces. She got them removed in January 2020, but for a whole year she had to cope with the constant, unceasing tang of metal glued throughout her mouth.
“It made me throw up three times in one day just knowing and feeling that I had that in my mouth,” Matilda said.
Kosmemophobia is not scientifically recognized, and many people who suffer from it are unaware that their phobia even has a name.
One woman in the U.K. didn’t learn of the term until she was 43. Describing her kosmemophobia as “a daily struggle,” that is “very real,” “quite awful,” and “rather strange,” she felt so moved by her discovery of the word that she created a blog about it in 2017. She called it “I Have Kosmemophobia…” In three years, she has only written on it twice.
This is an abbreviated version of her first post:
“Hello,
Currently whilst writing this, I am 43 years of age and although [I] have never blogged before, feel now is the right time to start and perhaps tell my story.
It was only because I was bored one night and after once again being accidentally touched by someone’s ring whilst giving them change at work and feeling horrid and dirty about it for hours afterwards, [that I] decided to Google the term “fear of jewelery,” and saw that this was actually a real thing and found a Facebook page and blogs where others were going through the same thing. Which, in a twisted way, made me feel better.
Up until two days ago, I had spent my life feeling that I was just being stupid and irrational, and that one day I may get over it. But as mentioned before, I'm 43 now and I haven't and can't see it ever changing.”
Most people who have kosmemophobia start demonstrating their aversions to jewelry at an early age. Professional NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. — easily the most high-profile person with the phobia — can trace his issues with metal accessories to his childhood.
In 2015, before competing in the Daytona 500, he told NBC Sports how his older sister, Kelly Earnhardt Miller, used to torment him with jewelry because she knew he hated it.
“My sister used to chase me around the house with necklaces and stuff. It’s creepy to me,” Earnhardt said. “She definitely antagonized me and terrorized me when I was younger.”
A photo from Matilda of cutlery that makes her feel ill.
Matilda’s siblings have also given her grief about her hard-to-understand phobias with jewelry and cutlery.
At a recent dinner with her mother, sister, brother, and grandmother, she experienced a pang of revulsion during the dessert course when a ramekin of chocolate sauce was passed around the table. The metal serving spoon inside of the dish was triggering for her, leading Matilda to ask her mother if she could drizzle the sauce onto her plate so that she wouldn’t have to touch it.
Her mother obliged, but her brother, who is older and no longer lives at home, was less convinced, instead using the occasion as an opportunity to poke fun at his sister.
“He started calling me spoiled,” Matilda said. “And then he said it wasn't a real phobia and that I just had to get over it. But it's really not as easy as it sounds to just get over something you've been afraid of your whole life.”
Earnhardt, and others with kosmemophobia, can relate. When he first told his now-wife, Amy Reimann, about his jewelry phobia, she thought he was “making it up.”
In fact, his fear of rings is why it took several years of dating and a nearly 18-month engagement before he was finally ready to tie the knot. Speaking to sports radio host Dan Patrick, Earnhardt called kosmemophobia “the biggest hold-up” he had to face in his relationship with Reimann.
Not only does Earnhardt dislike wearing jewelry, he also can’t abide being around it. Fortunately, his wife is understanding of this and refrains from wearing jewelry in deference to her man’s unique phobia.
Since a simple gold band is out of the question for Earnhardt, he’s resorted to wearing a wedding ring made out of wood.
A few years ago, he and his wife even invested in Qalo, a company that manufactures silicone-based rings and dog tags. Thanks to their scratch- and break-resistant materials, the rings have also become a favorite amongst athletes, seen on the likes of Steph Curry and LeBron James.
But for Earnhardt, the appeal is their “rubber composite sort of material,” which doesn’t give him the heebie-jeebies or make him feel nauseated.
“I’ve been wearing their product for a good damn reason: Because my jewelry phobia is real,” he explained in an episode from his podcast “The Dale Jr. Download.”
But having a jewelry phobia isn’t all that bad, namely because it can save you money. Depending on the metals, bracelets, rings, necklaces, and earrings can cost thousands of dollars. Add precious stones to it and the price goes up even more.
Kosmemophobia-friendly jewelry, on the other hand, tends to be a lot less costly. Qalo’s silicone rings start as low as $15, and you can find wooden and plastic resin wedding rings on Amazon for under $10.
At 16, Matilda has quite a few years ahead of her before the question of marriage comes up. When it does, she’ll have to find a wedding ring she can cope with wearing. It’ll likely be made out of plastic or fabric — two materials she can currently tolerate with jewelry.
One thing it definitely won’t have, though, is the thing women tend to covet the most: a diamond.
“That would just gross me out,” she said.
JESSIE SCHIEWE IS THE EDITOR OF OK WHATEVER. SHE BELIEVES IN MERMAIDS AND THRIFT SHOPS FOR EXERCISE.
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