Woman With Ketchup Phobia Says Seeing It Is Like Being Held at Gunpoint

A British woman has gone viral on TikTok after revealing her crippling fear of ketchup.

Earlier this month, Leigh Woodman shared a post about her struggles with mortuusequusphobia—an intense fear of the popular condiment.

“Unfortunately my nervous system doesn’t know the difference between being held at gunpoint and seeing a bottle of ketchup,” she explained in the caption of the post.

“My worst fear is it crusting on a plate then being put in my dishwasher and infecting the whole dishwasher and all my dishes and never being able to use them again,” she continued.

The New York Post followed up with Woodman about her unusual affliction. The fashion influencer said she has no idea what incited her fear of ketchup.

“I’ve just never been able to even look at it,” she said. “I know [if there’s ketchup in the room] to not even look at it or pay any attention to it.”

“I’m fully aware of how dramatic it sounds, and I’ve always been embarrassed by it. If someone were to hold me at gunpoint, I would freeze and panic, and that’s exactly how I’d feel if someone shoved ketchup in my face,” she added.

mortuusequusphobia Is a fear of ketchup

While she obviously doesn’t keep ketchup in the house, Woodman can’t control whether or not she encounters it in the wild. The tomato-based sauce is one of the most popular condiments in the world.

However, the influencer said staying calm in public means doing her best to just ignore it. “I know to not even look at it or pay any attention to it,” she explained.

Unlike some others with mortuusequusphobia, Woodman didn’t have a traumatic incident with ketchup that sparked her fear. And while she’s not a huge fan of tomatoes in general, she said no other products seem to affect her the same way.

“It makes me feel panicky,” she explained. “If someone waved it in my face, I would be sick. The smell of it just makes me feel so sick.”

Woodman added that she was motivated to speak up for herself and any others who share the same phobia.

“Because it’s not a well-known phobia and fear, I think people just see it as a joke and find it funny,” she said. “I think people should definitely take it more seriously.”

She also said that she has no interest in trying exposure therapy to work past her fear of ketchup. “This is just something I think I’m going to have to live with forever,” Woodman concluded.