Title. Is this just a symptom of anxiety or overactive imagination? What’s actually causing those sensations and is there a purpose to them?
In: 34
Your brain is causing the sensation. Evolutionarily, if you saw bugs, there was a chance they were on you, and could bite you and lead to illness. By making you itch yourself, you would be more likely to see any bugs on you, and prevent illness. Same thing happens if you see someone itch for a long time, your brain evolved to assume the people you see sleep near you, so it they have ticks, then you might too.
Itching from thinking about it is just a carryover from above
You are always itchy. But your brain filters it out, similar to how you don’t see your own nose unless you try to. It’s always there but your brain filters it out. When you see bugs it triggers your brain to stop filtering the itching you always feel anyway so that you become aware of it.
I know what you mean. I was in a house that got infected with bedbugs and the landlord never cleared it out before moving new people (me) in. I would feel phantom bugs crawling on my skin for years. The answer to this phenomenon is really quite simple: bugs are from Hell.
Your brain is basically a neighborhood of neurons that activate when stimulated. Often neighbors activate each other. Usually the neurons that cause you to feel prickly can only be activated by the neurons that see bugs, or feel them actually crawling on your skin.
However, sometimes it’s enough for you to imagine that bug, and that’s sufficient stimulus for the prickle neurons to activate.
Evolution really had us walking on eggshells with these bugs, huh?
It’s a reaction reminding you to check yourself, because evolutionary we associate bugs with disease and disgusting environments. So subconsciously if you see/think of bugs you double check to make sure you’re not actually feeling the sensation of any since they can cause harm.
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