Visual looming syndrome is a problem with visual perception that causes people to inaccurately think that a stationary object is moving towards them, and might poke their eyes.

All my life I have experienced actual physical pain in and behind my eyes when looking at sharp, pointy objects and certain 3-dimensional patterns, for instance some radiators viewed from a particular angle. This is a weird sensation and it seems to worsen when I'm tired, having anxiety or when I find myself in a general "fragile" state of mind.

I've had this all my life but I never really took it seriously and I even started to think that this condition was some kind of psychological defect and for a short period of time I even tried to "reprogram" myself to not feel this pain when looking at pointy stuff, without any luck I might add.

For some reason I never researched this and I've never meet anyone else with the same problem, perhaps in part because of my assumption that this is might just be my imagination and or a minor mental disorder so I felt reluctant to bring it up in conversations.

Relatively recently I stumbled upon the Wikipedia page on Visual looming syndrom . It has a name and it turns out that it's not all that uncommon but sadly but there no treatments. Just knowing this thing is real was kind of a relief for me.