Sounds & Sensations · 15 entries
Sound and Sensation Phobias
Sounds, touch, pain, texture, silence and light. What is feared here is a sensation rather than a thing, and the distinction does real work: a fear of the object producing a sensation files with objects, and a fear of the sensation itself files here. The group contains Misophonia, one of the most searched terms in the whole subject, named by neither diagnostic manual and coined by audiologists in 2001.
It is also where the suffix is least reliable. Photophobia is a medical symptom, an abnormal intolerance to light producing discomfort or pain in the eyes, and it is the clearest case in this catalogue of the suffix meaning something other than fear. Thermophobia names a property of a foam and of a bacterium as well as a direction of particle motion. Osmophobia is a hypersensitivity, consistent in migraine histories rather than an anxiety at all. Phonophobia is the boundary: a loud sound frightens most people, and it is not a phobia unless the fear runs out of proportion.
In this category
All 15 sound and sensation phobias
15 entries
- Fear of Being TouchedThe clinical record offers a definition and a list of symptoms. The only accounts of where the fear comes from are in fiction, and they say abuse, consistently.
- Fear of ClothingVestiphobia is a fear of clothing, usually of one fabric or one garment. One source calls it a word-list term, the other an under-recognised disorder.
- Fear of ColorsClinical fears of colour are rare and usually attach to one hue. The same word names an old argument that Western taste has always distrusted colour.
- Fear of FeathersWiktionary failed the word for want of citations in 2010, and a Nigerian psychiatry journal published the first case report under the name in 2022.
- Fear of FireworksFirework fear affects 52 percent of dogs and starts in the first year. The treatment data is blunt: only medication and food beat placebo range.
- Fear of Flashes of LightA dictionary editor wrote down the pattern during the 2015 review: a fear sense in the word lists, an intolerance sense in a speciality. Both are in use.
- Fear of HeatPharmacy, biology, physics and medicine all use the word, and none of them means a fear. The medical sense is heat intolerance and points at the thyroid.
- Fear of LightIt names discomfort or pain in the eyes on exposure to light. In medical usage the suffix means hypersensitivity, and this is the standard example of it.
- Fear of MusicThe only Wikipedia article under the name is a rock album, and the band's redefinition of the word is the most considered account of it that exists.
- Fear of OdoursIt appears in migraine histories, helps separate migraine from tension headache, and turns up in a quarter of sufferers. Nobody is afraid of the smell.
- Fear of PainGuarding, hypervigilance and avoidance are all meant to reduce pain and in the long term worsen it. At least ten per cent of adults have pain outlasting the injury.
- Fear of SlimeThree citations proved blennophobia exists, and a Wiktionary editor noticed all three stop to define it. That is how most phobia words behave.
- Fear of SoundThe name says loud; the reported sounds are a door closing and something in the kitchen. The line between it and hyperacusis decides what treatment is safe.
- Fear of the Colour PurpleThe literature grants it a single definition. The wider colour-fear vocabulary is described as existing mostly in lists of exotic words.
- MisophoniaLoudness is not the variable and the reaction is anger, not fear. Why the surveys report anything from 2 to 18 per cent, and why none of them is named.
Keep going
The other categories
- Social & InterpersonalFears whose object is other people: being judged by them, being among them, or being without them.
- The Body, Illness & DeathDeath, dying, disease, contamination, ageing and the body itself.
- Abstract & ExistentialFailure, the future, change, infinity, being forgotten.
- Places & SituationsEnclosed spaces, crowds, bridges, lifts, tunnels and flight.
Common questions
Questions about sound and sensation phobias
Is misophonia a recognised disorder?
No diagnostic manual names it. Audiologists coined the term in 2001 and the internet adopted it afterwards, which is the reverse of how most of the words on this site travelled. It has a growing literature and no code, which is why it is labelled studied here rather than recognised.
Is photophobia a fear of light?
No. Photophobia is a medical symptom, an abnormal intolerance to light producing discomfort or pain in the eyes, and it is the clearest case in this catalogue of the suffix meaning something other than fear. A person with photophobia is not afraid of light; their eyes hurt.
What is the fear of loud noises called?
Phonophobia, and the entry is careful about the threshold: loud sounds and sounds that signal a threat are feared by most people, and that is not phonophobia unless the fear and anxiety run out of proportion to what the sound actually means. Ligyrophobia names the same thing in the dictionaries.
What is the fear of being touched called?
Haphephobia. It is documented rather than recognised, and it sits here rather than with the social group because the object is the contact rather than the person making it. Fear of being hugged and fear of physical contact are the related terms, and the entries record where the sources treat them as one thing and where they do not.