Fear of Eyes
Ommetaphobia
Ommetaphobia, also written ommatophobia, ophthalmophobia or rarely oculophobia, is an irrational fear of eyes, and the mechanism that keeps it running is the one that appears to solve it. Avoiding situations involving eye contact, touching an eye or having the eyes touched works in the short term. Over the long term it makes the phobia worse, because each avoided encounter supplies a fresh justification for the fear. Some sufferers go further and act to prevent a triggering situation from arising at all.
What sets it off
The trigger list is broader than the name suggests, and no two people carry the same one:
- eye contact, and situations that require it, such as speaking in public or talking face to face
- touching the eye or having it touched, which covers eye examinations, contact lenses and eye makeup
- injury to the eye, or something foreign getting into it, sand or shampoo
- the use of eye masks
- fake eyes, and images of eyes
- the thought of any of the above, which needs no eye present at all
That variation matters clinically. Someone may be triggered by having to touch their own eyes and be entirely comfortable making eye contact with another person, which means the fear is not really of eyes as objects so much as of a particular relationship with them.
What an episode looks like
Triggering produces heightened anxiety or a panic attack, with the physical symptoms of nausea, rapid breathing and sweating, and the mental ones of panic and lost control. A severe enough attack may require hospitalisation. The symptoms outlast the trigger, persisting for several minutes after the person is no longer near whatever set it off.
For some people the fear takes a specific and unrealistic form: a conviction that they are in danger of an eye injury.
Where it compounds
Someone with social anxiety disorder alongside it is in a worse position than the sum of the two. Where the ommetaphobia is triggered by eye contact, every social encounter carries the trigger inside it, and the social anxiety symptoms get worse as a result.
What the avoidance costs in ommetaphobia
A phobia site describing the condition supplies the behaviours the clinical sources do not. A person with it may refuse to touch their own eyes at all, which rules out plucking an eyelash and putting in eye drops. A trip to an ophthalmologist can produce extreme panic and gets postponed as long as possible. The smallest vision problem sets off a full reaction, because the fear it attaches to is going blind.
Two behaviours in that account are checking rather than avoiding. Some wear sunglasses constantly, to protect the eyes from whatever might reach them. And some close one eye to find out what losing the sight in it would feel like, which is a rehearsal of the feared outcome carried out voluntarily and repeatedly.
The consequence is the one this catalogue keeps recording for medical fears. An organ that requires periodic examination is attached to a person who cannot be examined, and the deterioration that eventually forces the appointment is the thing the fear was about.
Why a ranking page calls it emetophobia
One of the pages ranking for ommetaphobia is worth reading as a specimen. It opens by saying the condition is sometimes referred to as emetophobia, which is the fear of vomiting and an entirely different entry, and then uses that word in place of the right one for most of its length. It derives the term from a Greek word it gives as Emma, meaning eye, which is not a Greek word.
It also cites the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for a prevalence of 7 to 9 per cent, which is the figure for specific phobias as a class rather than for this one, and then notes that less information may be available for this phobia specifically.
That page is what Wikipedia's own list of phobias describes when it warns about sites that fit a standard text to any phobia name. Here the template was filled in with the wrong name and published anyway, and it is among the first things a reader searching the word will find.
Told apart
Often confused with Fear of Eyes
- Fear of Being Stared AtScopophobia concerns being looked at by others, and eye contact triggers both. This one also covers touching an eye and images of eyes, which scopophobia does not.
- Social Anxiety DisorderThe two compound directly. Where eye contact is the trigger, every social encounter contains it, and the social anxiety symptoms worsen as a result.
- Fear of DoctorsThe reported avoidance runs through the ophthalmologist's appointment, so what presents as a fear of eyes can look from outside like a fear of the clinician who wants to examine them.
Common questions
Questions about Ommetaphobia
- Why does avoidance make it worse?
- Because it works in the short term. Each avoided encounter supplies a justification for the fear, so long-term avoidance strengthens rather than settles it. A severe enough panic attack can require hospitalisation, which depends on the attack rather than on the phobia.
- Do all sufferers share the same triggers?
- No. Someone may be triggered by touching their own eyes and be entirely comfortable making eye contact, which is why the trigger set has to be established individually.
- What are the triggers?
- Eye contact and the situations that require it, touching one's own eye or having it touched, eye injury, foreign substances in the eye, eye masks, fake eyes and images of eyes, and the thought of any of these without the thing being present. The list runs from a social act to a surgical one, which is why no single account of the object works.
- How long do symptoms last?
- Beyond the trigger. The nausea, rapid breathing, sweating and panic can persist for several minutes after the person is no longer near what set it off.
- What does the fear cost?
- Eye care, usually. A person who cannot be examined postpones the ophthalmologist as long as possible and cannot manage eye drops or remove something from their own eye, and the vision problem that eventually forces the appointment is the outcome the fear was built around.
- Is the online information reliable?
- Not uniformly. One page ranking for the term calls the condition emetophobia throughout, which is the fear of vomiting, derives the word from a Greek noun that does not exist, and quotes the 7 to 9 per cent figure for specific phobias as a class as though it were the rate for this one. Wikipedia's list of phobias describes exactly that practice.
Added 2026-08-23 · Revised 2026-08-26
Nearby in the catalogue
Related entries
- Fear of Being Stared AtA psychiatric journal described it in 1906 better than most sources since. It is classed as both a social and a specific phobia, and has never been counted on its own.
- Social Anxiety DisorderThe definition covers positive evaluation as well as negative, which separates it from shyness. Attention to the diagnosis rose from 1999, when drugs arrived.
- Fear of DoctorsThe only fear whose avoidance behaviour damages health directly. Its prevalence has never been reported, and the figure quoted instead measures something else.
- Fear of AgeingHe bent forward so he would not look tall, ate less to stunt his growth, and pitched his voice higher to sound younger. He was twelve when it started.
- Fear of Being Buried AliveIts own reference article concedes the fear was not entirely irrational before modern medicine. William Tebb collected 149 accounts of actual live burial in 1905.
- Fear of Belly ButtonsNo study, no figure, and an anatomy page that never mentions the fear. What that page does supply is the point: the navel is a scar, and everybody has one.