Sensory issues: Pain or Fear?

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Some people claim that particular autistic people are 'afraid' of certain noises. I don't buy this for a minute. That's IMO simplistic at best and ignorant at worst. I have sensory issues and some sounds cause me pain, but I in NO way fear these sounds.

So it is my opinion that certain PAINFUL and unbearable sounds to some people may cause them to react in a manner that makes observers believe they 'fear' the sound.

However, is there anyone who has a sensory issue that is actually SCARED of a noise, not merely that it is unbearably painful?

I'm scared of the fire detector going off. It hurts so bad I get nervous when I'm cooking. It's still more pain than fear though, I just get anxious when expecting pain.

yeah but you wouldn't be 'afraid' of it if it wasn't painful, yes?

I think the fear is a fear from going through the unbearable pain of sensory issues. My sensory issues go from discomfort to severe. The severest ones being noise do make me a bit anxious about going places where these noises happen a lot.

There have been times that I have feared sounds. I got close to melophobia for a while. It was very unpleasant, because I actually like music and dancing, and I had become too afraid to listen to CDs or the radio, or to go to my favourite night club. I eventually killed my fear one evening by turning off all the lights in my flat and blasting myself with a succession ot loud rock and hip-hop songs, collapsing in tears in a doorway; but at least I discovered that certain frequencies were tolerable, even if played quite loudly.

It changes; sometimes I'm OK, sometimes I'm not; I am better off now than I was last year. I had become afraid of going to my office because of all the ambient sounds (computer fans, roof clicking, colleagues talking), and I was having meltdowns frequently, which always caused conflict. So I feared the sounds because I feared the meltdowns and conflict too.

I carry intra-aural earphones with me at all times (the Philips ones have a noise-canceling function) and when I go dancing I usually put them in after a while, especially if they go over from playing rock music (which I can handle better) to that rubbery-sounding dance music. Other people at clubs often ask me what I am listening to and they want to pull out my earplugs so that they can hear my music!

For me the feeling from my sensory issues is more like an intense unpleasantness...rather than acute physical pain..it affects me in all kinds of different ways...my mood....my ability to process things..my general sense of self control...my ability to deal with other people...my motor reactions..when I am overloaded...I often pace back and forth clutching my arms like I am cold....so lots of people like to comment that I look like I must be really cold when really I am just reacting to my sensory overload....My reaction to sudden sensory assaults is more like repulsion than fear...even though it might cause me to run...I would not call the initial source of my reaction to be "fear"

Why is that so hard to believe? If you experience "pain" as a reaction to certain noises, why wouldn't it be just as easy to believe that "fear" could be another reaction? It's clearly a sensory problem/disorder, and those are clearly both senses, so why not? Logically, any of the senses could be wrongly stimulated, not just pain.

It's the same for me but when we used to have a burglar alarm. It got to the point where I would refuse to turn it off because I was scared that my going in the house would activate it - and yes I was scared of the noise, because it HURT and when I know I'm going to get hurt I'm not going to be ok with it.

It's pain for me, with sensory issues. Any anxiety due to this is perfectly normal under the circumstances, IMHO. Noone would say to normal people "Oh, you're just afraid of being poked in the eye/slapped in the face/stabbed", with the implication that if they got over the fear, the experiences of such wouldn't be in the least unpleasant.

Even when the phone rings my whole body jerks and it feels like a fear reaction for me, not pain. Other high pitched discordant noises, like Saturday morning cartoons make me feel irritated and like I can't think straight. I'm dealing with this right now because my son woke up before me. I'm dealing with it by playing Satie on the computer with headphones on.

Pain over here.

But given enough time, pain can turn to fear of it happening again, but the pain will still be there, of course.

I agree with you. I don't really feel the fear emotion. Every single oversensory that I have is a pain response. Not at all a fear response, whatsoever. I don't mean that it causes me pain as in a migrane or anything like that, either. When my ears are assaulted, it is shooting horrible pains in my ears, throbbing. And if it is a speech too loud of a noise overload, the speech breaksdown into the indecipherable, as well.

Same thing for aversive tastes and smells, and hot and cold temperatures - overloads cause me pain, like the chlorine oversensory meltdown I had this last week.

Wrong textures can cause pain and heebie-jeebies, and sometimes only heebie-jeebies, but not fear.

Lights are a bit different - they are just blindingly bright and I can't see or look at certain kinds of lights, but they don't cause pain or fear.

I can have an oversensory overload to any of the above and trigger a meltdown depending on what / when / how bad / etc.

But people who know me and hang around me (except for certain dementia TBI people who can't remember anything), figure out what things / time / context will trigger a meltdown and when, and just avoid that - they know how to get along with me perfectly well without problems, because even if I am hyper, I am almost always very calm and quiet as that is my general nature.

~Equiis

No, not for me. I don't have fear. Also, I aways get startled every time by one of the sensory triggers, when they happen. I can never tell or predict when they are coming.

~Equiis

Pain and angst. No fear.

No, not for me. My reaction to a sensory overload assault is: (1.) make it stop; and (2.) get it away from me / get me away from it. That's it.

Nothing. Nothing at all.

I'm starting to think I'm a half-aspie hybrid.