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📌Some people suffer from ligyrophobia, a persistent and intense fear of loud and unexpected sounds, such as the noise of firecrackers or fireworks.
📌The experience that each person has had with fireworks and firecrackers will be decisive in determining their reaction.
📌To overcome this phobia, the most advisable thing is to go to a professional and face the fear gradually.
During the Christmas holidays, and especially on New Year's Eve, firecrackers are sometimes set off, but why are there those who are shocked? terrifying fear and others that enjoy seeing them?
People who suffer when they hear firecrackers or fireworks may have a phobia or fear of loud sounds , sharp or sudden. This, furthermore, not only happens to humans, but also to some animals.
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Ligyrophobia: the irrational phobia of loud or very high-pitched noises
Ligyrophobia is the name given to persistent and intense fear of loud or very high-pitched and unexpected sounds, such as the noise of firecrackers or fireworks.
Blanca López Cabezuelo, psychologist specialized in functional analysis of behavior, explains to Maldita.es, half co-founder of Factchequeado , that this phobia, “regardless of the name you want to give it,” like other phobias, can have different degrees and be conditioned by various factors related to the behavior of each person, their experiences and evolutionary factors of the human species that makes us flee from danger.
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Personal experience with fireworks and firecrackers will be decisive in determining our reaction.
“If we are told or know that something sounds strong, that is, we have information obtained beforehand, we will avoid it ", indicates López Cabezuelo. On the other hand, he adds that human beings tend to “see more presence of danger than there really is, out of survival instinct.” Due to this instinct, “loud sounds provoke a startle response and this generates great stress in the body, because what it seeks is to mobilize the entire organism so that it can flee from danger,” explains the psychologist.
In general, situational phobias like this “are related to situations that have posed a risk in the past evolutionary development of humanity,” according to Rafael Mora, a psychiatrist at the Castellón Provincial Hospital Consortium, in Spain.
However, López Cabezuelo insists that it also influences the relationship we have had with firecrackers and fireworks, when we have been in contact with them: “It may be that your mother has told you since you were little that they are dangerous but, if you have not had any mishaps or you have had a good time when you have set off firecrackers with your friends, it is more difficult for you to develop this type of fear or phobia.” The same can happen if we associate them with pleasant moments, such as the family tradition of setting off firecrackers on New Year's Eve.
On the other hand, if we have not had a good experience, because we have been burned by a firecracker or we have experienced an unpleasant episode , “the fear we develop may be greater.”
The latter is what is called operant conditioning , the theory of psychologist and social philosopher BF Skinner, which states that a person is more likely to repeat a behavior if it is followed by pleasant consequences and less likely to repeat it if the consequences are unfavorable.
Fear of fireworks may be greater in people who suffer from anxiety
This phobia affects some people more than others, depending, above all, on the degree of anxiety they present. This is indicated by Mercedes Cimas, cognitive-behavioral clinical psychologist: “Firecrackers, being loud and unexpected, bother those who have an anxiety disorder more, since they have a high sensitivity to noise ".
Those people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), "generally, they also get upset and suffer from loud noises" such as fireworks. This is due, in part, to the fact that, as pointed out in an article published in the Journal of Neurology, “negative emotional disturbances with extreme irritability, anxiety or lack of emotional control” are some of the behavioral problems presented by people who suffer from ASD.
Fireworks can trigger a startle response in people who have post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), says Todd K. Favorite, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan.
“Although the loud noise of fireworks can trigger traumatic memories, it is usually the unpredictability of the explosion that activates the activation system or the sympathetic nervous system,” adds the professor. According to what he says, this is something that could happen to people who have been witnesses to gun violence or who have served in the military.
The clinical psychologist Jessica Stern explains to the Insider portal that for some people with autism, PTSD or past trauma related to sound, fireworks “can remind them of a threat and instantly activate the brain's threat detector ".
But can every fear of firecrackers and fireworks be considered a phobia?
In any case, We will not always be talking about a phobia. Mora points out that “the fear of firecrackers can reach the category of phobia when it generates acute symptoms of physical anxiety, such as tachycardia, cold sweating, a feeling of suffocation or lack of air, or psychological anxiety: intense, excessive and irrational fear of exposure to firecrackers, anticipatory anxiety (fear of facing situations in which there may be firecrackers) and avoidance behaviors of these situations.”
The person who suffers from it, Mora points out, “realizes that this reaction es excessive and irrational, But he can't avoid it." To overcome it, it is advisable to go to a professional.
To overcome the phobia you have to face the fear gradually
“One of the ways to deal with fears is exposing yourself to them. What happens with firecrackers is that we are not constantly exposed, since they are only used from time to time, at very specific times,” explains Cimas. However, the psychologist indicates that “the treatment would be to expose the person who suffers from this phobia to fear, first imagining the noise of the firecrackers and then live.”
Along the same lines, López Cabezuelo explains that one of the ways to overcome this type of phobias is through habituation and sensitization (what is called pre-associative learning), through which we become accustomed to noises like these or similar ones. The psychologist insists that this process must be done little by little, gradually, initially exposing the person to noises similar to firecrackers, "always from the least intense stimulation that causes the least fear." With this gradual and repeated exposure, the person will perceive the sound as less threatening each time.
If learning is not done in a phased manner, López Cabezuelo insists, noises could have the opposite effect in those who suffer from this phobia.
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