Run Silent, Run…Run!…RUN!
Ironically, the recent buzz re John Krasinski’s horror film A Quiet Place has almost grown deafening. If you’re unfamiliar, the film chronicles the tale of a family in a house/world where making the slightest sound attracts humunchsters [human-munching monsters]. But there’s another side to this movie that is flying somewhat below the radar: sedatephobia. When I first saw the word, I thought, “Huh. I didn’t know there was a word for being afraid of sitting in one place for too long.” Not surprisingly, I got it wrong. The term refers, informally since research on this is not extensive yet, to the fear of silence. Writing about the movie and the phobia on the Inverse website, Yasmin Tayag tells us that the fear in A Quiet Place “is an uncomfortably familiar one”:
Throughout the film, as monsters hunt their prey through super-sensitive hearing and horrified humans cower quietly in the dark, audiences are often plunged into complete silence. The dearth of sound is terrifying, and, some researchers have argued, that fear may linger long after we leave the movie theater.
If you’re wondering why “sedatephobia” instead of “quietusophobia” or “silenciophobia,” join the club. Blame the Greeks for the confusion. “Sedate” comes from the Ancient Greek word for silent or sleeping or dead and “Phobos” is the Greek god of fear, dread, or aversion (couldn’t make up his/her mind apparently). Writing on fearof.net, Jacob Olesen describes one possible cause of sedatephobia: “Many experts believe [red flag alert and confession of sorts: thanks to our fearless leader, the word “many” automatically, wrongly or rightly, sets off my BS detector]…ahem…many experts believe that technology has also given rise to the constant need for sounds around humans.” This fear also pops up in circumstances where “uncomfortably long silences that interrupted conversations made people feel ‘distressed, afraid, hurt and rejected’ because it decreased their sense of belonging and social validation.” (Well, that solves one mystery. All this time I’ve been thinking I have a perpetual case of persistent free-floating anxiety.)
Tayag has a different theory. She says that maybe “it all comes down to a single root fear: the fear of what we don’t know.”
Part of the reason silence is so scary is because it creates a sense of anticipation — or anxiety — depending on what you’re hoping to expect. Without aural cues to alert you to what’s going on, anything seems possible. And is anything more scary than that?
Well, yes. Waking up to find you have no clean underwear, for example, or discovering that Starbucks has discontinued the Horchata Almondmilk Crème Frappucino that your brain cells cry out for every morning.
There is a silver lining here, though. I will never suffer from true sedatephobia, and it’s not because we have endless trucks rumbling, scooters buzzing, dogs barking, planes jetting, etc. around us. No, it’s because no matter where I am, even if inside a sensory deprivation tank or the more insidious Cone of Silence, my world will never be soundless. Who knew there was a positive side to tinnitus?
[Image: By Anonymous (Faras) — Stanisław Lorentz, Tadeusz Dobrzeniecki, Krystyna Kęplicz, Monika Krajewska (1990). National Museum in Warsaw. Arkady. ISBN 83–213–3308–7, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1693497.]
