I have a very powerful sense of smell.
this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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I was telling an ex about smelling my coworker’s fear all day. He had a crush on me (it was a call center, so not an especially professional environment), and we had to share my cubicle for training, and he was just pouring out anxiety sweat. My ex had no idea what the fuck I was talking about and I’ve never met someone else who can identify the emotions that a person has by their sweat.
Saying someone “can smell fear” is a normal thing that comes up a lot in media, so I assumed it was also normal to notice. Apparently not. I’ll take all of the help my autistic ass can get in iding others’ emotions though
Oh hey, I remember Mythbusters did a thing on that years ago, got a professional sniffer in who was almost consistently able to detect samples of fear sweat out of a lineup of sweat samples. So yeah, fear smell is absolutely a thing if you know what to sniff for.
You got me down a rabbit hole, but it’s now been officially supported that people subconsciously react to smells, so I’m really curious if more people can train themselves to smell it.
I always thought when people talked about "smelling fear" it was just a poetic way of saying it was obvious that someone was afraid. I've certainly never been aware of picking up on a person's emotions via scent or heard someone say that they've done that.
Can you smell it on yourself? Like, do you find that your sweaty clothes smell the same after a run and, say, a presentation (or something else that gives you anxiety/scares you)? I think it’s most noticeable with my own sweat, but fear/anxiety sweat smells bad to me in a way that normal body odor or exercise sweat don’t.
Sex sweat also smells very different, but that’s normally more pleasant to me than the others. I haven’t noticed a specific smell of aggression or any other kind of sweat though.
Edit: I think you’re right that “smelling fear” is metaphoric, but I did not realize that until I started talking about it.
No, I can't say I've ever noticed a particular scent of anxiety on myself.
Maybe check it out next time, if you have a good sense of smell. Apparently it’s something people react to subconsciously, so I wonder if it can be trained.
That's crazy to me. I'm just learning all this. I barely have a sense of smell so distinguishing between different kinds of sweats is probably entirely out of my reach. I'll try and train it still
It’s the only sense of mine that’s at all good, so that probably has something to do with it
It smells kind of sour in my experience and i believe I've been able to smell it in my childhood pet bird as well as my wife
Yeah, it smells like battery acid to me. It’s fucking wild if birds use the same chemical signals as we do
Wow I can't believe other people smell the battery acid too. Maybe im not hallucinating
legit and respect, gotta take all the advantages you can get.
This is kinda interesting to me. I can pretty easily notice it with myself (If I'm scared for a presentation or calling with somebody). But I don't think I've every been able to identify it in somebody else
Yeah, I probably only noticed it in others because my sister and I shared clothing growing up and she is also an anxiety-ridden mess
I'm thinking maybe I was that anxiety-ridden mess in the past, and that's why I couldn't smell it on anybody else. My own smell was too noticeable, whoops.
I mean, me too! At least apparently nobody else can smell it
Luckily! Although I’m never certain people notice it, but just don’t say anything…
Now I had the opposite thought because I thought it was normal for people and I was the only one who couldn't lol