Hello, I did a bit of searching on The Mighty and did not find anything about misophonia. Here is a definition: “Misophonia is a disorder of decreased tolerance to specific sounds or stimuli associated with such sounds. These stimuli, known as “triggers,” are experienced as unpleasant or distressing and tend to evoke strong negative emotional, physiological, and behavioral responses that are not seen in most other people.”

— from Consensus Definition of Misophonia [2022]*

I live with this disorder and have for many years. Unfortunately, I knew nothing about misophonia until about 4 years ago. My reactions to various sounds, such as loud crunching, crumpling of paper, shoes squeaking on a floor, and someone rubbing on a balloon. This is a sample, however, there are some unexpected triggers that I experience.

My responses to these triggers are immediate, highly disturbing, and cause me to go from being chill to having violent thoughts, usually about the offender or the place it occurs even if I cannot see the offending activity. You can imagine how puzzling these outbursts were for me, and how many people had to deal with the repercussions. Once the sound stops, I almost promptly return to almost chill.

Since I shared this disorder with people close to me, usually during a trigger, they have all become super sensitive to my need to either leave until these noises subside, or they leave the room. I so appreciate this aspect of my tribe.

It is hard for us to live with issues such as this without a clue as to the what, why, and how to deal with it. I often thought I was just being nasty with people if they made a noise I did not like. No, that was not the case at all. Accepting this as a real thing, and not feeling guilty it truly helpful. As with all issues that are evident to others, it might be harder to resolve, however, I did after learning more about it and releasing myself from shame.

If you suspect you might be dealing with misophonia, please take a look at some resources. Misophonia as a disorder is not always accepted, even by many healthcare professionals.

Here is a link to a good website on this topic:

www.soquiet.org/whatismisophonia

#misophoniamatters #misophoniamatters #Misophonia