That article helped make me feel a bit less like a freak… but the jury was still out. (Er, on second thoughts, maybe don’t answer that…) Being diagnosed with misophonia I mean, we couldn’t ALL just be assholes, could we? I’d never encountered even one other soul who understood this reaction, let alone shared it, but here I was, reading about it in a news article, and discovering there were other people just like me, all over the world. It was me down to a T – it even mentioned the loathed foot waggling/rubbing, which had enraged me for my entire life, and which still prompts a physical feeling of disgust which I can only liken to the sound of nails down a blackboard, say. I forwarded the article to my husband and parents. Then, a few years ago, I came across a news article about a psychiatric disorder called misophonia, and all of a sudden, everything clicked into place. For years, I assumed I was just an asshole. It isn’t, needless to say: not for me, and not for any of the members of my family, who’ve had to put up with years of being asked repeatedly to please, PLEASE stop rubbing their feet together like that, or I will LITERALLY DIE OVER HERE.ĭEEP BREATH. These kind of actions will all provoke that same kind of instant rage which makes me want to – and sometimes HAVE to – run away, just to escape it. So, basically any kind of repetitive motion happening within my eyeline, really. I’ve always said that if I ever get arrested, it’ll be because someone was whistling in my street, or clicking their fork against their teeth, and, just to add to the fun, as well as these painful trigger sounds, I also have some visual misophonia triggers going on, too. It’s like this red mist of rage which descends, making me feel anxious and panicky, and like I could quite literally kill the person responsible for the noise. Quite simply, misophonia makes me feel murderous. Which, honestly, I was REALLY close to doing. For someone with a selective sound sensitivity like misophonia, on the other hand, they’re like a form of torture, invoking a powerful fight or flight response … which is why I ran out of that store a few years ago (So long, beautiful dress I never got to buy!) rather than turn around and scream at some poor girl to STOP CRACKING GUM ALREADY. The fact is, though, for most people, those kind of sounds are a minor annoyance at best. Which is true, of course – and probably one of the reasons misophonia is so easily dismissed by a large part of the population. You’re all, “Er, NO ONE likes hearing those sounds, Amber – it doesn’t have to mean you have a mental health condition, FFS.” – or hitting their cutlery against their plate with every bite.Īnd, I mean, I know what you’re thinking. – someone clicking a sweet against their teeth. – the tinny sound of music/radio seeping through cheap headphones. – the thumping baseline of music playing at a distance. Other triggers include things like… Common misophonia triggers: One of my trigger sounds, needless to say, is the sound of gum cracking – or being chewed loudly. I, you see, suffer from misophonia : a little known condition which is probably best described as an sound sensitivity syndrome in which sufferers have a strong negative reaction to certain sounds or other triggers. It’s not the first time this – or something like it – has happened. Instead, I turn and leave the line, abandoning my planned purchase and racing to get away from this hideous, repetitive noise, which is literally – LITERALLY – making me want to punch someone. No, seriously: I mean, I know it’s all the rage to use ‘literally’ to mean ‘figuratively’, but the blood is pounding in my ears, my hands are shaking, and I swear to God, if I have to hear this girl crack her gum one more time, I’m going to… CRACK! The line isn’t getting any shorter: the woman at the front has a bag of returns she’s complaining about, a supervisor is being called, and… CRACK! I start counting in my head, and it’s roughly every ten seconds, the loud, obnoxious chomping broken by the loud CRACK. She’s going to do it again, I just know it. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. The girl in line behind me is standing so close she’s almost touching me… and she’s chomping hard on a stick of gum, then cracking it loudly in my ear every few seconds. Misophonia: when sounds make you murderous… I’m standing in line at the cash register in a clothing store in Orlando, when suddenly I hear it. I thought I was an asshole: it turns out I just have misophonia.
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