Awkwardly sitting on a squishy grey chair in front of a therapist in his small practice room in Edinburgh, I knew that it was time to get help. I’d always had a serious problem with repetitive noises, and yet I felt like a fraud sitting there.
Therapists’ rooms are spaces for people with real issues, I thought to myself, and my problem isn’t even recognized as a registered medical condition by the NHS. There are few statistics, few experts on the condition and I’m more than aware that there are far worse problems that I could have in life.
The thing I remember the most about sitting in that practice room wasn’t what either the therapist or I were saying, because I could hardly focus on that.
All I could hear was the sound of the clock on the wall. Tick, tick, tick.
Every time the clock ticked it felt as though a small insect was stinging me. At first it was irritating, and then slowly my irritation turned to anger and then that turned to desperation to escape.
Then finally I was sat there for what seemed like no reason desperately trying to hold back floods of tears.
WHAT IS MISOPHONIA?
For as long as I can remember, certain sounds and movements have stirred an intense emotion in me that can only be described as a combination of total rage and anxiety.
Although for most people the condition begins in puberty, I can’t remember a time in my life when I haven’t been driven mad by certain noises.
The innocent sound of someone breathing slightly too loudly or absentmindedly clicking their pen makes my blood boil. Even the sight of someone twirling a piece of hair around their finger makes me shudder and cup my hands around my eyes.
I’m forever changing carriages on train journeys to get away from triggers and I often have to wait until a film has been out for a while before I go to see it at the cinema as I want to minimize the risk of being sat in front of someone loudly chewing.
I suffer from a condition called misophonia and it seems that I’m not alone. According to Dr Pawel Jastreboff, an audiologist and leading researcher on the topic, misophonia might effect between two and three percent of the population.
But if so many people suffer from this condition, then why has nobody heard of it?
Misophonia, also known as selective sound sensitivity syndrome, is a little known and largely under-studied condition.
The word misophonia translates quite literally to ‘hatred of sound’ and was coined in the year 2000 when the married couple, audiologists Drs Pawel and Margaret Jastreboff, noticed that the symptoms of some of their patients didn’t fit the descriptions of any existing audiological conditions.
Some people were having a strong emotional response to the most subtle sounds that other people might not pick up on, but at the same time had no problem with louder noises.
‘I know very well that in the medical field if you do not create a name for a new condition, the condition does not exist,’ Dr Pawel Jastreboff said.
And it seems he was right, for in the years that followed the birth of the term more and more people began to come forward as sufferers.
The condition has gained a little more fame lately, especially across the pond as American TV show host Kelly Ripa came out as a sufferer and, last month, MTV aired a ‘True Life: I have Misophonia’ special.
When people with misophonia hear one of their trigger noises or see a trigger movement, they are filled with emotions such as anger, disgust and hatred. The feelings then disappear as quickly as they came when a person is removed from the trigger.
It is not only noises that cause issues for misophonics, however, and repetitive motions can be equally as distressing. The sound of loud typing on computers drives me mad but I can easily plug in my earphones to drown out the tapping.
But the sight of someone’s fingers moving over their keyboard is much harder to avoid and this can aggravate me so much that, on a stressful day, I might have to cup my hand over my eyes or sink into my chair and pull my hair around my face.
Misophonia also seems to be more pronounced in me when I am stressed. On a good day I can be only slightly irritated by noises that on other days might make me come close to standing on a chair and screaming.
Misophonia Treatment Institute offers new treatments that can provide relief from the symptoms of Misophonia which are very effective for many people. Visit MisophoniaTreatment.Com for more details!
Misophonia 