- Hating it when hearing others munch their food
- Getting irritated by others whistling
- Visual triggers can be open mouth eating or hair twirling
- Misophonia is a conditioned reflex disorder
- Miso means hate and phonia relates to sound
Misophonia (also known as Selective Sound Sensitivity Syndrome, or 4S) is a condition when intense anger and disgust is experienced when confronted with sounds and noise coming from other people. Sufferers of this condition are not choosing to feel that way. Misophonia is a conditioned reflex disorder, and whilst not formally recognised yet as a medical condition there are, nevertheless, treatments available within the NHS (see link at the bottom). The trigger illicts a physical reflex response and this illicts an extreme emotion and fight/flight response and entry into survival mode. Such sounds can be when others start chewing or heavily breathing and this may cause intense anger and physical arousal. Misophonia is also multi sensory. Triggers need not always be sounds, they can also be smells and sights. There can be visual triggers such as hair twirling, jaw movement and open mouth chewing and also there might be other triggers such as smell or touch from another person. Any repeating sight or sound can be a trigger.
Distinctions need to be drawn with phonophobia, the fear of sound. Phonophobia is a mental health condition that can manifest at any age and you should see a mental health professional qualified to diagnose the condition if you are worried about it. Hyperacusis is also related, which is an abnormally strong reaction to sound, occurring within the auditory pathways, in levels that would might not cause discomfort to others. It is advisable to see your GP if you think you might have this. With misophonia the sound does not have to be loud to produce the discomforting effect. The hatred is of specific sounds, known as trigger sounds.
There are many misconceptions about misophonia. There may be a common reaction to intrusive sounds which are being witnessed as irritating sounds. For example, you are expecting a quiet experience at a restaurant but you end up getting irritated by loud diners at a nearby table. That is not an example of misophonia, where there are immediate involuntary responses, generally to soft sounds (though not exclusively to sounds), and it involves experiencing extreme emotion.
People who suffer from misophonia can often think that everyone else is also as easily and equally triggered by the sounds other people are making. Sometimes it can be a journey to gradually discover that it is a problem not experienced by many others. Other people are actually oblivious to the sounds of other people eating, for example, or don’t even hear the annoying sounds.
People who suffer from misophonia can often feel embarrassed and perhaps will be reluctant to raise it with others, even with therapists, perhaps in fear that such people will have no clue what they are talking about, or who may become judgemental. Therapists might even think that their discomfort is something that can be rationalised and that the rage can be controlled, perhaps by adopting a more generous attitude in company. Or people with this condition may be subject to more subtle stigmatisation, that they are weird for having such emotional discomfort. It can often be the expectations of polite society to not wish to cause a fuss, to just be more agreeable, and to tolerate others and their noise. Who wants to make a scene? Perhaps there was a rescuing tendency in the scripts associated with the family system and any objection to noise made by others is seen as being disagreeable. To express irritation might risk being ostracized.
Misophonia involves a spectrum of severity. It can manifest as being occasionally irritating to being overwhelmingly debilitating. Sufferers might, for example, learn to adopt their routine but get along in their life otherwise okay whilst others will quit jobs to avoid having to deal with certain noises or indeed end relationships to escape the pain of having to cope with triggers. Responding to a misophonia event can have a major impact on an individual’s thinking. When such a dysregulation of thoughts and emotions occur there can be aggressive outbursts (though such instances are rare). The benefits of bringing greater awareness to your reflex is that you may understand better that with misophonia, your lizard brain is hurting you, not the other person. It is a reflex. Exposure and response prevention is not a good idea but reducing the physical reflex and changing the response to the physical reflex is a good idea.
Therapy can help to explore the impact of avoidance strategies and whether they are still useful or whether they are compounding the problem. It is possible that at some point in the past, there was an event that linked loud noises and emotional trauma. There is no known single cause for misophonia but it could be worth exploring how sound featured within your early life. For instance, your trauma based learning system may have had key environmental inputs associated with noise particularly within a toxic sibling matrix. An example of this may be seen from those having to share bedrooms with older siblings at an early stage and noise may have been something that sparked unease, fear or not feeling safe. Making noise might have produced retribution if crying, for example, was not tolerated by older siblings. Or worse, there may have been physical or sexual abuse within such an environment. The work in therapy could be about understanding more about your personal triggers and how your vulnerable parts get activated. How, for example, your personal triggers produce strong physical sensations and how better to cope with the emotional misophonic response?
Noel Bell is a UKCP accredited psychotherapist and can be contacted on 07852407140 and noel@noelbell.net However, if you need a diagnosis, it is advisable to contact your GP in the first instance.
See also
Oxford Health Specialist Psychological Intervention Centre (OHSPIC)