Living with Misophonia.

First written late 2015;

Having Misophonia makes everyday life really hard. Recently the list of things that are triggers just seem to keep growing and it’s frustrating because I can’t stop the noises or my reactions to them.

My younger brother (who’s autistic) doesn’t understand and keeps telling me to ‘just get used to it’ as though that’s an easy thing to do. Some friends at school get angry at me trying to ‘control’ the noises around me. Because even though I know that I can’t live in a silent world and I don’t, for the most part, tell everyone I meet to shut up or stop sneezing it’s hard to stop that ‘look’ cross my face. I tend to find that I’m glaring at wherever the noise is coming from.

I’m always glad when I can wear my in-ear noise canceling headphones but I can’t walk around with them 24/7 and even when I do have them they don’t stop all the noise, so I’d have to also be listening to music in order to completely avoid noise.

My Misophonia started when I was 12, sitting in the car and having my brother sniffling and eating things loudly, I couldn’t tell him off because he’d get really upset and then mum would be angry at me, that’s where I think it started. Though no-one really knows if there’s a cause. I only realised that my reactions were over the top and much more aggressive than it’s normal about a year later when one night sitting in the lounge room I could hear lots of small persistent noises everywhere. I felt like I was going insane, they were so loud to my ears and I was fixating on them, wanting them to stop. I was told I was overtired and to go to bed. Sometime after that, I googled something along the lines of being angry at noises and that was the end of that.

Ways I try to cope;

I use music and positive sound stimulus or just stay in a quiet room during my down time.

Using my headphones when I’m stressed or even just the buds from them to help calm me down.

Physical stimuli, like something soft or smooth, tends to be easy to focus on and distract myself from the noise that’s in the room.

Exercise and sleep patterns I’ve found seriously affect my ability to cope/how triggered I am by the noise. A regular sleep schedule of solid sleep and physically demanding exercise really improves my daily life.

I’m glad I have these coping methods but sometimes having Misophonia is overwhelming even without there being trigger noises present, this isn’t something you grow out of or there is a treatment for and it puts a lot of strain on relationships. There really aren’t too many people that understand. The ‘nails on chalkboard reaction’ example does get most people to at least have a hint at understanding but they get frustrated when someone else seems to be trying to control them.

Update; 2017.