Shortly after her parents’ divorce when she was 13, Lindsey Baatz would hear a person chewing gum or a speaker playing music with heavy bass and bubble with rage, disgust and panic. Sixteen years later, she still can’t tolerate those sounds.
“My stomach drops, I feel a rush of adrenaline, my heart starts pounding, and I just panic,” said Baatz, 29, of Seattle.
In college, she “finally snapped” when sitting near a serial gum smacker while studying. That prompted Baatz to search for an explanation for why certain sounds make her want to explode.
“I found out that there’s a word for it,” Baatz said, “and that there’s other people like me, that I’m not the only person who feels this way.”
She has misophonia. Now, she spends time educating others about it through her TikTok account and on Facebook.
Misophonia is a complex disorder that causes decreased tolerance to specific sounds or stimuli associated with those sounds. It was named and described for the first time in the early 2000s, yet a survey conducted earlier this year found that just 11% of people knew about it.
Noises such as chewing, slurping, sniffing and heavy breathing are common triggers, as well as clicking, tapping and other repetitive noises that come from objects like clocks and fans.
Reactions are often intense, ranging from feeling trapped and panicked to wanting to vomit.
Misophonia can be so debilitating to a person’s life that it qualifies as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to soQuiet, a nonprofit that advocates for people with the disorder.
“People without misophonia struggle to understand it because they also don’t like certain sounds in the same way that people don’t understand ADHD because they relate to having trouble concentrating,” said Jane Gregory, a clinical psychologist at the University of Oxford who studies the disorder. “It’s not that people with misophonia don’t like the sound — it’s that their body is reacting as if that sound is somehow dangerous or harmful.”
Gregory has had misophonia since she was 8. Eating, heavy breathing and anything repetitive like typing, clock ticking and pens clicking trigger her.
“And pigeons,” Gregory said. “That repetitive sound they make makes me feel like they’re trying to torment me.”
The context of a sound matters, too.
A study published last year in the journal Frontiers in Psychology found that people with misophonia experienced a more negative reaction to trigger sounds when they also watched a video of the sound in action — say, a person chewing chips with the audio.
“People with misophonia often say they hear things others don’t, so it’s possible this is because they are more on the lookout for sounds,” said Gregory, author of the new book “Sounds like Misophonia.”
Researchers don’t know why some people develop misophonia or whether there’s a genetic component to the disorder, which can emerge at any age.
Some people randomly become intolerant to certain sounds, while others are triggered by a life-altering or traumatic event, Gregory said.
Studies have found that the parts of the brain responsible for long-term memories, fear, emotional awareness and auditory processing are more active when people with misophonia hear trigger sounds.
Research also shows that people with autism or ADHD might be more likely to develop misophonia, but that doesn’t mean that people with misophonia are more likely to have those conditions.
There’s no cure for misophonia, but treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy and other coping mechanisms can make it easier to deal with, Gregory said.
Some people reach a point they no longer have the disorder, she said, because they’re no longer in the circumstances that exposed them to their triggers or for unknown
How do you calm misophonia?
It can be hard to get diagnosed with misophonia because there’s no official diagnostic criteria, but there are experts that span several fields, such as audiology, neurology and psychology, who are familiar with it and can help.
Techniques that help you create new associations with your trigger sounds (like listening to recordings of your trigger at different volumes and speeds, or while doing something completely unrelated) can also help reduce the intensity of your reactions, experts say.
When you find coping strategies that work, make sure they allow you to participate in life, rather than force you to retreat from it, Gregory said. This could look like wearing earplugs or noise canceling headphones in environments with your trigger sounds. But be wary of forming a dependence on these products, Gregory said, because they can make you more sensitive to noises when you don’t wear them.
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