Rey Ross

Misophonic Guilt

Those of you with misophonia know the feeling, something triggers your misophonia and for whatever reason you can’t hold back like you usually do. You explode. After it’s all said and done you come to regret it, and this is the feeling I have decided to call misophonic guilt. It’s a special breed of guilt. Now what makes this guilt different from other types of guilt is that this one stems from things out of your control. You never decided to have misophonia. And yet you feel guilty for having it. And it certainly doesn’t help when others feed into that guilt. For instance, there have been multiple occasions in which I have politely reminded my brother not to talk with his mouth full, only to be admonished by my mother for it. She knows full well that people talking with their mouths full is one of my misophonia triggers, and yet she still makes me feel guilty for it. Like it’s my fault. Which of course, it is not.

I’m sure others with misophonia have had similar experiences. Times when others have said or done things to make us feel ashamed of our disorder. But there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Would you try to make someone feel guilty for having a broken arm? Probably not. So why would you do the same to someone with misophonia? Sure there are coping mechanisms those of us with misophonia can use, but those don’t always work. Sometimes we have bad days. We’re all human.
For those of you without misophonia, here’s an example of my inner monologue during a period of misophonic guilt so you can better understand what this feeling is like. “Shit, I just blew up at her like that. Who does that? She was just eating, shouldn’t I know better? Shouldn’t I be able to control it? I’ve been able to handle her eating before, why not now? I’m a monster…” And on and on it goes. Eventually spiraling into a bout of depression, unless I manage to stop the spiral.
Stopping the spiral takes practice, and truthfully it doesn’t always work. Like I said before, we’re all human. Still there are steps you can take to overcome the misophonic guilt.

First, accept whatever events occured that led to you feeling this guilt. This doesn’t mean you have to like what happened, but just accept that it happened. It’s in the past now, and nothing can change that.

Second, do what you can to get yourself in a good state of mind. Chances are if you’re feeling this misophonic guilt you are not in a healthy mental state at the moment. You need to take care of yourself, your mind as well as your body. Do what you can to improve your mental state, whether that’s reading a book, listening to music, taking a warm shower. As long as it doesn’t hurt yourself or anyone else. Do something to help yourself.

Third, tell yourself you cannot control the fact that you have misophonia. Nor can you control any outside circumstances. Don’t beat yourself up about it, just accept that it’s out of your control. You’re only human, and that’s okay. It’s not your fault. You’re not supposed to be able to control everything. It’s okay to have bad days.

Now these don’t always work, but they do help me alleviate these feelings of misophonic guilt. Hopefully they’ll help you too.

March 4, 2018 0 comment

Coping

Defining Misophonia

written by Rey Ross

Misophonia is officially defined as the hatred of sound. This definition isn’t quite right. Yes I hate some sounds, but not all sounds. I still love music, I love the sound of a baby laughing on his stroller from the Baby Stroller Reviews, I love the sound of my cats purring. But there are some sounds that I hate with a passion. It’s not just hatred though, it’s more than that but it’s also less than that. How do I put this in words to make someone without misophonia understand? Imagine you are sitting at a table eating dinner with your family. If the thought of that made you flinch or filled you with fear, you probably have misophonia. If that’s true I’m sorry. If that’s not true, consider yourself lucky. That dinner table with your family would be filled with noises. Noises that most people hardly notice. The scraping of a fork against a plate, the chewing of food, the slurping of a drink, even the sound of someone swallowing or breathing. All these things and more make that dinner table hell for those of us with misophonia. I apologise right now, because if you have misophonia even reading about those sounds could cause pain.

Some of you without misophonia may be thinking “But everyone gets annoyed by these sounds”, stop that thought right now. Misophonia is more than annoyance, it’s wanting to scream because someone’s breathing too loud. It’s wanting to punch someone who’s smacking their gum. It’s wanting to rip your own ears off because you can’t escape the noise. Hey, if Van Gogh cut off his ear maybe I could too right. That thought goes through my mind more often than it probably should.

Those noises are everywhere. There is literally no way to escape them. Even those of us with misophonia make these noises, sometimes on bad days even the noises I make trigger me. We can put in our earbuds and turn on some music or white noise, but it doesn’t make the noise go away. So we go about our daily lives fighting back the urge to strangle someone every day. Sometimes I don’t even know how I’ve made it through the day. Sometimes I come home from school and all I want to do is scream and cry like a two year old. Sometimes I have panic attacks. Sometimes I can’t even stand the sound of my own breathing. But other times I’m fine. Sometimes I’ll be doing something and I’ll be able to forget that I even have misophonia. It’s not all bad, but it’s definitely not all sunshine and rainbows either.

So if I could define misophonia in my own words how would I define it? I’d define it as a disorder that makes the people who have it have adverse and intense emotional and physical responses to certain noises. These noises often include noises made with the mouth and small repetitive noises. Reactions to these noises may include violent urges to hurt those who are making the noise or themselves, sudden feelings of rage and/or panic, and intense anxiety. This is also a disorder which at the moment has no cure.

There may not be a cure. Not just yet. But I have to hope that someday there will be. Maybe not in my lifetime, maybe not for a century or more. But sooner or later there will be. Until then all I can do is this, writing. Putting my voice out there. Helping people understand. Maybe someone with misophonia will read this and feel a little less alone in their struggle.
This is my definition of misophonia. But I will not let misophonia define me.

Editor Note: There’s a wonderful study at Duke University that has proposed a possible treatment for misophonia. The best part, it’s starting in 2018! To find information on this study, or donate, please go here.

December 11, 2017 6 comments