February 1, 2023
As a teenager, my friend remembers being moved almost to tears by the sound of a family member chewing muesli—and, she says, at another time, the noise created by friends chomping on popcorn made her leave the room. She is not proud of herself for reacting like this, but she says that her responses feel unavoidable.
She may be right: She probably has misophonia. Indeed, according to a forthcoming scientific paper from King’s College London, so do 18% of people in the United Kingdom, reports The Guardian.
Otherwise known as “sound rage”, misophonia is “a decreased tolerance to certain sounds” says Dr. Jane Gregory, a clinical psychologist at the University of Oxford who co-authored the paper and counts herself among the 18%.
Sound triggers are usually repetitive, she says. It is not about “the volume of the sound or necessarily the acoustic pattern”, but what it means to the observer. Eating sounds are most commonly reported, closely followed by so-called throat sounds.
“Chewing, crunching, snorting, sniffing, throat clearing, nose whistling, heavy breathing,” rattles off Dr. Zach Rosenthal, who runs the Centre for Misophonia and Emotion Regulation at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. “These are all relatively ordinary everyday things that people need to do, but in people with misophonia they are experienced as highly aversive.”
Only about 14% of the UK population are aware of misophonia, according to the King’s College London paper. Perhaps one of the reasons, Gregory suggests, is simply that it is hard to talk about. “You are essentially telling someone: ‘The sound of you eating and breathing—the sounds of you keeping yourself alive—are repulsing me.’ It’s really hard to find a polite way to say that.” Maybe the movie Tár will help: its protagonist, played by Cate Blanchett, has an extreme reaction to the sound of a metronome.
Theories about how misophonia develops are exactly that. “A lot of people say they had always been a little bit sensitive to sound, but then they remember a certain time when it suddenly got a lot worse,” says Gregory. Rosenthal says it typically presents itself in late childhood or early teens and is often associated with family members. “People ask me all the time: ‘Why my family? Why my parents?’” The explanation feels comfortingly logical: “You’re not blaming, you’re not judging—you were probably just around them the most.”
The impact can be severe. Gregory knows of relationships that have ended over misophonia; she has encountered people who have moved several times to escape triggering neighbors. Others must pick careers based on where they can work without being bothered by sounds. “If you don’t get any respite from it, you can get desperate,” she says.
You get a really strong adrenaline reaction and it tells you that you’re either in danger or you’re being violated
Strategies might help, however, such as introducing background noise when eating. Gregory’s husband, who knows better than to eat Monster Munch at home, can tell if she is bothered by a sound, because she will suddenly call out: “Siri, play Taylor Swift!”
Sometimes the best option is to walk away. Gregory suggests then “slowing down your breathing, or just giving your mind a little job to do,” such as playing a game for a minute. By the time you re-enter the room, the sound might be gone, or you might feel better equipped, “because you know what’s coming.”
She also recommends “opposite action—this idea that sometimes the more we avoid something or block it out, the more harmful it feels to us. In CBT [cognitive behavioral therapy], we do the opposite of what you feel like doing.”
In this vein, she tries to fight her instinct to glare at her husband, gazing adoringly at him instead: “It’s a way of tripping up your brain and saying: remember that you love this person, remember that you’re not actually in danger.”
Research contact: @guardian
