Have you ever hated someone for making sounds while chewing, crunching, snorting, sniffing, or just breathing? These are normal day-to-day sounds. However, for some these sounds can make them dislike other people. This is the curse of misophonia.
According to researchers at King’s College London,18 percent of people in the UK are affected by this condition. Misophonia, also known as “sound rage”, is a disorder in which certain sounds trigger emotional or psychological action that might be unreasonable in a given situation. While most people find these sounds a little irritating and ignore them, those with misophonia develop extreme hate for these sounds and the people who make them. The conditions can even get worse and lead to phonophobia, an abnormal fear of sounds.
Physical and Emotional changes in Misophonia
Researchers have found that these strange repulsive actions lead to psychological signs of stress like increased heart rate, irritability, shame, and anxiety. People with Misophonia try to isolate themselves from others, which can also affect their mental health. When sounds get unbearable, they create conflict. The condition usually appears around the age of 12 and affects more people than we know.
In the beginning, young people tend to ignore the situation but then the situation gets worse. Persons with misophonia rated the trigger sounds of eating and breathing as highly disturbing. Lots of relationships ended due to misophonia onia, it creates an adrenaline reaction which tells you that you’re either in danger or you’re being violated, ” says Dr. Jane Gregory, a clinical psychologist at the University of Oxford.
Causes of Misophonia
The exact reason for Misophonia is still not known by the experts but it is believed to be a combination of the factors such as brain structure differences where there is a disbalance of activities between the areas of the brain which processes the sounds in different ways in an individual. This hence can result in Brain disorders, Mental health illness like PTSD which is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and BPD i.e. Borderline Personality Disorder and hearing losses. Another cause is family history which is due to the genes transferred from one generation to other in a family.
Strategies to tackle Misophonia
Avoiding background noise by listening to favorite music or reducing exposure to high volume is one of the great examples to handle the situation. Walking away from the situation, physical exercises like breathing slowly and doing other aerobic activities give you another mind job to do. Improving the sleep cycle by having a proper bedtime schedule brings fresh and positive mornings which can help in reducing the chances of getting irritated easily
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