2023-10-20 18:21:24
The sounds of your partner’s chewing are unbearable, hearing your colleague typing on her keyboard is an ordeal? We may be suffering from misophonia.
What is misophonia?
Misophonia is recognized as a disorder characterized by a disproportionate emotional response to everyday sounds. Misophones are intolerant to certain sounds. Mouth noises, chalk on the board, the sound of someone blowing their nose or tapping on their computer keyboard… you may feel a slight irritation. Sometimes the reaction is more intense and these noises cause anger or even distress. Some people therefore have difficulty getting used to certain stimuli. Surprisingly, most people with misophonia are less bothered by noises from children or animals. 1.
Misophonia: causes and origins?
We do not know exactly what the causes and origins explain the development of misophonia. But some factors 2 that may promote the development of this disease have been identified:
- Tourette syndrome, a neurological disease characterized by sudden, brief and intermittent involuntary tics,
- Anxiety or depressive disorders,
- Eating disorders,
- Having tinnitus,
- Having certain genetic predispositions.
What are the symptoms of misophonia?
The main symptom of this chronic disease is a reaction ofsignificant irritabilityd’anxietyof disgust then anger when faced with certain sounds produced by adults. But other symptoms can also appear more randomly:
- Inability to concentrate,
- Inability to relax,
- Feeling of shame,
- Feeling of loss of control,
- Feeling of helplessness,
- A need to escape,
- A desire to put an end to these noises.
How to avoid symptoms of misophonia ? The most effective is to implement avoidance strategies. We use means to protect ourselves from aversive sounds by wearing earplugs or listening to music, for example. The problem is that by implementing avoidance strategies, we disrupt our social, professional and family life because we distance ourselves from others and close in on ourselves, a social phobia can arise…
What treatments are available to treat misophonia?
There are no treatments yet to treat misophonia, but psychotherapeutic monitoring can be implemented to learn how to manage your phobia. You can go to a psychologist or psychotherapist for a few sessions. The objective? Gradually expose yourself to noises that you cannot tolerate so that the professional assesses the intensity of the symptoms anxiety, anger, irritability and disgust. Other solutions? People affected by this disease and also suffering from tinnitus can do habituation therapy3 to learn to live with these noises. Finally, we have the possibility of going to a hypnotherapist because some succeed in alleviating this pathology…
Contrary to what one might believe, antidepressants or anxiolytics do not seem to be effective in the treatment of misophonia.
1. Misophonia in the UK: Prevalence and norms from the S-Five in a UK representative sample. Silia Vitoratou, Chloe Hayes, Nora Uglik-Marucha, Oliver Pearson, Tom Graham, Jane Gregory.
2. Misophonia or aversion to noise: regarding a clinical case, Claude-René Jacot, Tanja Eric and Othman Sentissi, in the Swiss medical journal.
3. According to the Hearing Foundation
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