I hate chewing sounds

Post Reply New Topic

They are not doing it deliberately. I have misophonia, which is what the OP is describing (intense distress at sounds such as eating and drinking). You cannot help it - it is probably hard-wired into the brain and it may well be hereditary. Many people who have it do not believe it is a preference or even psychological, but neurological. Many people with misophonia have tried CBT, drugs, all kinds of things, to cure this condition, and almost none of them work. Alcohol provides some short term relief, although it is not a good form self-medication. Some people are trying neurofeedback, although that is fairly expensive, and some audiologists have developed a treatment plan which is supposed to reduce (not cure) the distress of misophonia. It is a serious condition - the people who have it did not choose it.

I have both AS and misophonia, and I would say they are about equal in their impact on my life. You cannot just "get over" misophonia - you cannot get used to the sounds. Attempts to try desensitization, in fact, have tended to worsen the condition. It feels to me like an electrode is stuck straight into the anger center of the brain and given a shock whenever a "trigger sound" is made.

One prominent neurological researcher is looking at the possibility that it works a bit like synesthesia. Just as people with synesthesia will see particular sounds as colors, so too people with misophonia will experience particular sounds as intense stimulation of the fight-or-flight center of the brain. Many people with misophonia also have other forms of sensory processing irregularities, e.g. I find moving crowds unpleasant - "scratchy" - when I look at them. The point of the comparison with synesthesia is that the brain sometimes has extra neural connections between regions that are not normally connected (like hearing and vision) - hence the unusual experiences of sounds as colors. If the abnormal connections lie between hearing and the amygdala, say, then particular sounds might be experienced as intense threats (distress, anger) without any intervening thought processes (i.e. this is not a cognitive problem, the result of faulty thinking, but a neurological problem, the result of faulty wiring in the brain).

And I could well imagine an NT saying "i hate having to put up with people who have AS" - but that is not helpful. The same thing applies to comments about misophonia.