Currently loud af at the Buffalo Wild Wings I’m at and I can still hear the guy at end of bar eating.

I kinda hopes he gets a bone in sideways.

#misophonia

Alter, bitterer Rauch 🤢 ich glaub neben Kopfhörern 🎧❤️ (die Typen neben mir sind echt ne akustische Zumutung) brauch ich demnächst ne Nasenklammer. Oder so kleine minicabins wie im Nachtzug. Ein Traum.

#Bahn
#Misophonie
#minicabins
#misophonia

Booked an apparently nice hotel in Norwich
It's opposite a fucking Wetherspoons
Which is open til 1AM.

Good thing I brought some ear plugs. 😑
#misophonia #noise #UK #pubs

🔗 The Unbearable Loudness of Chewing

It’s a teenage rite of passage to explode into rage at your parents. While the usual outburst is sparked by some combination of hormones, insecurity, and authority issues, for me it was a popping sound in my father’s jaw. I first noticed it at the dinner table. Every time he took a bite, the disc of cartilage that cushioned his jawbone would slip out of place and snap back. Chew, click, chew, click. Like a drum, his mouth reverberated the sound, which changed in pitch each time he opened to take a bite. Layered beneath all of this was the wet percussion of normal chewing. The trio — jaw pop, meat squish, fork scraping teeth — became inescapable. And it drove into me, first through my chest, a surprising shock of affront and disgust that then suffused through my whole body. It was the first time I ever got scared that I wasn’t in control of what was inside my own head.

It hits fast.

A second I am fine. The next, a wet, grinding chew or a hard break of someone taking _in_ their sniffle cuts through everything. It is not “a little annoying.” It is a five alarm buzz in my body. My skin goes tight. My jaw locks. My stomach turns like I tasted milk gone bad. Heat crawls up my neck and into my face. My heart starts doing that stupid, hard thump that feels louder than the sound itself.

The noise feels intimate, in the worst way. Too close. Too detailed. Like someone put a mic really close to the other person and a speaker next to my ear and turned up the gain. Each smack is sharp and slow at the same time. Each click lands with a tiny pause after it, like my brain is forced to replay it and confirm, yes, it happened again.

Disgust shows up first, quick and clean. Earlier my face used to contort into this mess. These days, my eyes immediately lock to the origin of the sound. Then anger follows like a door slammed in my chest. Not “I’m irritated” anger. The kind that wants to shove the world away, the kind that makes my hands want to do something, now, just to make it stop. And straddling both is panic, because I can feel myself losing control. I can watch myself getting pulled into a reaction that I do not want to share.

Then the shame comes in, right on time, and whoo!, it makes everything worse.

Because it is a person I love.

So now the sound is not just a sound. It is a test I am failing in real time. I am angry at them for making the noise, and angry at myself for being angry. I start bargaining with my own brain. Be normal. Be kind. Don’t be weird. Don’t be cruel. Just sit here. Just breathe. And the harder I try to be calm, the more the sound digs in, like it knows where the soft parts are.

I can feel my face trying to hold a neutral shape. My teeth press together. My shoulders creep up. My eyes lock on some point that is not them, because if I look at them I might snap, and I would rather bite my tongue than hurt them. I get this sick, trapped feeling, like being stuck in a room with a dripping faucet that is also an insult.

I am not choosing any of it.

That is the worst part.

It is not a preference. It is not a pet peeve. It is my nervous system grabbing the wheel.

So I reach for escape the way you reach for a railing when you miss a step. Headphones. Noise canceling. Leaving the room. Anything that puts a wall between me and that sound before it turns me into someone I do not want to be.

And then I hate myself for needing that.

I hate that love is sitting right there, chewing, and my brain treats it like a threat.

I hate that I have to protect both of us from a sound.

I am heaving a sigh of relief. Much like the author says, this is the first time I can put a word to the feeling that I get.

It’s misophonia.

NBC has the announcer's mics unmuted the entire time and it sounds like one of them is sucking on a cough drop during this musical interlude.

Ugh.

#misophonia

As a person with #misophonia it is a special hell to be forced to hotdesk next to an office mate that mumbles and whispers everything on their screen, all day, just at the edge of hearing.

I never thought I'd miss my oppressive tech support cube but here we are. My jaw hurts from gritting my teeth.

You know what's fucking weird? Amazing and wonderful, but weird?

My misophonia is gone.

Like, I don't fully trust that it's gone, in the same way you'd give a backache that disappears some serious side-eye.

But crunching crackers, right next to me, and I'm waiting for the fight/flight twitchies to hit, and they just... never come?

Wtf brain, but thanks.

#misophonia

When you have (mild, but still a thing) #misophonia
And you try to be patient with people
But noises are pissing you off
And you vent to people

What we do NOT NEED
is being told we're overreacting
coming up with unhelpful solutions you can be SURE we have thought of, dreamed of, or already done

Sometimes you just need to let out the frustration. The world is noisy, we know this. But sometimes it hurts. And it's nice for people to sit with that instead of telling you to put it out of sight.