Does anybody here have misophonia?

Thank you Paul. I was ready to try to leave this forum. Yes, I do mute. But sometimes it is not enough. The HA’s put a pipeline to my head though when they’re on. People swear by the Phonak Sphere’s, but that is not my experience. Now I will have to approach my GP to see if he can send me to a specialist. If you were to have seen some of my previous postings you would have seen more of what I’m complaining about. At least now I can stop blaming the Phonak Sphere’s.

Have you told you audiologist?
I’m sure there is a selection in Target for this.

Second that recommendation for CBT, psychotherapy, medical or therapeutic management of depression/anxiety.

Just hearing all of this depresses me. Sheesh.

You just want to nip it in the bud if you can, to arrest progression. A professional can support management strategies. If upcoming surgery is an acute stressor right now there’s a solid chance that it will calm down again once that’s over, but it’s still worth developing good coping strategies which can make it better and help manage any flares in the future. Plus, CBT will give good knock on effects for other issues.

Are you sure that you aren’t experiencing hyperacusis, rather than misophonia? I haven’t looked at other posts of yours, however.

I know for myself, as a new HA user, who should have had them long ago, I still can’t get used to loud sounds, even though I’ve gotten better with them. Loud sounds are still excruciating for me—much to my husband’s annoyance, as he clangs stuff in the kitchen, or rustles a rice cakes cellophane and I exclaim and try to turn my aids down.

If you look at the wikipedia page for hyperacusis, it’s pretty interesting and informative. There are lots of conditions that can cause this, take a look. To me, the biggest one of all is going for a long time without aids, leading to getting used to a much less noisy world before the rude awakening with aids!! Much as they help to understand speech, which, of course, is vitally important.

Misophonia is literally “a hatred of sound.” If you haven’t attached strong emotional responses to the sounds mentioned then you probably don’t have misophonia, but may be at risk of developing it.

I would strongly recommend seeing an audiologist as there are many sound tolerance disorders that are possible including hyperacusis and reduced loudness tolerance. Most of them can be easily managed, sometimes reversed depending on the condition. It’s best to seek professional help as early as possible in order to avoid a undesirable outcome. Make sure you seek out an audiologist that is experienced in this area.

Yeah. It’s even worse due to loudness recruitment. Obnoxiously loudly speaking people make my blood boil - if I make hearing aids quieter, then I don’t hear normally speaking people.

I think I may have symptoms - I certainly have a phobia for loud noises, especially bangs - not a fan of firework displays! Back in my teens I would avoid noisy gigs and discos - if I happened to find myself in one by accident I wouldn’t stay long!

Even earlier in life - as a toddler - I can remember being frightened of certain sounds: telephones, toilets flushing, motorbikes being started up. Would set me screaming. Is this a form of misophonia, or is it something else?

Another experience, again in my early teens, and maybe contributory towards my hearing problems late in life. I was briefly in the school CCF as a naval cadet, and we were all taken on a field trip to Portsmouth harbour. There, the officer showing us around took us to a big shore artillery gun and wanted to demonstrate it by firing a few blanks. His order was “I don’t want to see any of you sticking your fingers in your ears. You need to learn to put up with the bangs.”

I kid ye not! After over 60 years, I can still recall that officer’s words, almost exactly.

I almost fainted from the noise. And was almost deaf the rest of the day, so I was spared any more of that idiot officer’s spiel.

I guess, if he tried that stunt with cadets now, he’d be court-martialled.

@Hearing_Potential @user490

Yes, I would like to know also what @user490 asked, knowing, of course, that it could be different from person to person.

Although I got my first aids in August, am still getting used to how loud everything is!! I went waaay too long without aids, getting more and more wrapped in a degree of silence (looking back on it, that is).

I am getting better at putting up with the loudness of everything, but it’s a long. slow journey.

My ENT told me that the kind of hearing loss I was likely from head trauma. I have no idea why he thought so, but he is one of the top ENTs in a sea of them in NYC. And, as a matter of fact, I have had an extraordinary amount of head trauma. He’s also had a lifetime of experience in the field.

But my mother, grandmother, and aunt were quite deaf, and both of my brothers also have a lot of hearing loss, so who knows.

And I have lived in a very noisy city for my whole adult life.

I am just trying to push the envelope in trying to put up with the perceived loudness of everything, rather than to turn my aids down. But I still do turn them down, when my husband has his off, and doesn’t realize how loud his clanging around in the kitchen is! He is not a loud person, though, it just hurts my ears!

Discomfort from loud noises that other people would find uncomfortable is totally normal. As is being afraid of sudden unexpected sounds when you’re an infant. Misophonia is a very strong aversion to/hatred of sounds that don’t bother normal people, and often includes the sound of other people chewing food/gum. However as you are in control of your own eating sounds people with misophonia will have no problems with their own eating sounds. It’s thought to be an abnormal wiring of the fight-flight response that has been conditioned to specific sounds in specific contexts over time. The treatment is typically cognitive behavioural therapy and retraining of the response to the otherwise neutral sounds so that they’re not longer perceived by the brain as aversive.

Discomfort from loud sounds when wearing hearing aids is a little more complicated and requires further investigation from your audiologist. You may have reduced loudness tolerance and hyperacusis and your brain injury may be a contributing factor. Or it may be that settings in your hearing aids can be adjusted to adapt to sudden loud sounds better. I cannot really advise further online, but I would encourage you to talk to your audiologist and ask them to develop a testing and management plan with you to work out exactly what the root cause of your difficulties are. The acceptable noise level test and loudness discomfort levels are two psychometric tests that many audiologists can complete that feed into how your hearing aids are programmed.