Does anybody here have misophonia?

@Hearing_Potential

I would sort of doubt that Costco fitters can assess all of that, although, of course, they can help to deal with the fact that it is taking me a long time to get used to the loudness of: walking of the floorboards of our almost 100 year old apartment (with slippers that are like ballet slippers, a very soft, cloth sole), a kitchen sink faucet that I think is objectively too darned loud (we need to get it changed), a city in which the police cars and ambulances have increased the sound of their sirens to get people to move out of the way, and lastly, my husband takes his aids out and then makes much more noise than he thinks he does!

Even aside from these issues, I know that I still need to put up with my reaction to noises, even as innocuous as my husband crinkling plastic wrappers, clanking utensils in cooking, etc. I am utterly astounded how loud the floor boards are!! I never remember them being this loud in the past, but in fairness, I’ve been losing my hearing for an incredibly long time.

Obviously, this is NOT Misophonia! But I do have a visceral reaction to these loud sounds, I’m trying to get used to.

You might be surprised what your costco audiologist can do. Some of the tests described are built into common diagnostic equipment, whereas others can be performed on any equipment.

When you first start wearing hearing aids your brain is constantly detecting new or novel stimuli that it hasn’t been exposed to in a while and awaiting your response to determine if it a threat or can just be ignored. The key thing is to not react in a negatively emotional way because your brain will remember your reaction, treat the sound like a threat and program this into how you respond the next time. This can lead to a negative spiral which ends in misophonia if not broken.

The process of adapting to hearing aids is biologically-based had a time course of around 6 months. The more consistently you wear well-fit hearing aids during all your waking hours (10hrs/day minimum) the faster your brain will adjust and the sooner you’ll be ignoring all the unimportant sounds and will be able to focus on what you really want to hear. This is particularly true for hearing in background noise - your brain has to know which sounds aren’t important so it can filter them out and focus on what is important.

A pre-requisite for this to take place successfully is getting your hearing aid settings right. If you’ve been using them consistently for at least two weeks and are still experiencing difficulties it’s time to address those with changes to the settings. Soft sounds can be made softer and loud sounds can be made more comfortable while keeping speech audible in most cases. If you’re not happy with your costco audiologist, you may be one of the people who needs more expert care than they can provide. No professional should ever be offended if someone asks to see a different clinician or get a referral somewhere else.

@Hearing_Potential

Thank you. Well, last Friday I finally got in to see one of the better fitters that I was referred to, as my left hearing aid was dead and wouldn’t charge. It turned out, luckily, that it was just wax in the receiver in my mold.

After she fixed that, she said, “how are you hearing?” Well, I had really been struggling to hear words, and also was wincing with ordinary sounds that seemed way too loud (I didn’t even mention the last part).

She said that the fitter that I saw in February who gave me my new molds had forgotten to adjust them for me!! So she did it for me. What a difference!! I can hear so much better, and I am not constantly in pain from ordinary sounds sounding way too loud!

I still need another remake of the molds, so will address that next week. It’s quite the journey.

Thank you @Hearing_Potential for your words of wisdom.

I’m really pleased that things are going better. I am dreadfully sorry that this happened to you. I hope that your “fitter” from February gets a letter from you about the pain you experienced over the past 4 odd months, to the point you were concerned that you had misophonia. They need to learn from this and improve their practice so it doesn’t happen to someone else.