Misophonia - The Mysterious Case For the OCD Detective

The first article I read this morning was on the BBC site about Misophonia. See here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c04vx47gx91o

OK so poor Lottie is looking forward to seeing her family this year at Christmas but she will have to do it unfortunately wearing ear plugs. The reason being is that she can't stand the noise that her family make when they are eating. Hmmmm interesting I thought. Well I will change seats, carriages and possibly even trains if I have to sit next to someone tucking into a Cornish pasty. I actually like the taste of them but the meaty smell is overwhelming when you can't get away from it in a small train carriage and then when you have someone either nibbling away at the Cornish corners or masticulating their meat then I tend to want to scream very loudly. OK Lottie I'm with you, I don't like the sound of people eating or generally any sound that would fall into the category of 'highly irritating'. I once lived next to a train line and after the 18 months was up I was ready for the mad-house. 'You'll get used to it' they said, 'You won't even notice it after a while' they chimed. How wrong they were. Ever single train that came past (and there were 16 an hour on average, was documented by my train). You'd think I'd get a bit of respite in-between but alas no, I was preparing, nay steeling myself for the next one, day in day out, week in week out, month in month out until thank God, I split up with my girlfriend and moved out. Horrendous. But I've never really thought of it as a problem, and as I've got older I've noticed it diminishing. I used to have neighbours living above me that would send me into a cold sweat every time they crossed their lounge floor, which they seemed to do at a higher frequency than the trains. What the hell are they doing up there? I've come to realise that people an awful lot of time wondering back and forth around their flats doing this, doing that, looking for this, looking for that, until exhaustion has set in and they need to go to bed! (Hurrah).

Photo by Elyas Pasban 

So yes noises have been somewhat problematic for me and on reading this article, it brought a fair bit back to me. But here's the thing, when I stopped to think about it, it sounded awfully similar to my OCD. OK so it wasn't my own random intrusive thought coming in that was triggering me, it was an external stimulus, but apart from that it had all the same hallmarks. The over-reaction to whatever the stimulus is, the absolute horror and repulsion and emotionally scalding moment when I can't do anything but quiver in fear and panic. Then all the attempts to neutralise the interruption. Interestingly at the end of this article they gave 3 bits of advice: 

1. Visualise something else: Imagination is key. Try to associate the particular sound affecting you with something completely different. So for example, try to imagine someone's slurping is just a sink draining water. By doing this you're trying to teach your brain that the sound affecting you isn't harmful
2. Try a competition: Have a bit of fun with it and make the irritating noise into a competition with the culprit. For instance, if someone is crunching loudly have a go at mimicking the sound and crunching loudly too. By mimicking, instead of feeling like the sound is being imposed on you, you become an active participant. And the competition element should help distract your brain into focusing on that and make you a little less affected
3. Create a scenario: Another technique is to try to create a little story about why the person making the noise is having to make that sound. So if someone was sniffing for instance, perhaps they're not feeling well or maybe they're upset. By doing this you're changing the meaning of the sound. Although the noise stays the same, your interpretation of it shifts from being aggravating, to feeling a little more neutral towards it.

I would be most interested to her back from people whether this advice actually works for them because I know as an OCD sufferer these pieces of advice would definitely end up in the file cupboard known as 'neutralising'. I would go as far as to say that this advice could be actually counter productive if Misphonia is anything like OCD. Neutralising just ends up with stimulating the brain to create more of the same. I guess the pathway might be a bit different as you're relying on an external stimulus to create the sound but I can't help thinking there's something in what I'm saying. I know for example that at one point I wore ear plugs religiously every night in order to get to sleep and all I managed to do was to train my ears to work harder and harder noticing quieter and quieter noises... and so I'm wondering whether the neutralising behaviours suggested above are just going to stimulate the brain into searching further and further and hearing more and more noises that are creating the hideous sense of panic and dread. 

I remember hearing a train from about 5 miles away that no one else could and I was nearly on the floor curled up in the foetal position sucking my thumb as I was so anxious about hearing it (that was around the same time as aforementioned living next door to the train track).... or my friend coming around to my new flat and me telling him about how horrendous the radio was coming from the old people below. He strained and he strained and kept saying he couldn't hear anything. Eventually when he could see the enormous vein popping out of my head, slightly crumpled and admitted that yea he thought he could hear something. (He told me many years later that he actually couldn't but thought it was probably best for me that he said he could!).

Anyway, its an interesting article as I've never read anything about it before and I don't think I've ever really thought of it as being that pervasive in my life, even though at times it clearly has but would love to hear back from people that have it, or have it and OCD or anyone that thinks there might be a direct link between the two. I will be spending Christmas with my relatives and I am hoping to ameliorate any chance of a renewed misphonic attack (as just talking about obsessions can get me started!) with the good old fashioned ROCD way of getting hung up on my ROCD instead!